Free Summer in the South by Cathy Holton

martinis, Mr. Stanley coming in from the golf course with grass stains on his pants and his face ruddy with health and happiness. Trouble did not seem to darken the Stanleys’ door; misfortune seemed incapable of finding them. They never worried about debt collectors or paying bills or being evicted. And it seemed to Ava that this was the wonderful thing about having money; not that it could buy you things, but that it kept the wolves at bay. It gave you security and stability. Freed from worry and care, it allowed you to live your life with oblivious abandon, taking everything for granted, even good fortune.
    And, oh, what a life they led!
    “Daddy, let’s go for a ride,” Mrs. Stanley would call to Mr. Stanley when he came in from the golf course. Wrapped in her fur, clutching her martini glass with jeweled fingers, she would climb into the front seat of the Lincoln Continental beside Mr. Stanley, and Ava and Margaret would climb into the back. They would drive out into the western suburbs and beyond, out into the country past dairy farms and Catholic shrines, and Mrs. Stanley would pour martinis from a little silver shaker for her and Mr. Stanley, and he would tell them stories of his youth. Sometimes they wouldn’t return home until late in the evening and Clotilde would be furious, threatening not to let Ava go anywhere with those “arch-Republican Stanleys.” But under Ava’s relentless pleading she would eventually give in.
    Mrs. Stanley had sized Clotilde up pretty quickly and she would have nothing to do with her, but she seemed genuinely fond of Ava. Ava had the feeling that she would adopt her, too, if given the chance, and she spent a lot of time fantasizing about becoming one of the fabulous Stanleys.
    Ava stuck her arm out the window and let it undulate in the wind like a snake fighting a swift current. All along the road were masses of greenery: tulip poplars and hickory trees and wild azaleas. They passed small shotgun houses with cars rusting in the yard and a lone trailer set back from the road beneath a sodium vapor lamp. They passed a boy riding a four-wheeler along a dusty road, and a flock of goats standing in the shade of a sycamore tree.
    “All this used to be Woodburn land,” Will said.
    “It doesn’t look very prosperous now.”
    “The town grew to the north and the west. I suppose that’s why the family stopped living out here after the Civil War.”
    “But they held on to the property?”
    “Yes. They rented the land first to sharecroppers and later to big farmers, but after a while the taxes and upkeep got to be too much. The aunts didn’t want to sell it. They were afraid it would be snatched up by some big developer and turned into McMansions on postage-stamp-sized lots and that’s why they gave it to me.”
    “Wow. Some gift.”
    He seemed amused by her reaction. “I inherited it when I turned twenty-one. It was in trust, and as the Colonel’s only remaining male heirs, it could have gone to either Sumner or me.”
    “Who’s Sumner?”
    “Fanny’s son. Her only child.”
    “So you got the family farm and Sumner didn’t? He must really like you.”
    He smiled ruefully and glanced in the rearview mirror. “He doesn’t like any of us much, I’m afraid.”
    She turned her face to the window. The scattered farmhouses and trailers gave way now to wide rolling fields of alfalfa and soybeans. Far off in the distance the land rose gradually to a prominent ridge crowned by a grove of tall trees.
    “Longford,” Will said, pointing to the grove.
    S he couldn’t see the house. Even after they turned off the main road onto a narrow paved drive, it was still hidden by the trees. A white fence ran along both sides of the drive, flanked by a row of old oaks.
    “This used to be a dirt road,” Will said. “They’ve only recently paved it.”
    The sun glittered along the windshield as they broke from the trees into a wide grassy clearing. The house was not what she had expected,