one

I’d never heard of Langston, Georgia, or Fairhope until a wet February night when I shared a fire and a bottle of wine with Rick Broussard in his Franklin Avenue apartment. The CD player was turned down low, but Julie Miller’s sassy The Devil Is an Angel could still be heard during our conversational lapses. I spent a good portion of the evening complaining about life in general and my looming need for a thesis in particular. Rick listened politely, but with no surprise. This wasn’t the first time I’d used him as a sounding board. He reached up from where he was sprawled on the hearth rug to refill his glass and regarded me with an amused expression.

"Try and keep some perspective, sugar," he said in that bayou-flavored drawl many women found irresistible. "Everybody starts off feeling that way. A thesis sounds worse than it is. Once you get into it, it’ll flow. You’ll see. And Foster’s not such a bad guy. He’s just demanding. He wants you to do your best and not settle for mediocrity."

Rick could afford complacency; he’d earned his master’s a year and a half before and was now securely settled as an assistant instructor at the University of New Orleans with a comfortable span of years ahead of him to achieve doctorate status. Not only did this make him irritatingly smug, but lately I’d noticed he often took the side of the professor rather than mine in our discussions.

"Foster’s an ogre," I corrected him. "His criticism wouldn’t be so bad if he had some constructive suggestions to make, but he doesn’t. I’ve taken him six proposals for the damned thing and he’s torn them all to pieces." I sighed in self-pity. "If I just had some idea of which way to go. It’s easy for you to talk about hard work and doing your best, Rick. Mathematics isn’t exactly a crowded field. But, I swear, three out of four students at UNO are history majors. You can’t throw a rock in this place without hitting one. There’s nothing new left to work on. Anything I pick is bound to be hackneyed."

"Nothing new under the sun, huh?" He gave me a lopsided grin and I thought, as I had so often before, what a remarkably attractive man he was. With his dark hair and blue eyes, he looked more Irish than the French suggested by his name. A slightly crooked nose—the souvenir of a head-on encounter with a diving board—and complete ignorance of his appeal kept him from being too handsome. I tried to put those thoughts out of my mind.

When we met four years earlier, the attraction was instantaneous and explosive. For six months we were completely and devastatingly in love—or what we thought was love. Ours was a relationship packed with passion. Unfortunately, that passion extended well beyond the bedroom to every facet of our lives. Quarrels rivaled lovemaking in fire and emotion. We agreed on nothing—food, politics, religion, music. He was constantly annoyed by what he saw as my passive behavior and lack of self-confidence. On the other hand, I found his outspokenness, which he called honesty, impossible to tolerate. All in all, it was an exhausting six months. We were both relieved when we agreed to call it quits.

Strangely enough, once romance was removed from the equation, friendship came easily, along with a comfortable tolerance for the differences that had been so aggravating before. Now we shared confidences, hopes, and problems. He told me all about his successes and frustrations at the university; I confided my worries about school and the usual tensions with family. I had watched with something that bordered on maternal amusement as he worked his way through a parade of beautiful women, and he helped me cope with the beginnings and endings of the few romantic alliances I’d formed over the years. In many ways, Rick was my best friend. I tried to be there for him when he needed me. He had been especially caring and supportive during my mother’s illness and death the year before. It was a satisfactory arrangement for both of us.

"Don’t you have at least an idea of what to write, Jill?"

I shook my head miserably and watched the rain batter the window across the room. "Oh, I get ideas from time to time, glimmerings of how I’d like to handle this subject or that. Then I do a little research and find it’s already been done—usually several times and often better than I could do it."

"There you go again," he groaned. "You have to learn to believe in yourself."

"It’s not that." I held out my glass for a refill. "It’s a lack of original material. I can’t open a book in the library without finding someone else’s notes penciled in the margin. Oh, what’s the use? I’ll just pick something and redo it and they’ll give me my degree out of pity. For all I know, the review committee’s as bored as I am with the whole process. They probably don’t even read the pathetic papers anymore."

I got up and paced Rick’s small living room, sidestepping the mismatched furniture. The rain sounded different now and I wondered if it had changed to sleet—a rarity for New Orleans, but unusually cold temperatures were predicted. My mother had hated cold weather. Even the short New Orleans winter had been too much for her. It was sad to realize that this was my first winter without her. I took a deep breath, refocused my thoughts, and moved closer to the fireplace, warming the backs of my legs.

"I’m not sure exactly what you need," Rick said tentatively. "I understand you don’t want to use published sources. Would old letters and papers do you any good—if they’d never been studied before?"

"It depends." I was sure now that it was sleet. I should have left, but I hated the thought of driving on icy roads as much as spending the rest of this cold night alone.

"On what?"

"Hmmm?"

"What would it depend on?"

"Oh, a lot of things—who the papers belonged to, the content, the quantity, whether there was any historical significance. What difference does it make?" I went back and curled up on the love seat again. If it was sleet, I’d just bunk here rather than risk driving. "Rick, there aren’t any significant collections just lying around these days, waiting to be discovered. All the historians before me have made sure of that. Picture a cornfield and a swarm of locusts."

He grinned. "You know, I might know where you can find something like that."

And that was the beginning. His mother’s older sister still lived on the family’s home place in Langston, Georgia, and Rick believed she had four or five generations of family papers stored there.

"I thought your family was from Louisiana."

"Only my father’s side. Mom’s people are from Georgia. Her family, the Westbrooks, have lived there for ages. Aunt Montine still lives in the old house. It’s called Fairhope." He smiled. "I used to spend summers there when I was a kid. I thought it was the most wonderful place on earth. Fields, woods, a big creek—everything a boy could want. And the house was huge and mysterious; to me it was like a castle. Of course, it probably wouldn’t seem like that now. Everything gets smaller when you grow up, doesn’t it? Mom and Dad visit her a few times a year, but I haven’t been back in a long time."

"What about the papers?" I asked, pulling him back to the subject at hand. It was fine to reminisce, but we had important matters to discuss.

"Well, Aunt Montine has complained for years about all the old letters and stuff in the house. Says it’s not fair that she should be responsible for them just because she’s an old maid who never left home." He thought for a minute. "I don’t know how historically significant they are, but they must be well over a hundred years old. Seems like most of them belonged to James Westbrooks, my great-great-grandfather or great-great-great-grandfather or something. Papers that old ought to have something you’d like, right?"

I was no longer curled up on the love seat; I was upright and completely alert. "Did you say James Westbrooks? James Kenton Westbrooks?"

"Well, I don’t know his middle name," he said with a trace of annoyance. "I thought I was doing pretty damned good to dredge up his first name. After all, it’s been—"

"Rick! Do you know who James Kenton Westbrooks was?"

"Sure. He was my great-granddaddy, give or take a great."

"James Kenton Westbrooks was one of the South’s most prominent statesmen. He represented Georgia in the US Senate. His speeches in support of preserving the Union are required reading in most American history courses! And, when Georgia did secede, Westbrooks went back home to support the Southern cause. He was influential in Jefferson Davis’s administration. I wonder if this is the same guy."

Rick shrugged. "Could be. I seem to remember something about him being a politician, but I don’t really know, Jill. I never paid much attention to those old stories. You know, chivalry, the Old South, and all that kind of crap? I never saw anything very romantic about supporting a hopeless cause—and a morally reprehensible one at that—and losing a war."

There was no point in trying to make him understand. I knew from experience that he had no feel at all for history and this was not the time to try and show him the error of his thinking. I jumped up to pace again, suddenly energetic.

"Well," I told him, "you have to find out. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I mean, it’s hard to believe such a collection could still be undiscovered. This is a prominent person we’re talking about here. And your aunt lives in what was probably his house." I looked at Rick for verification, but was met with the predictable shrug. He really could be the most infuriating person. "There’s probably not much left. If it’s the same James Westbrooks, someone must have come to her about the papers long before now. She probably turned them over to someone ages ago."

Rick laughed. "You don’t know Aunt Montine. She’s not a timid little old lady. She’s led quite a life. Been a teacher. I think she was actually in the Army, but I’m not sure. And she’s traveled all over the place. She’s not the sort to tolerate wandering historians on her doorstep. I doubt she’s ever had time to look at those papers. And she’s made it clear she isn’t interested in messing with them herself."

"Let’s call her," I suggested. Visions of national, or at least regional, prominence filled my head. A find like that would assure me of publication and probably set me up in a teaching position with a good school. It was the chance of a lifetime and I wanted to do something about it right then. Rick brought me back down to earth.
"We’re not going to call my aunt at this hour. It’s after midnight there and she’s not a young woman. Besides, she may have already made arrangements for the papers, like you said. Don’t get yourself all excited over what may be nothing. I’ll ask Mom if she knows anything tomorrow and she can call Aunt Montine."

I had to be content with that.

Over the next several weeks, there were quite a few calls to Georgia, beginning with Rick and his mother and ending with me. Montine Westbrooks was a soft-spoken woman whose broadly accented voice evoked images of plantations and antebellum grace. She seemed slightly amused at the excitement her family papers were causing, but did verify that many of them belonged to the famous statesman. She was more than agreeable about allowing me access to the papers, but warned that there were boxes of them and that no one had ever tried to organize what she called "the mess" before.

"It could take weeks or even months," she told me. "I don’t think you’ll understand it until you actually set eyes on it."

The possibility of spending months in Georgia hadn’t occurred to me. I was accustomed to doing my research in big, orderly libraries and then driving home for the night, but Miss Westbrooks wasn’t inclined to ship the family papers 500 miles away to a complete stranger—a sentiment even I could understand. We debated over the best way to handle the project and, in the end, she offered me the hospitality of her home.

"It’s a big house and I won’t mind the company," she’d said cheerfully.

Only a foolish historian would have turned down such an offer. I accepted immediately. Still, arrangements weren’t made overnight. There was a semester of classes to finish and Miss Westbrooks was planning to be away on vacation for most of June. It wasn’t until the end of July, that I set out for Langston and the James Westbrooks papers.

Pine woods and dense areas of underbrush flashed by the car. The many shades of green were occasionally broken by flat expanses of cleared ground. I reflected that another of those never-questioned beliefs had been disproved. Georgia clay wasn’t red, as I’d heard all my life. It was more an orangy brown that glowed in the plowed fields and showed through bare places among the roadside weeds, striking a vaguely exotic note with someone accustomed to plain black dirt. I was a bit surprised to find myself so far from that familiar dirt, having rarely ventured more than a hundred miles from New Orleans during my twenty-four years.

My family had lived there since before I was born. For as long as I could remember, our vacations were spent in a big breezy house on the Mississippi Gulf coast. I attended college and graduate school at the University of New Orleans, living in a dorm room, and later an apartment, less than ten miles from my parents’ home. But now here I was, having found my own way along hundreds of miles of interstate and country roads to rural middle Georgia, heading for a place I’d never seen and someone I’d never met.

Not that I’d had a choice. With a thesis to write, I could spend the summer in the sweltering Louisiana heat, closed in a library poring over dusty, well-thumbed books and papers. I could devote hour upon hour trying to piece together enough scraps, overlooked by the scholars before me, into a paper with a fresh slant on the social customs of Americans in the nineteenth century. Or I could pass the warm months in an antebellum plantation house with free room and board and exclusive access to the papers of James Kenton Westbrooks and produce a truly original thesis from uncirculated material. As I said, no choice.

In spite of what I believe is a healthy streak of common sense, I couldn’t keep from imagining my destination as some sort of latter-day Tara, complete with huge columns and sweeping lawns. I knew it was silly, but without any evidence to the contrary, my mind kept conjuring up images of Rhett and Scarlett. I hoped I wasn’t about to be disappointed. For all I knew, it was a moldering ruin in a snake-infested swamp.

I stretched my tired shoulders as much as the confines of the car permitted. I had left New Orleans at eight that morning and it was now nearly 4:00. No, make that 5:00. I’d crossed into the Eastern Time zone as I entered Georgia. The hours of expressway driving had been tedious and had given me too much time to think. My mind kept returning to last September and the sterile hospital room where my mother had spent the last two weeks of her life. Every detail of that dreadful time was burned into my memory and my mind played them over and over. I didn’t seem to be able to get beyond the fact of her sickness and death to where I could replace those sad pictures with earlier, happier memories. I filled the car with music—Guy Clark’s Dublin Blues—to distract myself.

Things improved once I left the interstate. The winding, two-lane back roads were more interesting. I was unaccustomed to hills. New Orleans is so flat you have to climb a tree if you want to see more than half a block away. I was enjoying the unfamiliar experience of navigating a road that followed the undulating contours of the land, twisting and curving through dense woods and open fields. The music, warm and filled with good harmony, spurred me along. The sky was a bleached-denim blue. In some places the land and trees were completely covered by a dense green plant I didn’t recognize. It looked like some sort of grapevine on steroids. Whatever it was, it seemed relentless, devouring everything in its path. Tall trees, fences, even abandoned cars and buildings, took on the appearance of fantastic leafy creatures frozen in mid-step.

At 5:30, I turned onto state route 212A, passing a sign that announced Langston was 14 miles ahead. With my destination in easy reach, I felt a tiny flicker of apprehension. I’d been preoccupied with planning this project for most of the last five months, but I’d only been concerned with the papers themselves. Now, for the first time, I considered the fact that I was going to stay several weeks in a stranger’s house. I would be spending twenty-four hours a day with an elderly woman I’d never met—a woman whose ideas of proper conduct might be seriously at odds with my own.
It could get uncomfortable. I realized much too late that different arrangements could have been made. It would have been less convenient, but certainly possible, for me to have made several short trips to Georgia instead of one long one. I might even have managed to scrape together enough money to stay in a local hotel during some of those visits. Not that it made any difference at this point. I was expected and the car kept rolling along the blacktop. A visitor was likely to be a welcome diversion for an old woman living alone out in the country, and I couldn’t hurt Montine Westbrooks’s feelings by changing my plans at the last minute. I’d just have to make the best of the situation.

Outside of Langston, I stopped at a small store. Heat shimmered up in waves from the gravel lot and I realized I wasn’t going to escape the summer heat just by driving a few hundred miles northeast. The air here wasn’t as stiflingly humid as the New Orleans summer variety, but it was just as hot. The sun seemed to sear the surface of my skin as I crossed the lot and walked around the gas pumps.

I pushed open the door and entered a dim interior of worn wooden floors and high crowded shelves. A long counter ran along the rear wall where a heavyset woman with over-permed grayish hair stood with her back to me, arranging merchandise on a shelf.

She turned at the sound of my footsteps and a smile creased her face. "Afternoon. Hot as the hinges of hell, ain’t it?"
"It is hot," I agreed.

"What can I do for you?"

"Just a Coke, thanks."

"Help yourself, honey. In that cooler right over there. Cold drink’s a good idea on a day like this. Been so blamed hot the last week or two, I expect we’ll all end up melted in little puddles." She blotted her face with a rumpled man’s handkerchief she’d pulled from somewhere while I plucked an icy bottle from the old-fashioned chest cooler. "That’s eighty-eight cents."

The door creaked open again and a big, soft-looking youth entered. He was dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt that had once been white.

"Mama, the bread man’s here with the delivery."

"Well, what are you standing there for, Lonnie? Get out there and help him. That stuff needs to be on the shelves right now."

A petulant expression crossed the doughy features, but he did as she asked with no argument. I took my drink over and lay the change on the counter.

"Am I on the right road for Fairhope?"

The woman picked up the coins, one at a time, and put them in the cash register before answering. When she spoke, her voice was noticeably less friendly. "Fairhope? You going to Fairhope?"

What was this, a gothic novel where the heroine was warned against traveling to the haunted manor house? I refused to acknowledge her attitude and answered cheerfully, "Yes, I am. Is this the right road?"

"Just keep on going through town. You’ll come to it." Her lips narrowed. "You a friend of Montine Westbrooks?"

"Not yet. I mean, I haven’t met her yet." Now why did I have to say that? Maybe Rick was right about my being too passive. I didn’t owe this woman any explanation.

"A smart girl ought to be careful about the friends she picks."

With that snippy remark, she returned to stocking her shelf and I left the store, wondering what the woman had against Miss Westbrooks. Whatever it was, it certainly had nothing to do with me. I got back into the car, twisted the cap off the bottle and drank deeply, thinking that, no matter what anyone said about Coke’s formula, it didn’t taste as good as it had when I was a little girl and only got to have it as an occasional treat. But then, that was true of a lot of things. Maybe the change was in me and not the drink.

The town of Langston was not impressive at first sight. The buildings were old—not old enough to be historically interesting, just shabby and worn out. Laid out in a square around a faded red brick courthouse, Langston looked tired and dusty in the afternoon heat. Few people were visible on the main streets and none of the cars parked there were new. It took only a couple of minutes to drive the length of the town and emerge on the other side. I pushed a new CD into the player and was rewarded with Nanci Griffith’s Texas-tinged voice singing about Lake Ponchatrain.

Beyond the city limits, the road resumed its winding way. I slowed and found the narrow side road six-tenths of a mile from town, just where Miss Westbrooks had said it would be. Thick woods lined the shoulders and there were several patches of the unfamiliar climbing vine. I rounded a sharp curve and I was there at the big mailbox with Westbrooks painted on the side.

I turned into a narrow paved drive and had my first look at Fairhope. Although I’d never admit it to anyone, I was a little disappointed. There were no massive columns, just a thin square pillar on either side of the small porch at the front door, supporting an equally small second-floor balcony. And the house wasn’t as large as I’d expected. The white wooden structure was narrow, probably no more than two rooms wide. From my vantage point down the driveway, I couldn’t judge its depth. The sloping lawn was pretty, even if it was a bit overgrown. All in all, it was pleasing in appearance, but it sure wasn’t Tara. I followed the drive up the hill where it curved to the left in front of the house, stopped the car, and got out.

The first thing I noticed was the quiet. There was no whir of machinery, no low roar of traffic, none of the background din to which I was so accustomed. The only noises that reached me were bird songs, insects chirping, and the rush of the breeze through the big oaks surrounding the house. Then came a faraway voice.

"Hellooo!"

I looked around. There was no one in sight. Then the call was repeated. It seemed to come from somewhere over my head, but a glance showed no one at the upstairs windows.

"Hellooo! I’ll be right there."

I made my way around the right side of the house, still looking up, and discovered a woman descending a tall ladder, a metal pail over her arm. As her feet touched the ground, she turned to me with a welcoming smile.

"You caught me in the act. I was hoping to finish the windows before you got here." She extended a slightly soapy hand. "I’m Montine Westbrooks. You must be Miss Barnes."

"Oh, please call me Jill."

"I’d love to, darlin’. And you must call me Monty. Everyone does."

Surprise is a poor word to describe my reaction. This was not the elderly woman I’d expected. She looked to be in her late fifties or early sixties, but it was impossible to make an accurate guess. Her short, fluffy hair was an improbable shade of red, artfully arranged in a windblown style. Her makeup had been applied with an expert, although liberal hand. The effect was quite attractive. Her appearance declared that she knew she was a beautiful woman, regardless of her years. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t an aging Southern belle in trim jeans and a crisp blue and white striped shirt.

Introductions made, I looked up the ladder. "Isn’t it dangerous, climbing that ladder, I mean?"

"Why no, honey, not as long as you’re careful. And I usually am. Besides, it had to be done. I couldn’t put you in a room with those dirty windows. You’d have spent your time here never knowing if it was day or night. Should have gotten them done before today, but I’ve been a little busy. I’m always surprised at how quick the days go by!"

She set the bucket down, sloshing a little water onto the ground, then slipped her arm through mine as we walked back to the car.

"Let’s get you settled in. Are your bags in the trunk? You must be completely exhausted from that long drive."
Monty insisted on carrying one of the two suitcases. I didn’t want her to, but it seemed that the only way to get it away from her would involve a tug of war and I wasn’t sure I’d win. I picked up the other bag, my laptop and CD player, and followed her through a front hall, where I had a tantalizing glimpse of the antique-filled rooms on either side before we started up the narrow staircase. My hostess took the steps like a teenager.

Two doors led off each side of the big square landing and Monty opened the one on the left front. A four-poster bed covered with a white cotton spread dominated the large room. The furniture was dark and massive, of a style popular in the century before last, but the effect was softened by bright pink chintz at the windows and an easy chair in one corner. The curtains billowed lazily in the breeze and a ceiling fan whirred overhead. I realized with some surprise that the house was not air-conditioned—at least no air conditioning unit was running at the time. This was a circumstance that would have been completely unheard of at home, where it’s considered a warm-weather necessity. While the air in the house was not the chilled variety I was used to, it was comfortable enough.

"It’s lovely."

"I’m so glad you like it. You never know what people will or won’t like, do you? This is the original part of the house, built about 1810. A new wing was added to the back in 1872—that’s where my room is—but I thought you’d rather be here since you’re interested in the history of the place."

"I can’t imagine anything nicer."

Monty laughed. "Well, you certainly are a polite little thing. I do hope you’ll be comfortable. However, it’s not as convenient as what I’m sure you are accustomed to. No closet, you see. Just that old wardrobe there."

The piece of furniture she indicated was a magnificent mahogany armoire that would have been welcomed with greedy delight in any Royal Street antique shop.

"I’m sure it’ll be fine," I told her. I indicated the clothes I was wearing. "I don’t have many things that need hanging up."

"Well, good. Jeans and shorts are about all I wear in the summer. It’s just too hot to dress up. I think pantyhose are pure torture, don’t you? Now even though the room is old-fashioned, you do have a bath. I had one added to each of the front rooms. Of course, it cost some space in the back rooms, but the sacrifice was worth it." She opened a door beside the wardrobe and I saw the gleam of tile and enamel.

"Andrew Garrett, the young man who did most of the renovation work here, was very much opposed to the idea of modern bathrooms." She smiled. "He really wasn’t enthusiastic about any kind of bathroom—so concerned with historic authenticity, you know. Since we obviously had to have them, he wanted something basic and primitive. But I wasn’t having any period pieces. I don’t think people really appreciate history in the bathroom, do you? I don’t mind authenticity, darlin’, but not at the expense of civilization."

She told me to "wander down" whenever I felt like it, then left me on my own to explore the big, airy room. There were unremarkable landscape paintings on the walls and a vase of fresh flowers—zinnias, I thought, though I wasn’t sure—on the dark surface of a bureau. The bright blossoms were reflected in an ornate mirror on the wall behind them. I pulled back a curtain and looked down through oak leaves to an expanse of green lawn that now lay in the shadow of the house. At the bottom of the side yard, several orderly rows of vegetation suggested a vegetable garden. Beyond that a pasture stretched to a patch of woods that looked cool and dim. The road wasn’t visible from where I stood, and it was nice to think this might have been the same view seen from this window a hundred and fifty years before. Of course, the fields would have been under cultivation then and there would have been farm activity in view, but it was an intriguing fantasy anyway. I unpacked quickly, putting my clothes in the bureau and setting up my CD player beside the flowers.

The lure of the shiny, determinedly modern bathroom was irresistible. More than an hour later, cool and relaxed from a long bath, I went to find my hostess. The "new" wing of the house had been connected directly behind the main building and was reached, I discovered, through a door at the back of the entry hall. It led into a kitchen roughly the size of my whole apartment. The gleaming stainless steel, bright tile, and high-tech accessories emphasized Monty’s determination not to be uncivilized. A big wooden table was set for three.

There were two doors at the rear of the kitchen, which presumably led to the rest of the house. I was approaching one of them when I heard voices from outside. A screen door led me to a wide porch on the shady side of the house. Monty and a compact, smiling man with silver hair, a full mustache, and a florid complexion sat at a wrought-iron table sipping limeade. He fit the popular image of the old-fashioned, chicken-cooking Southern colonel; all he needed was a white linen suit and a cane. Instead, he wore a knit shirt, slacks, and dockers without socks.

"I’m glad you’re down, darlin’," Monty greeted me. "I was afraid you’d fallen asleep."

She made the introductions. Her companion was Stanton Briggs and, as soon as he spoke, any resemblance to Southern aristocracy disappeared. The accent was as mid-western as Nebraska corn.

"Would you like a cold drink, dear?" Monty asked.

"Yes, please." I eyed the frosty pitcher. Lime slices and ice cubes floated in the pale liquid. It looked delicious and I was still thirsty from the trip. I accepted a tall glass and nearly choked after a couple of big swallows.

"It’s…it’s not limeade!" I gasped when I was able to speak again.

"Why, no, dear. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you thought it was."
I coughed again. Briggs jumped to his feet and rushed to slap my back under the mistaken impression that he was helping.

"Stanton, stop that! It does no good to beat the child. You’re making it worse." Monty turned her attention back to me. "Are you all right? We should have told you. Stanton and I are partial to margaritas. I always find tequila so stimulating, although lately we have been omitting the salt in deference to the heat. Do you like them or shall I fix you something else? There’s wine and beer and liquor, and soft drinks, of course. And I guess I could manage limeade, if that’s what you’d like."

She sounded rather doubtful about that last item.

"No, no, this is fine." As long as you don’t try to down it all at once, I thought to myself. Well, Mother had always told me gulping my drinks wasn’t ladylike. I’d just paid the price for my gauche behavior.

"Fairhope is lovely," I said.

"It is a pretty place," she agreed, then laughed. "Although I guess a house with a name must seem a bit ostentatious to a modern young woman like yourself. But this place has been called Fairhope for so long that I don’t think I’d get very far trying to change it."

We passed a pleasant hour there on the porch, watching evening slip over the land. Shadows deepened and birds increased their volume as the day cooled. Monty was a skilled hostess, gently guiding the conversation to spotlight her companions. Stanton Briggs proved to be a charming man with more than a passing interest in the history of the area.

"This was Indian land for hundreds of years, of course," he said, waving an arm at the sweep of fields before us. "Creek territory at the time the white man came. It used to be quite common to turn up arrowheads and spear points in the spring plowing. Harlan Addison—he owns the hardware store in town—has quite a remarkable collection. And there are some mounds back in those woods."

"Burial mounds?" I asked.

"Yes, some are," Monty said, "but we’re careful not to broadcast the fact. Treasure hunters, you know, although they call themselves amateur archaeologists. Just a hint in the wrong ear and they would descend on us, digging up the mounds and disturbing the sites. Worse than puppies in a garden. I can’t think why people won’t let the dead lie in peace.

"Then there are the idiots who talk about Indian treasure, as if it were buried all over the pl

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