Tina stared at the landscape that had been her home for many decades, so different from her childhood in Georgia, amidst forests and meadows and planted fields. She glanced again at Ravenwood and that glance sent her to a memory –

riding recklessly, urging  Argo to go faster.  Crossing meadows in a blur.  Leaping over fences.  Escaping her parents’ news.  Every morning that spring, she rose before dawn to get the stallion ready for their first ride of the day and, when all was light, the two left again – reckless, dangerous, racing and leaping. Blocking out the words.  Filling up the spot where her dreams had been.  Suspending her anger at herself for being so oblivious to the family’s true financial situation.

It had been easy to miss it, though.  They lived in a large house, her father’s “ancestral manse,” as he called it, surrounded by property and tilled fields.  She went to the private girl’s academy her grandmother had attended, one where part of its treasured history was that it regularly served sweet tea on its lawn to Confederate officers during the War of Northern Aggression, and where every girl she knew was a schoolmate.  The house servants were in place, as always.  There were clues that she berated herself for not recognizing.  She certainly knew that there was a Depression – the news reels that played between the first and second movies at the theater had shown her that, but bread lines and men selling apples on street corners were abstract and from someplace else.  Drought-blighted farms bore no relation to the fertile fields that surrounded her.

But then there had been clues.  Her mother, who had derived so much of her social comfort from her closet with the latest designer clothes, had not bought anything new for over a year, claiming that she didn’t care for the “tasteless extravagance” of the latest designs.  All of the horses had been sold except Argo, and the stable hand and groomsman let go, since it was “just foolishness” to keep horses that no one rode.  Her parents had not been to the country club in months.  She found out later that they were avoiding the many members to whom her father owed substantial sums of money.