When Nina followed, the first thing she heard was loud meowing as the family’s two Siamese cats, Bastet and Teniers, appeared as if out of thin air to wind around her legs and demand attention. The second thing she heard was even louder cursing coming from the back of the house.
“Uh-oh.” Her father dropped his briefcase on the rosewood console table beside the front door. “Sounds like she started without us.”
“Yeah.” Nina scooped up Teniers and hugged him despite his yowl of protest. “Sorry, kitty babies. Your dinner will have to wait.” She dropped the cat beside Bastet and hurried through the kitchen and down the narrow back hallway after her father.
Her mother’s studio was a converted bedroom at the very back of the house, where the sun came in through two large windows and a row of French doors leading into the courtyard. The room had built-in shelves along one wall, while the rest was mostly open and dotted with bits and pieces of work and rolling bins of equipment. Sheets of oilcloth covered the wooden floorboards beneath half-finished clay sculptures. A few finished pieces were sitting on a long, well-worn table with a chipped marble top that stood near the French doors, awaiting transport to the local foundry, where they would be cast in bronze or other materials.
Nina’s mother was at the table now, along with the family’s longtime maid, Delphine, a petite and energetic woman who proudly traced her ancestors back to one of the French casquette girls who had arrived in New Orleans in the 1700s. The two of them were bent over a piece on the table. It was a medium-size sculpture that Nina’s mother had been rushing to finish the past few weeks, a modernist portrayal of several women laughing and cooking together. The shapes and details were fluid and rather abstract, like most of Nina’s mother’s work, but Nina could tell that the women in the piece had been inspired by her aunts and cousins.
At the moment, Nina’s mother and Delphine were grasping the base of the clay sculpture, clearly planning to hoist it off the table and into the large wooden crate sitting on the floor near the door. From past experience in helping her parents move similar pieces, Nina guessed that the thing had to weigh at least fifty or sixty pounds.
“Hang on!” Nina’s father exclaimed, striding forward. “Let me help.”
“Yeah,” Nina said at the same time.
She didn’t notice that the cats had followed her to the studio. As she stepped forward, the toe of her paddock boot landed squarely on Teniers’s tail. The cat squawked loudly and shot forward—just as Nina’s mother took a step, staggering slightly under the sculpture’s weight.
“Non, non!” Delphine said. “I need to—”
She never finished the comment. Teniers crashed into Nina’s mother’s legs, tripping her just as she took another unsteady half step.
“Ack!” she exclaimed as the sculpture jerked out of her grasp. Delphine tried to hang on to her half, but it was no use.
“Careful!” Nina’s father yelped.
CRASH!
The sculpture landed upside down, squashing the soft clay of the top half of the piece. The intricate figures were reduced to mostly shapeless blobs.
“Oh! Oh!” the maid cried, her hands flying to her face. “The ladies—they are ruined!”
Tears sprang to Nina’s eyes. All that work!
“Oh, Mom,” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry! This is all my fault—if I hadn’t been late—”
“Me too,” her father added, stepping forward to encircle his wife in his long arms. “I’m sorry, love.”
“No, it’s all right.” Nina’s mother sighed, then smiled slightly, leaning against her husband for a moment before pushing him away and stepping over to examine the fallen sculpture. “I mean, it’s not all right,” she amended, poking a chunk of clay with a bare toe. “It’s pretty much trashed. I should have guessed something like this would happen. Things have been going a little too well lately, what with landing this big solo show and all. . . .”
Nina’s father chuckled. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Don’t tell me my family is finally rubbing off on you, Eva? I thought your Yankee sensibility would never succumb to Big Easy superstition.”
Despite what had just happened, Nina couldn’t help smiling at that. Her father’s family had lived in New Orleans pretty much forever—or at least since the time of the Louisiana Purchase. While his family and Delphine’s both considered themselves Creoles, most of Nina’s father’s ancestors had come from Africa or the West Indies rather than France or Spain, and they’d brought their own beliefs and ideas with them. For generations, the family had steeped in the great melting pot of New Orleans culture, with its mishmash of traditions, including plenty of superstition and voodoo. By now, of course, most of the family treated such things as nothing more than local color—fun to talk about at parties, but nothing to take too seriously. Nina and her father certainly fell into that category. But a few family members still believed, at least a little, including Gramma Rose and Uncle Oscar.
Nina’s mother, on the other hand, had grown up in a voodoo-free subdivision in suburban New Jersey. She’d come to New Orleans on vacation soon after graduating from art school, met Nina’s father in a jazz club, and never left. Even though she’d been there for more than fifteen years now, her in-laws still loved to tease her about her sensible Yankee ways.
“Maybe so,” Nina’s mother said with a small smile. “I just know I’ve had this feeling that something bad might be coming.”
“Don’t say that, madame!” Delphine crossed herself.
Nina’s father laughed again. “Better watch out, Delphine,” he joked. “Sounds like Great-Aunt Serena might be hanging around these parts.”
Nina’s eyes widened. Weird, she thought. I can’t remember the last time Dad mentioned Great-Aunt Serena . . .
“Stop, Gabe.” Nina’s mother tried to look stern, though there was a twinkle in her blue eyes. “I’m just saying, maybe this was meant to be. In any case, you all don’t need to look so upset—it’s not a big deal.”
“How can you say that?” Nina squatted beside the sculpture, poking gingerly at what remained of one of the figures. Teniers wandered over and rubbed against her knee, purring loudly, and she tapped him on the head. “Naughty Teniers!”
“No, seriously,” her mother said. “Teniers probably did me a favor. I was feeling pretty ambivalent about that piece anyway.”
Nina looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
Her mother shrugged. “I mostly rushed it out for the show. I didn’t really even stop to think about whether it was working. And in the end, well, I’m not sure it was. It’s really pretty similar to some of my past work.” She smiled ruefully. “I’d hate to have the critics accuse me of being derivative of myself.”
“But I thought you needed that piece to fill the show,” Nina’s father said.
“True. But maybe I can use something else,” Nina’s mother replied. “I’ve got plenty of older pieces that haven’t been out in public yet.” She winked. “Could be fun to figure out which one fits.”
Her husband looked thoughtful. “What about that piece on the breakfront? I’ve always liked that one. . . .”
Bastet had wandered into the room by then too. She head-butted Nina, letting loose with a piercing Siamese yowl. Leaving her parents discussing their sculpture options and Delphine bustling around putting away the wooden crate, Nina headed back toward the front of the house to feed the cats. Once that was done, she went to her room to change out of her riding clothes.
Nina’s room lay between the kitchen and the studio. It was the smallest bedroom in the house, but she didn’t mind. Her parents had let her decorate it however she liked, and she’d treated it as her own personal art project, adding and subtracting things over the years. The walls were each painted a different color and the door was covered in a collage of photos and sketches of family, friends, and beautiful spots throughout the city. Instead of ordin
ary curtains, Nina had draped the two narrow windows with Mardi Gras beads. The rug beside the bed had been a gift from her cousin DeeDee after a trip to Morocco. Her bedspread had been handmade by her great-aunt Shirley.
Nina knew her room looked different from those of most of her friends, but she’d never understood the appeal of going to the mall and buying shiny new things with no history at all. What was the point of having stuff without a story?
There were horsey touches too, of course—Nina had been fascinated by horses for as long as she could remember, though she’d only been riding for a few years. She’d created a handmade frame out of driftwood, stones, and bottle caps for her favorite photo of Breezy. Above her bed hung a slightly faded Victorian print of a pair of Arabian horses running wildly through the night. It was spooky and a little weird, and Nina had loved it from the moment she’d spotted it in the back corner of a local junk shop, though it had taken her a couple of months to save up her allowance to buy it. One of her mother’s sculptures, a horse rolling luxuriously in the dirt, stood atop the whitewashed bookshelf. Beside it, in a place of honor, was Nina’s copy of Misty of Chincoteague.
Nina patted the book’s well-worn cover as she hurried past on her way to the overstuffed wooden wardrobe where she kept most of her clothes. She dug out a pair of leggings and a funky beaded tunic she’d found at a flea market. Once she was dressed, she flopped onto her bed and grabbed her laptop off the bedside table. It was Friday, which meant dinner with the relatives. Nina guessed they’d be leaving as soon as her parents cleaned up the mess in the studio. But first, she wanted to make some notes on her costume idea while it was fresh in her mind.
She forgot about that when she logged on and saw an alert message flashing on her desktop. Oops! She’d totally forgotten that she’d arranged to “meet” the other Pony Posters for a chat that day.
Normally the members just left messages for one another whenever they could. With the four of them living in three different time zones, it was rare for more than one or two to be on the site at once. But every so often they liked to get together in real time, all four of them. Today was supposed to be one of those times.
“Sorry, guys,” she murmured under her breath as she quickly brought up the site.
As expected, the other three were already there. Nina scanned the messages. There were already several new ones. It wasn’t long before Nina spotted her name.
[MADDIE] OK, so are we taking bets on how long it’ll take Nina to remember to show up? Lol!
[BROOKE] Give her a few more minutes. Maybe she was late coming home from the barn.
[HALEY] Ya, pretty sure she had a lesson today.
[MADDIE] I know, I’m just teasing. But she’d better show up soon!
“I’m here, I’m here,” Nina said aloud. She quickly opened a text box and started typing. A moment later she hit enter and her message appeared below the others.
[NINA] Sorry I’m late! Lost track of time, etc., boring blah blah.
[HALEY] It’s OK—ur here now!
[NINA] Thx! Anyway, I have news: found out something fun at the barn today. There will be a costume class at my horse show next Sat!!!
[MADDIE] Cool!
[BROOKE] Yah. U said something about that a while ago, right?
Nina should have known that Brooke would remember, if anyone did. She was probably the quietest of the bunch, and at first that had made Nina feel as if she didn’t know her quite as well as the others. But after a while, she’d realized that Brooke’s mind was always working double-time even if her mouth—and typing fingers—could be a little slow. “Still waters run deep,” Gramma Rose always said. It had taken Nina a while to figure out what that saying meant, but now she thought of Brooke whenever she heard it.
[NINA] Miss A said something about the costume class a while ago, but then we all forgot. So it was like a whole new surprise, lol!
[HALEY] So u and Breezy both dress up for the class?
[NINA] Right. And I already know exactly what our costume will be, and I’m super excited about it!!!
[BROOKE] Don’t keep us in suspense!
[HALEY] Ya—spill!
[NINA] Give me a chance to type it out, lol!
[MADDIE] OK, but hurry! Dying to know more!
Nina nodded and typed as fast as she could, her slim fingers flying over the keys. Finally she hit enter and sat back to watch her message appear.
[NINA] I’m going to dress as an ancestor of mine. Her name was Serena, and she lived around the time of the Civil War. She had a totally tragic life. Her fiancé joined the Buffalo Soldiers and ended up dying of cholera. According to old family stories, Serena never got over it. They say her unhappy, restless spirit haunts her descendants to this day—when everything is going perfectly right, she steps in to make it go horribly wrong.
As she scanned what she’d written, Nina’s mind drifted to her mother’s sculpture. But she shook off the thought. Serena was a fun family legend, nothing more. Ghosts weren’t real.
[HALEY] Whoa! Cool story!
[MADDIE] And cool costume idea! Esp. so close to Halloween.
[BROOKE] Totally. So what’s Breezy’s role?
[NINA] He’s going to be Serena’s ghost horse, of course!
[MADDIE] Duh, B. What, did u think Breezy was going to dress up as Serena’s dead boyfriend, lol?
[BROOKE] ha ha, OK, fine. So did the real Serena have a special horse?
[NINA] No clue. But everyone rode back in those days, right? It’ll be fine. I already have some cool ideas about how to make Breezy look super spooky—like braiding some gray and silver ribbon into his mane and tail, and turning his coat gray and ghostly with something. Talcum powder? Hmm, will have to experiment.
[HALEY] I’m sure u will come up w/something! U are the most creative person I know.
Before Nina could respond, she heard her father calling her name. “Oops,” she said, glancing at the vintage cat clock on her wall. Its hands were stopped at two thirty, since Nina was always forgetting to wind it. But she didn’t need a clock to know it was time to head out to meet her relatives.
[NINA] Sorry guys, I have 2 go. Family dinner.
[BROOKE] O right, it’s Friday.
[MADDIE] Talk to u soon. Let us know how the costume is going!
[HALEY] And take lots of pics!
[NINA] U know it. Later guys!
CHAPTER
3
“KEEP HIM MOVING, JORDAN! DON’T let him be lazy!” Miss Adaline called.
Nina held her breath, watching as Jordan gave Freckles another kick. The pair was heading toward a small crossrail in the middle of the ring. Nina’s riding class was more than halfway through their Saturday morning lesson, and they’d just spent several minutes jumping the obstacle from a trot and a canter. Now, after all five riders had jumped it a couple of times, Miss Adaline had decorated the standards with fake autumn leaves and added a row of small pumpkins underneath the rails.
“All the jumps at the show will be decorated,” the instructor had explained. “We don’t want your horses to be surprised by seeing something different. Successful showing is all about preparation.” Miss Adaline was a cheerful woman in her late twenties who liked to tint her chin-length dreadlocks different colors—this month an autumnal orange. She was also one of the best riders Nina had ever seen, competing not only in the hunter/jumper style she taught the students at Cypress Trail Stables, but also in saddleseat riding.
Jordan was the first rider to try the newly decorated obstacle. Normally Freckles was a steady, reliable jumper. But when he neared the jump, his ears pricked forward at the pumpkins.
“Push! Keep his attention!” Miss Adaline hollered.
“Go!” Jordan blurted out, giving her mount one more kick a couple of strides out.
The Appaloosa spurted forward, and Nina thought he was going t
o put in an extra-big jump. Instead he darted left at the last moment, ducking out and around the fence! Jordan wobbled and lost her stirrups, but managed to stay in the saddle.
“Sorry!” she cried, her face flaming as she fished for her flopping stirrups.
“Don’t apologize,” Miss Adaline said briskly. “Just circle back and give it another try. This time, keep your left leg and left rein on him so he doesn’t think he can do the same thing again.”
Jordan nodded, shortening her reins and taking a deep breath. Nina shot her an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up as Freckles passed at a rapid trot.
“Go, Freckie,” whispered the rider beside Nina, a slightly older girl named Marie. She was astride her own pretty gray mare, but Nina knew she’d leased Freckles before Jordan.
Freckles slowed down again on the approach to the fence. But this time Jordan kicked him more determinedly. The horse hesitated slightly, then hurled himself over the fence and cantered away smoothly.
“Way to go, girl!” Nina cheered.
Miss Adaline smiled. “Yes, much better,” she said. “Nina? You’re up next.”
Nina nodded and gathered up her reins. “Wake up, Breezy,” she said, squeezing with both calves. “Our turn.”
She sent the pony into a trot. He felt sluggish at first—Breezy liked to take any opportunity he got for a quick nap. But Nina had plenty of energy to spare, and she urged him forward with her legs, seat, and voice. By the time the pony circled toward the fence, he was moving along nicely.
Like Freckles, Breezy pricked his ears at the pumpkins. But all Nina had to do was squeeze and cluck, and one ear swiveled back toward her. His trot never faltered. A moment later he was cantering away after a smooth jump.
“Nice!” one of the other girls in the class called out.
“Yes, lovely,” Miss Adaline agreed. “Marie? Give it a go.”
Nina gave Breezy a pat as she rode to the end of the line. Jordan twisted in her saddle and smiled.
“Way to go!” she whispered. “Those crazy decorations didn’t scare Breezy at all, huh?”
Moonlight Mile Page 2