Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (16 page)

“How exciting. Such a big change for Rosewood Farm, having ponies there and offering riding lessons,” Sara said. “I think it’s a great idea.”

Adam nodded in agreement. “It’s a smart expansion plan. Even in these difficult economic times, you’ve got to grow the business.”

“I hope you’re right. You should come by and see the barn Owen built for the ponies. It’s great.”

“We’d be delighted to. We need to make a full report to Brian. He’ll be pleased to hear what you’re doing for the young riders in the area.” Brian Steadman was Adam and Sara’s nephew and an excellent three-day-event rider.

“How are his clinics going?” Brian had begun offering clinics up and down the East Coast.

“He’s having a terrific time. But I think he’s ready to take a break and focus on his own riding,” Sara said.

Jade nodded in understanding. Being a clinic instructor was intense work; one always had to be “on.” Personally, she preferred the tinkering and fine-tuning that came with teaching students over the long haul. She also enjoyed being able to see the results of the hard work the horse and rider put in.

“Knowing you’re back to stay in Warburg might be the thing to make him come home himself.”

Adam’s comment made Jade grateful for the store’s soft lighting. Neither Steadman could see her blush of embarrassment.

Really, Adam should know better than to play matchmaker. Brian was a great guy and a terrific rider. He didn’t need his uncle lining up dates for him, nor had he ever. Back in high school, the girls had been crazy for him, Jade among them. Luckily, she’d had just enough smarts not to act on her crush. Because the thing about Brian was that he was almost
too
nice, and back then she’d had a whole lot of dark stuff inside her. Had she and Brian dated, she’d have messed things up between them for sure—that, or Blair Hood would have started gunning for her again.

Blair Hood, who’d targeted Jade as her archenemy in school, had memorized the mean-girl handbook. It was probably the only book Blair bothered to read. Thank
God Jade didn’t have to deal with the likes of Blair and her nasty, catty friends anymore.

But even though high school was over and Jade wasn’t nearly as screwed up as she had been following the death of her parents, she sensed that perhaps Brian was still too nice a guy for her. She’d bet her four brand-new ponies that he wasn’t the type to indulge in a wildly steamy hotel hookup with a stranger.

“It would be great to have Brian back in the neighborhood,” she answered politely.

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said so,” Adam said with a wink.

Oh, Lord
. “Above all, tell him not to cash his clinic checks, because when he comes back to Warburg he’s going to want to come out to the farm and see the new crop of youngsters Ned and Travis are starting. A couple of them look like they’ll make nice eventing prospects.” Then, before either Steadman could wax eloquent on what a stupendous, good-looking, talented sweetheart of a dude their nephew was—all of which she knew perfectly well—she made a show of whipping the shopping list from the side pocket of her hobo bag. “So, Adam, I’m in the market for some pony tack. I was thinking we’d do saddles first. What have you got in sizes fourteen and fifteen inches? If you have any used saddles in good condition, that would be stupendous.”

The days before school opened were filled from morning to night. Jade would have preferred it, however, if they’d been crammed to bursting. It was how she operated best. Too much downtime and little niggling worries started to creep into her brain. Jade knew she was good with kids. She enjoyed their curiosity, their openness and hunger to learn, their incredible sense of wonder. But what if the kids Ted Guerra had assigned to her class hated her? What if there wasn’t that all-important
sense of connection? What if she couldn’t reach in and flick on the switches that lit their minds and made them eager to learn about ecosystems, multiplication tables, the fifty states, and to tackle their first chapter books? What if she was a flop as a teacher? What if, when Sandy Riley returned, she found a class of second-graders who hadn’t learned a thing and hated school? The thought made her sick with dread.

Picking up the ponies at Windy Hill with Tito and Ned helped. As did the fact that everyone—from Owen to Patrick and Ellie Banner—was waiting to greet the four new equine additions when the van rumbled back up Rosewood’s long drive.

“Oh, Jade, this one’s so cute,” Margot said, walking up to stroke Dickens’s velvety gray muzzle after Jade had led him down the ramp. “I adore white ponies.”

“Can you take him for me so I can go grab Sweet Virginia?”

“Sure.” Margot grasped the nylon lead from Jade and walked the gelding into the middle of the courtyard. “What’s his name?”

“That’s Dickens,” Olivia informed her. “And Tito’s bringing down Hopscotch. He’s my favorite.”

“I can see why, Olivia. He’s really nice. A happy, relaxed fellow. Notice how he’s looking around with his ears pricked forward? Not worried at all. You all did some great pony shopping.”

“Yeah, we were the ones who picked them out. Aunt Jade and Ned just watched us,” Max said proudly.

“And take a look at this last one, babe,” Travis said to Margot as Jade brought Sweet Virginia down the ramp.

“Wow. Congrats, sis.” Margot’s voice was solemn. “She’s something.” The four of them—Ned, Tito, Margot, and Jade—paraded the ponies around the courtyard between the four barns with everyone else looking on.

“So, y’all approve?” Jade asked. She knew her own
face was split in a grin of happiness, but it was so very fine to see the frank appreciation stamped on Margot and Jordan’s faces.

“They’re adorable, Jade. And we’re so glad they’re here,” Jordan said.

“I’m glad you got ponies worthy of your new barn, Jade,” Owen teased.

“And we get to help ride them for Aunt Jade,” Olivia said.

“Don’t say that too loudly, or Doc and Archer are going to feel like you don’t love them anymore,” Kate said.

Olivia shook her head so vehemently, her pigtails slapped her tanned cheeks. “No, they won’t. They know we love them, and now they have new friends to play with. Ponies are herd animals,” the six-year-old told them, with unshakable authority. One of her birthday presents had been an encyclopedia of ponies. Jordan and Owen had been taking turns reading it to her before bed.

“That’s right, Olivia. So let’s bring these guys into the barn and get them settled in their digs. That’ll give Doc and Archer a chance to catch a first whiff of their new pals.”

“And then can we ride them?” Max asked eagerly.

“You’ve lucked out, Jade. Not everyone has a live-in troupe of riders to exercise their mounts,” Travis said, grinning.

“And I’ve got Georgie, Will, and Neddy waiting in the wings. The lot of them will be semipros by age twelve.”

“Sounds like Jade’s got it all figured out,” Owen said.

“You bet.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true of the rest of her life, Jade thought.

The distraction of working with the new ponies at Rosewood and familiarizing herself with their habits and dispositions, along with the hours she spent training
the horses Travis and Ned had assigned her, helped Jade stop worrying about what awaited her when the school bell rang come Tuesday morning.

She spent her evenings holed up in her little cottage, trying to prepare for her new job as thoroughly as possible. Lesson plans were drafted, charts constructed, name tags for cubbies and desks copied, the week’s first homework assignment considered. Jade opted for a short questionnaire, so that the students could tell her a bit about themselves and she could see what their spelling and handwriting were like. A few math problems would also ease them back into the habit of adding and subtracting on paper.

Jordan had created a lovely working environment for her. The cottage was cozy but not fussy. The living room was dominated by a large off-white twill sectional (Jade had had to promise not to sit on it with her boots) decorated with green and blue throw pillows. Candlestick floor lamps framed the sofa, and a square coffee table rested before it.

Although there was a second bedroom, which held a large desk for her laptop and printer, Jade often found herself working at the antique benchwright table that served as her dining table. Jordan and Owen had come across it at an estate sale, and Jade found it the perfect length for laying out sheets of poster board when she was making job charts and writing out the rules for the classroom.

At the far end of the table sat the stack of four-by-twelve-inch desk tags she’d made. Next to it were the ones for the kids’ cubbies. Every time she’d written Hayley Cooper’s name, she had to quash the nervous flutters that made her Sharpie pen waver.

She knew she had no reason to be so nervous. Her classroom was taking shape, the space above the chalkboard decorated with the alphabet in both print and
cursive, the walls covered with a map of the world, a birthday chart, the job chart she’d made, an oversize calendar, and, as a visual aid for the first unit the class would be studying on ancient civilizations, an array of posters depicting Egyptian pyramids, artifacts, and hieroglyphs. She was doing everything she could to create a learning environment that was both inviting and stimulating.

On the day before school opened, Jade was at the elementary school, putting the finishing touches on the classroom, fish for her sparkling new aquarium included. She’d placed the aquarium on top of a wide freestanding bookshelf, the perfect height for seven-year-olds to view the fish darting about inside the tank. She spent minutes inserting the aquatic plants and positioning a sunken ship, some different types of coral, and a perforated rock on the graveled bottom. Then, after checking the filter and double-checking the water temperature, she began to introduce the fish.

“Be well, be happy,” she whispered as she carefully transferred six fish into the tank, more nervous about the lives of these vibrantly colored and patterned little fish—who immediately began darting this way and that in the clear water—than she was about her four new ponies.

But she
knew
horses; tetras, not so much. And though the ponies had been at Rosewood for only a few days, they were adapting just fine. The kids had ridden them in both the outdoor and indoor rings, and Jade herself had taken them out cross-country, through the wooded trails and over the late-summer fields. They’d been as well mannered hacking around Rosewood as they had been when she’d taken them on a test ride at Windy Hill.

Indeed, the ponies had been so good out in the field that she was already thinking that, as Kate and Max would be riding Doc and Archer in the children’s division
of the Warburg Hunt Cup, Olivia could enter the hunter trial competition on one of the new ponies—perhaps even ride her fave, Hopscotch. And if Jade convinced Owen to enter the Warburg Cup on Mystique, a seasoned field hunter, it would mean that more of her family than ever before would be riding in the hunt club’s most prestigious event. Wouldn’t that be cool?

She sprinkled some food into the tank, relieved when the fish darted to the surface to feed. They swam, they ate—so far, so good. She wondered what names the students would give them.

A knock on her open door had her spinning around. It was Tricia Creighton, the other second-grade teacher, whose classroom was across the hall.

“Hi. Oh! The room looks really great. You’ve pulled everything together nicely. I love the reading corner.” Tricia nodded her head at the spot across the room where Jade had set up a low circular table for group reading and three bright beanbag chairs for the kids to curl up in with a book.

“Thanks.” Jade considered Tricia’s approval the equivalent of a gold star, since the older woman was a veteran of the trenches. Jade had been bowled over to learn that Tricia had been teaching second grade for
thirty
years. “And thanks for the tip about contacting publishing houses for the posters.” Jade had followed Tricia’s suggestion and called some New York publishers. A few had been generous enough to send her posters of books she hoped the kids would read this fall:
Building with Dad
,
Traction Man Is Here
,
Dogku
, and
Roger, the Jolly Pirate
.

“And let me take a look at the fish,” Tricia said, crossing the room to peer into the tank. “The kids are going to love them.”

“I hope so.”

Something in Jade’s voice, perhaps its fervency, had Tricia glancing up. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

“Between you and me and the chalkboard? My stomach’s in knots,” she confessed.

“Don’t be. This is a great age to teach. The kids want to learn and they want to like you. A pretty terrific combination, if you ask me, and why I’ve always loved teaching this grade.”

“Still, any last-minute advice would be greatly appreciated.”

Tricia smiled. “The best advice I can give is don’t try to do everything at once—you’ll only overwhelm yourself as well as the kids. Oh, here’s another pearl of wisdom to share: save your nerves for parents’ night. That’s a much tougher audience, ten times worse than your most disruptive, bratty kid.”

Jade swallowed. “Really?”

“Without a doubt. So save your worrying until …” She glanced over at the calendar Jade had pinned to the right of the chalkboard. “Ten days from now.”

“And here I was getting all worked up, fretting over whether I could talk about the Egyptian gods in a way to get the entire class excited.”

“Piece of cake. I have a bunch of great Egyptian projects I’ve done over the years that I’d be happy to share with you. And though parents’ night is the pits, it nevertheless serves a purpose. Spending an evening presenting your curriculum to parents and then having one couple ask why their little Johnny isn’t being taught Fermat’s last theorem, since his IQ is off the charts, or demand that you take such and such morally offensive title off your reading list makes you want to drop down on your knees and thank your lucky stars you’re teaching their kids instead of them.”

Jade couldn’t help but laugh. “Wow, none of this was
mentioned in my education classes. Nor by any of the teachers I student-taught for—not a peep.”