Chapter 1
Rodin Moon arrived in New Zealand from New York half a world away after two-day stopovers at LA and Honolulu, dispirited and disoriented. It was 5:30 am in a different time zone.
Thank goodness, the officials at Auckland International Airport spoke English, at least a version of it, she thought, standing patiently.
The 'aliens' like herself, mostly eye-weary with drooping shoulders, watched indifferently as many others moved at a much faster rate through Customs at booths marked for New Zealanders and Australians. It was an opportunity to exercise her mind: what time was it in New York?
Rodin mentally turned back the hands of the big wall clock in her parents' apartment sixteen hours, the time difference at that time of year: answer 3:30 in the afternoon of the day before. Wow, how complicated; little wonder unconfident people fear travelling.
She yawned and thinking that her brain lives!
"Move along lady," growled a huge man behind her, speaking in a foreign accent, perhaps French?
Rudeness was another reason some people avoid foreign travel. Then she remembered the rudeness of the deli owner at the base of her apartment building and all the other rude people she met every day and sighed, moving her two carry-bag forward in the gap that had opened up in front of her, complying with the reasonable request of the man behind.
She turned and smiled at him, "Thank you." He looked startled and managed a little easing of muscle around the mouth.
Her USA passport was stamped and she was on her way by bus to the 'domestic' terminal a short distance away.
Rodin's mother was a Kiwi (New Zealander), and for each of her three pregnancies had returned to that country for the birth under the care of her mother, a career midwife.
Rodin's father had insisted his children be foremost Americans and had them issued with US passports. Although she'd later secured a New Zealand passport, Rodin knew she would have gone through Customs faster if she had presented it. But why the rush, to sit a little longer waiting for her internal flight to Taupo?
At last her flight was called, and Rodin began the final leg of her journey to hopefully find peace and happiness.
It needed a mind-shift to adjust from earlier flights on big jets to the 19-seater turbo-prop airplane but she liked small planes. The interesting flight from Auckland with clear-day views was completed in just short of forty-five minutes, views that captured the what the eye saw, to be remembered.
She gazed at harbours, saw-toothed coastline washed by relentless waves, blue hazed-dimmed hills, fields that were so green they had to be called verdant and eventually the destination jewels of the 234 square mile Lake Taupo, a submerged volcanic crater. Close by were the summer-dressed trio of slumbering active volcanoes called Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and the tallest with its snow crest was Ruapehu, at just over 9000 feet.
Finally, after a smooth landing and no-fuss exit, she was safe in her Aunt Jessie's arms, both bawling, oblivious to everyone else.
"We're so, so sorry, Rodin."
"I know and you said it with flowers and phone calls."
"He was such a lovely man. Race car driving is such a dangerous sport." Jessie burst into tears again, sobbing, "I was so looking forward to you two staying with us on your honeymoon."
Rodin, a little shaky herself, calmed by her mother's younger sister and walked with her to sit over coffee.
"Aunt Jessie..."
"Call me Jessie love. I'm only eight years your senior."
"Mum sends her love and asked me to give you this as soon as I saw you." Rodin reached into her handbag to extract an 8-inch long gift-wrapped parcel.
"Oh, how sweet. What is it?"
The question was unanswered.
Jessie tore at the wrapping, opened the blue velvet box and stared in astonishment. She was looking at her sister's most precious possession, a diamond necklace, a family heirloom.
Rodin's great-great-grandmother, Sarah Ironmonger, had been given the necklace in England by a widowed uncle by marriage, Lord Reacher. Sarah, a hospital nurse, had been engaged privately to care for Lord Reacher, or Charlie as he was known within the family, while he slowly recovered from a horrendous riding accident when his horse stumbled and went down, rolling on to him after failing to complete a jump over a high rock wall.
Sarah worked to get him walking again, massaging his legs and back hourly every four whenever she was on duty and with longer gaps between the massaging at night for several months. She's managed to convince Charlie to endure the pain and inconvenience, being emphatic that the doctors were wrong and she claimed that he'd walk again.
The contact between Charlie and his indefatigable Nurse Sarah ended in January 1903 in London when Lord Reacher limped unassisted to farewell his beloved Sarah, who was in the waiting room with her husband Phillip and some of Charlie's family relatives. It was there that Charlie handed Sarah his deceased wife's necklace, much to the envy of other female relatives.
"Jessie, mom said to tell you she's had this necklace to treasure for four years since Grandma Jane's (the late Sarah's daughter) death. She'd like you to enjoy it for four years before returning it to her."
"Oh, that's so typically generous of Polly. I'll write to her tonight. We must get it valued for insurance purposes before we leave here."
Over lunch, Rodin studied her aunt. At eight years older than her, Jessie MacDonald looked older than her thirty-three years. Although redheads were difficult to pin-point age, it must be the freckles, the signs of premature ageing would be due to Jessie's hard life as a veterinarian and the hard environment on the high-country plateau.
She specialized in horses and that was a little unusual for a female vet, according to Rodin's mother. She'd said horses were heavy work, even though Jessie worked with an assistant, a sturdy mentally-slow young man called Frank.
Jessie had lovely green eyes and a bright personality, and still appeared to be young at heart. She and husband Tony, also a vet, had visited the Moon's in Manhattan just under a year ago. That's when they'd met Rodin's fiancée Sebastian Paul, a civilian helicopter pilot whose passion was racing sports cars.
"Your father is still controversial from what I read," Jessie smiled. "I occasionally see on websites letters to the editor of New York newspapers. Only recently he was calling a so-called critical review in the 'New York Times' of a special exhibition of modern European sculpture as...let me think... 'patently absurd drivel of someone with the critique intellect of a junior school art teacher'."
"That's my dad," Rodin said proudly.
Her flamboyant father, Theo Moon, was a sculptor of note.
By day from noon to closing time, he operated a very successful art dealership for emerging artists of merit in various media. Jessie's mother Polly Moon specialized in accelerating the skills of promising young students of the violin.
Rodin thought sourly that she'd walked away from her life as art director at a high- profile advertising agency three months ago when her world crashed around her and she was unlikely to ever be so happy again.
Her fiancée Sebastian's car exploded in flames and he died minutes later when being placed into a rescue vehicle. His blue and yellow Porsche had been hit by another car coming out of a bend, clipping Sebastian's car and pushing it under braking at right-angles into the path of two other accelerating cars that had no chance of avoiding smashing into the spinning Porsche.
"Polly was very lucky to find a man like Theo. Those two are made for one another," Jessie mused, sinking her teeth into a coconut slice.
It was funny to hear Jessie, who lived 8500 miles away saying that, thought her niece. That's exactly what her parent's closest friends said about Jessie and her husband.
They spent time filling the big 4WD Japanese vehicle with supplies in the city as the rural veterinary practice was very rural, located in a tiny settlement on the uplands of the Central Plateau with its neighbouring mountains, and fabulous wilderness inhabited by wild horses and forest tramping territory.
The village had the ridiculous name of Iceland, dubbed that by a surveyor pitching a tent there 150 years ago and finding it impossible to hammer tent pegs into the icy ground during an abnormally bad period of freezing weather.
