Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(38)

“Four different schools in the area in ten years,” Father Dominic was saying as he slipped a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket onto his nose, then flipped through Becca’s file. “The latest being this one. She gets good grades, and is quite bright—that’s why we accepted her, of course.”

“Her father’s sizable donation probably didn’t hurt much, either, I’d guess.”

He glanced at me over the rims of his spectacles. “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm, Susannah. We treat all of our students the same, as you know, regardless of whether they’re on scholarship or pay full tuition. But it does appear that Becca’s had emotional problems. It looks as if there might have been some bullying at her former schools. ”

“It’s not hard to guess why.”

“More sarcasm? The other children can’t see that the poor girl is haunted.”

“Of course not. But she tried to carve the word stupid in her own arm with a compass in the middle of class. They may not be able to see Lucia, but they can definitely tell there’s something wrong with Becca. The less enlightened among them are naturally going to tease the crap out of her for it.”

Father Dominic sighed. “If you talk like this about our students in front of Sister Ernestine, it’s going to be extremely difficult for me to convince her to hire you full time, with pay. You do realize this, don’t you, Susannah?”

I let out a sigh of my own. “Especially if I dress immodestly. Fine, Father, I get it. I’ll ratchet up the sensitive psychobabble in front of the nun, okay? But in the meantime we’ve got to find out who Lucia is, and who or what it is she thinks she’s protecting Becca from, before she protects Becca to death. Does it say anything in that file about horses?”

“Horses?” Father Dominic looked perplexed. “No. Why?”

“Lucia is dressed in riding clothes and carries a stuffed horse. You know the dead usually appear in the clothing they were wearing right before they bit the dust.” He gave me a disapproving look. “Um, in which they felt most alive. Becca wears a horse pendant. She twists it when she’s feeling nervous. Horses are the only clue I can find that links the two of them.”

“Horses,” Father Dominic murmured, flipping through the file. “Horseback riding. There’s nothing in here about—” Suddenly, he froze as if he’d seen something in the file. “Oh, dear.”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s funny you should mention horseback riding, Susannah. Because I believe I do remember now a girl who—”

His blue eyes got a far away look in them as he stared out one of the office windows at a group of middle-aged tourists who’d just pulled up on a bus outside the mission, and were now milling around the courtyard, taking photos and admiring the flowers and statues and fountains. It was strange to go to school at a place that was also a tourist destination, and even stranger to work at one, especially considering all the money those tourists were spending in the gift shop (and the school still couldn’t scrape together a salary for me).

But Father Dominic didn’t appear to really be seeing these visitors from the Midwest.

“You know, I think I do recall a riding accident involving a child. It was in the newspaper—the one your friend Miss Webb works for—some time ago. It could very well have been around the time that Becca’s troubles started.”

Father Dominic glanced through the girl’s file until he saw something. Then he stopped flipping and tapped a page, speaking in a more excited voice.

“Yes. Yes, exactly. Here it is. I remember now. It says here that Becca attended the Academy of the Sacred Trinity for first and second grades. That would have been around the same time that it happened.”

“That what happened?” I love him like he was my own grandfather, but like my own grandfather, he drove me nuts sometimes. I had a feeling I knew what he’d say if I brought up Paul: Well, what have you been doing, Susannah, to lead that boy on?

“The accident,” he said. “There’s no mention of it in Becca’s file, oddly enough. But I do think Becca must have known the girl. They would have been in the same grade . . . possibly even in the same riding class. Otherwise there’s nothing else to explain their intense connection—”

“Wait,” I said. “You think Lucia was the girl in the riding accident?”

“It would explain quite a lot. Becca would have been traumatized by such a tragedy.”

“What tragedy?” I asked. “Not to say a riding accident doesn’t sound terrible, and it’s always awful when a child dies, but—”

“Not an accident like this,” Father Dominic said. “This one was ghastly, which is why I remember it, even after all these years. The girl in question—who was quite young—was out riding with her instructor when her horse was spooked by something. It took off, but the little girl managed to stay atop it.”

“Astride. I think they say astride, not atop . . . she wasn’t thrown off?”

“Not right away. I remember the article saying she was quite a skilled rider, for her age. That’s how she managed to stay astride for so long, and why it took so long for them to find her. And then when they did . . .”

“Yes?”

“It was too late.”