He tapped the file he’d been holding tucked beneath one arm.
“Kelly Prescott—er, Walters—called early this morning to say that her stepdaughter wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be in school today.”
This was deflating. “Oh.”
“Sister Ernestine left this on my desk this morning.” Father Dominic removed the file from beneath his arm and waved it at me. “Becca Walters’s transcript. I’m not quite certain how the sister found it in all that mess, but she managed. I don’t suppose you had a chance to review it.”
“I must have missed it while I was busy applying much-needed first aid to Becca’s arm and also keeping her friend from trying to murder me.”
I knew there wasn’t any point in telling Father D that even if I’d had a chance to read Becca’s file, I wouldn’t have put much stock into what it said. I have a ton of respect for teachers, who are some of the hardest working (yet worst compensated) people in the world.
But one of the reasons I was attracted to the counseling field in the first place is that it would allow me to help kids like the one I’d been—kids who have gifts that can’t be measured on an aptitude test, or scored with a letter grade.
Another reason is that the more people I can help resolve their issues now, while they’re still alive, the less work I’ll have to do for them later, when they’re dead.
It also made sense from a financial point of view. As a therapist, I’ll get paid for the work I do—by living clients, who have things like insurance and credit cards. Taking money from the deceased is something I’m opposed to (though Paul’s never suffered from this moral dilemma).
“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.