“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.”
doce
“I think I remember that the coroner ruled that her death was caused by asphyxiation,” Father Dominic said.
“Asphyxiation?” I was confused. “Who strangled her, the horse?”
“Susannah, you watch entirely too much television.”
This is untrue. I don’t watch enough television. I don’t have time, due to my studies, budding career, romantic life, and, of course, busy NCDP-busting schedule.
“When she fell from the horse,” Father Dominic went on, before I could argue, “I believe her spinal cord was severed, cutting off her breathing. I suppose she might have been saved if her body had been found soon enough, but she wasn’t . . . in any case, she died from lack of oxygen, which is what medical examiners call asphyxiation.”
“Ew.” I gave an involuntary shudder, thinking of Lucia’s face, which, though usually twisted in anger when I’d seen it, had still been cherubically round. She had a mouth that, unlike my stepnieces, was shaped exactly like the rosebuds in the bouquet Paul had sent me, only smaller and pink, not white.
“That’s a horrible way to die,” I said.
“I agree. But I doubt the girl suffered long, if at all. An injury like that would have instantly paralyzed her.” He heaved a little shudder himself. “And the girl’s soul never revealed herself to me, asking for help . . . or for justice. Apparently she’s chosen to reveal herself to you, now, though, hasn’t she, Susannah?”
“She tried to kill me. That’s the opposite of asking for help, Father D.”
“Spirits aren’t always aware that we have the ability to help them,” Father Dominic said. “And even then, they’re often sometimes too frightened—or stubborn—to accept our guidance. Jesse, you’ll recall, wouldn’t have dreamt of accepting your aid while he was in spirit form. He was the one rushing to your defense. And yet, in the end, it was you who—”
“Jesse wouldn’t accept help if he were bleeding on the side of the road. It kills him that he had to accept scholarship money and student loans to pay for him to go school.” Which was another reason I couldn’t tell him anything about what was going on with Paul. He’d want to handle the whole situation himself, which would, of course, end in disaster.
“And if the girl you’re talking about and the one I met yesterday are one in the same,” I went on, “she’d rather choke me to death than let me help her.”
“Still,” Father Dominic said, after a beat. “You know we have a duty to—”
“Help Kelly’s stepdaughter,” I said. “I know. And help Lucia, too.” I’d already switched on my computer and typed the words Lucia, asphyxiation, and horse into the search engine of my computer. “Oh, great,” I said when I saw the results. “Porn. Why is it always porn? Thank you, World Wide Web.”
The priest winced. “Susannah, please.”