"Yes," Father Dominic said, sounding distant - more distant than San Francisco, anyway. "Yes, I see."
"Father Dominic!" I cried. I was losing him . . . and not just because our phone connection wasn't the best. "You've got to stop him!"
"But why should I, Susannah?" Father Dominic asked. "What Paul plans on doing is quite generous, actually."
"Generous?" I cried. "What's so generous about it?"
"He's giving Jesse another chance at life," Father Dominic said. "And, from what you say, risking his own life in the process. I'd say it's quite noble of him, actually."
"Noble!" I couldn't believe my ears. "Father Dom, I can assure you, Paul's motives are far from noble. He's only doing it . . ."
"Yes?" Father Dominic was suddenly all ears.
But how can you explain to a priest that a guy is trying to off your boyfriend so he can get into your pants?
Especially when Paul wasn't trying to off Jesse at all, but to save his life, actually? "It's just . . ." I wasn't making any sense, but I didn't care. "Can't you expel him or something?"
"No, Susannah," Father Dominic said. Was it my imagination or was there a slight chuckle in his voice. "I can't expel him. Not for that, anyway."
"But we have to stop him," I said. My protests, even to my own ears, were starting to grow faint. "It's . . . it's unnatural, what he's planning on doing."
"That may very well be," Father Dominic said, "but it isn't immoral. It isn't even illegal, as far as I can tell."
This had to be a first. Paul doing something that could actually be construed as moral, I mean.
" - But I do wonder," Father Dominic went on thoughtfully, "just how he's planning on accomplishing this little miracle."
"I told you," I said bitterly. "All he has to do is get something the person once owned, and then stand in a place he once stood, and - "
"Yes," Father Dominic said. "But what belonging of Jesse's does Paul have?"
This shut me up for a minute. Because Father Dominic was right. Paul didn't have anything of Jesse's. He couldn't stop Jesse's murder, because he didn't own anything from Jesse's past.
"Oh," I said, beginning to feel a little less like I had a slowly tightening noose around my neck. "Oh. You're right."
"Of course I am," Father Dominic said. Was it my imagination or did he sound distracted? "Although it's something you might think of doing, Susannah. If he'll teach you how, I mean."
"What?" I twisted the phone cord around my finger. "Go back through time and save Jesse from dying?"
"Exactly," Father Dominic said. "It might, for all you know, be the reason why he's still here on earth. Because he was never meant to die in the first place."
I was so appalled that for a moment, I couldn't say anything. Unbidden, my mind flashed back to that poster my ninth grade English teacher had hung up in her classroom, of two seagulls flying over a beach. . . . A poster I always seemed to remember at the most inconvenient moments. IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, LET IT GO, the words beneath the seagulls read. IF IT WAS MEANT TO BE, IT WILL COME BACK TO YOU.
The imaginary noose around my neck tightened to a choking point.
"That's bull, Father D," I yelled into the phone. "Do you hear me? Bull!"
"Susannah - " Father Dominic sounded startled.
"That is NOT why Jesse is still here," I shouted. "It's NOT. Jesse and I are meant to be together, and if you can't see that, well, that's your own damn problem!"
Now Father Dominic sounded more than startled. He sounded angry. "Susannah," he said. "There's no reason to use that kind of language - "
"No, there's not," I agreed with him. "Especially since I have nothing more to say to you." I slammed the phone back down into its cradle. A second later, Dr. Slaski's attendant appeared, looking worried.
"Susan?" he asked. "You all right?"
"I'm fine," I said, horrified to find that my cheeks were damp.
Great. So, on top of everything else, I'd been crying.
"It's just," the attendant said, "I heard shouting. . . ."
"It's nothing," I said. "I'm leaving. Don't worry."
And I did, without saying good-bye to Dr. Slaski. I had no more to say to him than I did to Father Dom. There was only one person, I realized, who could stop Paul from doing what I now knew he was going to do.
And that person was me.
Of course, knowing that fact wasn't the same as actually having a plan for how I was going to stop him. That's what I tried to come up with as I drove back to school. A plan.
It wasn't until I was pulling into the Mission Academy's student parking lot that what Father Dominic had said really began to sink in. Paul didn't have anything of Jesse's that could bring him back to that horrible night when Jesse had died. I was almost sure of it. Jesse had been murdered and his body never found - until recently, that is. His own family had believed he'd run away to escape an unwanted marriage.
What could Paul possibly have of Jesse's that could help him get back to the day leading up to his death? Nothing. Because the only things that still existed from that time were a miniature portrait of Jesse - which I kept safe at home - and some letters he'd written to his fiancée. But those were on display at the Carmel Historical Society museum.
There was nothing of Jesse's that Paul could possibly have that he could use to hurt him. Or rather, to save him. Nothing. Jesse was safe.
Which meant that I was safe.
The relief I felt was short-lived, however. Oh, not my relief about Jesse. That remained. It was as I was attempting to sneak back into school that my newly restored equilibrium was shaken again. Only this time, it wasn't by Paul. No, it was Sister Ernestine who shattered my hard-won sense of calm, just as I was trying to blend in with my fellow students as they made their way to their next class, pretending like I'd been there with them all along.
"Susannah Simon!" The vice principal's shrill voice caused several doves that had been roosting in the beams overhead to take off in startled flight. "Come to my office immediately!"
My youngest stepbrother, David, happened to be nearby. When he heard the sister's command, he visibly paled . . . an accomplishment for him, seeing how pale he was already, being a redhead.
"Suze," he asked me, looking a bit freaked. And why not? Usually when I get into trouble, it isn't for mere tardiness. No, more often, it's along the lines of destruction of property . . . and someone usually ends up unconscious, if not dead. "What did you do now?"
"Never mind," I said, a little chagrined that I'd been busted for so minor an offense as skipping class. I was really losing my touch.
I followed Sister Ernestine into her office, which, unlike Father Dominic's, didn't have any teaching awards on the shelves. No one would consider Sister Ernestine an exemplary educator. She's a disciplinarian, plain and simple.
I got off lightly, I suppose. She'd noticed I'd been gone during religion class, which I was supposed to have right after lunch. I told her I'd had a slight medical emergency, and needed to go to the drugstore, once again invoking the 'crimson tide' in the hopes she'd drop the subject. It didn't have the same effect on Sister Ernestine as it had on Brad, however.
"Then you should have gone to the nurse's office," was Sister Ernestine's terse response.
For my crime, I was assigned to write a thousand-word essay on the importance of honoring one's commitments. Additionally, I was told to be at Saturday's antique auction to help man the eighth graders' bake sale table.
All in all, I suppose it could have been worse.
Or so I thought. Before I ran into Paul Slater.
He was lurking behind one of the stone supports that hold up the breezeway, which is why I didn't spot him on my way from Sister Ernestine's office to my trig class. He stepped out from the shadows just as I was hurrying by.
"The wanderer returneth," he said.