Her eyebrows pinch together as she examines me. “I forget what finding her must have been like for you. We should do something with the ashes as soon as possible. It’s not good for you, sleeping over them like this. It’s bad luck to keep your dead in the house.”

I shake her words off. “It’s not that.”

Her lips press together in a thin line. She doesn’t believe me.

“I’ll come up with something to do with them,” I finally tell her. I don’t want to admit it, but keeping Moony in a box under my bed does feel like holding her spirit hostage.

She nods. “You dropped this,” she says, leaning down to pick my cell phone up off the floor. As she turns it over, the screen flares to life and the color drains from her face in a retreating pink wave. She doesn’t do or say anything. She just sits there, transfixed, the glare of the screen casting creepy shadows across her face.

It takes a second, but I realize my mistake. I must have fallen asleep while researching the priest from her school. “Mom?”

“What is this?” she asks quietly. Her eyes finally pull away and find mine. “Catia, what is this?”

“Research?” I supply lamely.

Her mouth opens, closes again.

“Eric said there was some kind of public scandal at your old school. And Daniel signed up for this course on local history at the community college. I thought, you know, he could write his first paper about it or something.” I realize my excuse is garbage as soon as I hear myself say it, but it’s the first thing I think of.

She passes the phone back to me very slowly and stands up. “I don’t want you looking into this. Do you understand me?”

I shrug, uncertain how to react.

“I mean it, Catia. I don’t want you researching the school or having anything to do with that town again or ever, ever speaking about this man. Do you hear me? And I want those ashes gone within the week, or I will take them down to the gulf myself and dump every last speck of her unceremoniously in the muddy, brown water.”

She’s not shouting, but there is force behind her words, like they are backed with brick.

“Okay, okay,” I concede, quickly tucking my phone under my pillow. Without knowing it, she has told me more than any google search ever could. Because of her reaction, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I know that my mother was involved in that scandal. And what’s more, that Father Terry was too.