Page 11 of Saint Céline
“Like what?”
“Like you’re equal.” The words landed heavier than I expected. My mother seemed to hear how they sounded because her face softened right away. “I don’t mean it the way it cameout, sweetheart. I just… we have to be careful. This is new for both of us.”
She was right. That was the worst part. I looked toward the hallway Katherine had disappeared down.
“She asked if I could go to Bellamont,” I said quietly.
My mother closed her eyes for a second. “Selena.”
“I know.”
“No, sweetheart.” Her voice turned gentle, which somehow made it hurt more. “You don’t. Bellamont is very expensive. Mrs. Montgomery is kind, but we cannot ask for things like that.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know.” She touched my cheek with the back of her hand, cool and soft. “But you wanted to.”
I looked away. Through the kitchen windows I saw the black car waiting on the front drive. A man in a dark coat held an umbrella by the open back door. Katherine stood beside it, arms crossed, arguing with her mother again in that quiet, stubborn way of hers.
Then, suddenly, she looked toward the kitchen window. Toward me.
I lifted my hand before I could stop myself. A small wave.
For a moment, she did nothing. Then Katherine lifted her hand too. The gesture was quick and stiff, almost embarrassed, but it was real.
My mother sighed softly beside me. “Go back to the cottage after lunch,” she said. “And please don’t wander.”
“I won’t.”
I meant it when I said it. Mostly.
Katherine climbed into the car. The driver closed the door. As it pulled away down the long gravel drive, I stood at the kitchen window and watched until the black car disappeared between the trees.
I didn’t know her yet. Not really. I didn’t know she was lonely in that big house, or that she hated most of the girls at Bellamont Academy almost as much as she wanted them to like her. I didn’t know she cried quietly in bathroom stalls and corrected people’s grammar in her head because saying it out loud had made everyone hate her by the third grade.
I only knew she had looked at me and seen something interesting. After years of being looked through, looked past, or looked at like a problem someone else had to fix, it felt dangerously close to what I desired.
5
Vincent
Grief made people careless in ways they never noticed. It did not turn them wild or loud or suddenly honest. Mostly, it softened the edges they had spent years sharpening for everyone else. They let their smiles slip a fraction too soon or held eye contact a beat too long. They forgot to guard the small performances they had built their lives around. That was what made mourning rituals so interesting to watch.
At Bellamont University, the grief looked especially polished. White roses arranged under stone arches. Silver frames catching the light just right. Electric candles that flickered without ever burning down around the photograph of a girl no one had quite known how to love while she was still breathing. The university had turned tragedy into tradition faster than most people could finish their morning coffee.
By Monday morning, Katherine Montgomery had already become a symbol.
Brilliant girl gone too soon. Quiet genius. Beloved daughter. Promising scientist.
All of it true enough to feel useless. I stood on the second-floor balcony of Montgomery Hall with a cup of coffee cooling in my hand and watched the students move past the memorial below. They lowered their voices when they reached the photograph. They rearranged their faces into the right kind of sadness, left a folded note in the basket, and walked away lighter than they had arrived. People loved proving they were good. It let them off the hook for never having paid attention in the first place.
“Professor Moreau?”
I turned. Wendy Chen from my molecular genetics seminar stood a few feet away, clutching a notebook to her chest like it might steady her. Her eyes looked red, either from crying or from not sleeping. Maybe both.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said quickly. “I just wanted to ask if class is still happening this afternoon. With everything that’s going on, I wasn’t sure.”
“Yes, it is,” I told her. “But no one will be penalized for staying home if they need to. Take the time you need.”
