Page 12 of Saint Céline
Her shoulders dropped with visible relief. “Thank you. I just… I didn’t really know Katherine well, but everything feels so strange right now. Like the whole campus shifted overnight.”
“That’s understandable.” I kept my voice even and warm. “Grief does that. It makes the familiar places feel a little off-centre.”
She nodded, eyes shining again. “I keep thinking I should have talked to her more. Sat with her in the library or asked about her research. She was always so quiet, and I just… I didn’t.”
Most people were having some version of that thought today. A useful, harmless guilt. Brief enough that it would fade by theend of the week. “You can still honour her by paying attention to the quiet ones around you now,” I said. “That’s usually what they needed while they were here.”
Wendy blinked, then gave me a small grateful smile like I had handed her something solid to hold onto. “That’s… yes. Thank you, Professor. That helps more than you know.”
I smiled back, the gentle one they all expected. She left looking a little less burdened. I took another sip of my coffee. It had gone completely cold.
Below me, the main doors opened, and Céline Martin stepped inside. The hall changed around her without anyone saying a word. A few students glanced up. Conversations softened. One girl moved forward and wrapped her in a hug. Céline accepted it with the kind of stillness that looked natural, one hand resting lightly between the girl’s shoulder blades, her face set in exactly the right amount of grief. Moving but not messy. Fragile enough to invite tenderness. Controlled enough to inspire admiration. Beautifully done.
No excess. No collapse. No trembling that might make people uncomfortable. Just enough to keep them watching.
I leaned one elbow on the balcony railing and followed her progress through the hall. She wore black again, soft wool coat buttoned high, with dark brown hair smoothed back from her face. Pale but put-together. The grieving girl with perfect manners and expensive taste. Everyone looked at her like she was the real tragedy. That was the part I liked best. Not Katherine in the silver frame. Céline, under the archway, accepting condolences meant for the dead.
Professor Ellery from biochemistry stopped her. Céline lowered her head while he spoke. When he touched her shoulder, her smile trembled at precisely the right second. He looked devastated for her. Not for Katherine.For her. I wondered if she knew how well it worked. Then she glanced up,and her eyes found mine on the balcony. For half a second, the mask held perfectly. Then something flickered behind it.
She knew I was watching.
I smiled down at her. She looked away first.
Interesting girl.
The first time I had noticed Céline Martin properly was not in any lecture hall. Before that, she had been one of the many beautiful Bellamont girls who moved across campus like they had been arranged by money and good lighting. Charming when she wanted to be. Popular without effort. Intelligent in conversation, though not always in the way her written work suggested. That small discrepancy had stayed with me long before she applied to my lab. Not enough to act on. Just enough to remember.
* * *
My office sat on the third floor of Westgrave Hall, windows overlooking the eastern cliffs. On days like this, the glass rattled faintly when the wind pushed off the ocean, and the water below turned almost black where it slammed the rocks. I preferred the campus in bad weather. It looked devastatingly beautiful.
I sat down at my desk and opened the stack of undergraduate research applications. Twenty-seven students had applied for five spots. Most were competent. Several were ambitious. Two were genuinely talented. Only one had produced work worth keeping.
Céline Martin.
I read her proposal again.
Adaptive Cellular Response Under Chronic Environmental Stress: Repair Pathway Plasticity in Damaged Epithelial Models.
The title was plain, the way good science usually is. Clear. Specific. Hard to dress up. The proposal itself was excellent. The hypothesis was narrowed with real discipline. The literature review knew exactly what to include and, more importantly, what to leave out. The methodology stayed cautious without turning timid, ambitious without sliding into fantasy. Whoever wrote it understood that science was not about having a clever idea. It was about surviving the long, dull hours required to prove one.
I read the methodology twice. Then the section on stress memory in damaged cell systems. One sentence had stayed with me since the first night I reviewed it.
Cells do not merely endure stress; under repeated pressure, they learn to organize survival around it.
It was too good. Not impossible for Céline. But unlikely. She was intelligent, more than most people gave her credit for. Her mind moved fast in social settings. She read faces, moods, silences. She sensed hierarchy the way some students sensed patterns in data. In class, she knew when to speak and how much to reveal. But in the lab, she lacked patience. She hated waiting for results. Her hands were careful enough, yet her attention always drifted toward the outcome before the process had time to unfold. She watched people more than she watched samples.
This proposal had been written by someone who loved the process. Someone who could sit with uncertainty without needing to decorate it. Someone who saw failure as information instead of humiliation. I opened her transcript, then her old lab reports, then the recommendation from Professor Ellery calling her promising, personable, and unusually perceptive.
Personable. A polite word for charming enough that people forgave the gaps.
A knock sounded at my open door.
“Vincent, do you have a moment?”
Dean Waverly stepped inside without waiting. She was in her late fifties, silver hair pinned neatly, navy suit crisp as always. Like most administrators here, she had perfected the sound of compassion while her mind stayed on liability.
“Of course,” I said, starting to rise.
