Page 7 of Saint Céline
“I’m not ready,” I said, quieter than I meant to. “There are other applicants who actually want the spot.”
“There are always other applicants.” He stepped aside slightly as another student passed, greeting her by name without breaking eye contact with me. “But most people only say they don’t want something after they believe they’ve already lost it. You’re not most people. You’re grieving, and it would be unfair to let that cost the lab a project of real value.”
The words slid under my skin and stayed there. For a moment, the hallway, the flowers, the rain streaking the tall windows all seemed to sharpen around us. I remembered the funeral again, the way he had looked at me like he saw every careful performance I had given that day.
“I’m sorry if this causes any inconvenience,” I managed.
“It doesn’t.” His tone stayed pleasant, professorly. “Orientation for accepted students is Friday at four. My office is in Westgrave Hall, third floor. Don’t be late.”
He turned before I could answer, walking away with that easy stride, greeting two more students by name as he passed them. The flowers in the pitcher tilted. Water sloshed over my fingers and dripped onto the floor in small dark spots.
I stood there while the residence hall moved around me, voices and footsteps and the distant sound of rain. Then I carried the peonies back upstairs, placed them on the table in our living room, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Sophia looked up immediately, her expression shifting to concern the moment she saw my face.
“What happened downstairs?” she asked carefully. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I stared at the pink blooms leaning toward the window, bright and out of place against the grey afternoon. “He ignored it,” I said. “My withdrawal. He just… ignored it.”
Anya frowned, closing her book with a quiet snap. “Ignored what exactly?”
“My email. I’m in the lab now, whether I want to be or not.”
Sophia’s face changed first, just slightly, worry flickering behind her calm eyes. “What do you mean? He can’t do that, can he? Not after you told him you needed space.”
I swallowed hard. “Apparently, he can. He said the work was too good to let me walk away from it. And the way he looked at me… it was like he knew… I don’t know, there’s something off about him.”
Rain slid down the glass beside my bedroom door. Somewhere below us, students laughed in the common room, soft and far away. I looked at my laptop, then at the flowers, then at my phone, where Thad’s message still waited like a small, safe door I could choose to walk through.
I should have felt trapped. The panic rose sharply and cold in my chest, mixed with the heavy guilt over Katherine and the proposal and everything I had pretended to be. But beneath all of that, beneath the fear and the grief and the careful mask I wore every single day, there was something else I hated myself for recognizing.
The smallest thread of relief.
4
Selena (Past)
My mother started her chores before the sun came up. I woke to the soft sounds of her moving around the cottage downstairs, opening cabinets with careful hands and closing them even more carefully, like she thought the Montgomerys might hear every little noise from the big house up the path. The bedroom stayed dark except for the thin grey light pushing through the curtains, and for a few seconds, I lay there forgetting where I was.
Then it came back to me all at once. No peeling paint on the ceiling above my bed. No shouting drifting up from the living room. No sour smell of whiskey soaked into the walls. Just the steady tap of rain against the window and my mother whispering to herself down in the kitchen as she checked the clock again and again.
I got out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s jeans. The knees still felt damp from the rain. My sneakers waited by the door, stuffed with paper towels the way my mother said would helpthem dry faster. They hadn’t. When I slid my feet inside, my toes curled against the cold lining. I went downstairs anyway.
In the tiny kitchen, my mother stood at the counter in her plain black dress and cardigan, hair pulled back so tight it made her face look both younger and more tired at the same time. She had made me toast and cut it into neat triangles, even though I was ten and not a little kid anymore. The plate sat on the table next to a glass of real orange juice. Not the powdered stuff we used to mix from the big plastic tub back in Portland. This tasted bright and cold when I took my first sip.
“You’re up early,” she said, turning when she heard me on the stairs.
“So are you.”
“I have to be at the main house by six.” She smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, then did it again, the fabric whispering under her palms.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s only five-thirty.”
“I know.” She gave a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I don’t want to be late on my first day. First impressions matter here.”
“You won’t be late,” I told her, sitting down at the table. “You’re never late.”
She watched me pick up a piece of toast. She had spread the butter all the way to the edges, thick and yellow. Back in Portland, she used to scrape the knife across the bread until there was hardly any left, saving the rest for later when my father might want more. Here she had used too much, like she was trying to prove to both of us that things could be different now.
“I need you to stay in the cottage today,” she said quietly.
