Page 60 of Saint Céline
That night I couldn’t sleep. The rain continued steadily against the cottage roof while my mother slept in the next room, exhausted from helping prepare the estate for the trip. Through the kitchen window, I could still see lights glowing upstairs in the main house where Katherine was probably reorganizingluggage for the fifth time. I stood there for a long time watching the rain slide down the glass. The feeling inside me had started small earlier that afternoon. Something childish and ugly and aching.
I don’t want her to go. Not forever. Not even for long. I just wanted one thing in her life to stop moving so effortlessly. One interruption. One inconvenience. One moment where the world didn’t rearrange itself perfectly around the Montgomery family. The thought should have disgusted me immediately. Instead, it sat warm and poisonous beneath my ribs.
The next morning, the house woke before sunrise. The driver loaded luggage downstairs while Mrs. Montgomery rushed through final checklists in a silk robe, already stressed about airport timing. Katherine wandered sleepily through the kitchen, holding coffee and wearing one of my hoodies because she had stolen it weeks ago and never returned it.
“You look terrible,” she informed me, voice still thick with sleep.
“You’re awake before six in the morning.”
“I’m rich. I’m not built for hardship.”
I smiled faintly despite myself. The passport sat on the marble kitchen counter beside Mrs. Montgomery’s handbag while everyone moved distractedly around it. Blue cover. Gold lettering. Carelessly unattended. I noticed it immediately. And then I kept noticing it. Every time I looked away, my eyes drifted back.
My mother asked me to bring extra tea towels upstairs. One of the housekeepers needed help carrying garment bags. Mr. Montgomery complained loudly about traffic projections to Portland. The entire house moved in overlapping motion around me. No one watched the passport. Not once. I wish I could say there was a moment where I consciously decided. There wasn’t. That was what frightened me afterwards. I simply walkedpast the counter while everyone argued about luggage weight restrictions, picked up the passport alongside a stack of travel documents, and carried everything upstairs.
All except hers. That one stayed in my hand.
My heart beat so loudly I could hear it in my ears. I stood alone in the upstairs hallway staring at the navy passport cover while rainwater slid slowly down the windows beside me.
Put it back.The thought came to her insistently.This is insane.
But another voice answered just as quickly.
Then she’ll leave.
I looked toward Katherine’s bedroom door. Toward the life I had spent years trying to enter fully. Toward the girl who loved me enough to share everything and still somehow remained unreachable. My fingers tightened around the passport. I only wanted one summer. One interruption. One moment where she chose me over everything else.
That was the lie I told myself while I slipped the passport beneath the loose floorboard underneath my bed in the cottage. The wood lifted easily because I already knew where it creaked. I had spent too much time hiding small things there not to know. The passport disappeared into darkness beneath the floor. My pulse thudded violently in my throat. Then I lowered the board back into place. For one terrible second, excitement moved through me so sharply it almost felt like joy. Immediately afterwards came guilt.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I stood up too quickly and nearly hit my knee against the bedframe. Downstairs at the Montgomery home, someone shouted Katherine’s name. Panic flooded through me immediately. I left the room fast enough to run back inside that I almost collided with Mrs. Montgomery in the hallway.
“There you are,” she said distractedly. “Have you seen Katherine’s passport anywhere?”
My stomach dropped so violently I thought she would hear it.
“No, Mrs. Montgomery.”
“Wonderful. We’re already late.” She sighed.
Everything after that happened too quickly. Katherine searched her room twice. Then three times. Then the crying started. Not dramatic crying. Frustrated crying. The kind born from panic and humiliation.
“I left it right here,” she kept saying while Mrs. Montgomery tore through drawers beside her and Mr. Montgomery barked instructions downstairs into his phone.
“We can’t miss this flight over a passport,” he snapped.
“I know that,” Katherine said, voice breaking. “I’m trying.”
I stood in the doorway watching the chaos unfold around the room. Watching Katherine’s hands shake while she searched through the luggage. Watching her face redden with stress. And beneath the guilt, buried so deeply I almost hated myself for recognizing it:relief.
Because for a few brief beautiful minutes, I thought it had worked. I thought she might stay.
Then Mr. Montgomery fixed it in under an hour. Three phone calls. One furious conversation with someone at the airport. A private processing arrangement. Emergency documentation waiting in Portland. Money smoothed reality flat again before consequences could fully exist.
By noon, the luggage was loaded back into the cars. Mrs. Montgomery kissed Katherine’s forehead and told her not to cry over something so minor. Mr. Montgomery complained about inefficiency but sounded more annoyed than truly angry. The crisis had already transformed into an expensive inconvenience instead of an actual problem.
That was wealth. Not having problems, but knowing problems would never trap you permanently.
