Not happiness. Nothing that simple. Just the terrifying realization that, despite everything, some part of my life still resembled home.
15
Selena (Past)
The summer Katherine lost her passport began with more rain. Not the dramatic kind that crashed and thundered across the cliffs, but the steady, cold kind that rolled in from the Atlantic and simply stayed for days, turning the gardens heavy with moisture and the stone paths silver under low grey skies.
The Montgomery estate always felt quieter during weather like that, softer somehow, with windows fogging faintly in the mornings and the whole house carrying the mingled scents of coffee, old wood polish, and the sea drifting in through every open door. I liked it best when the rain trapped everyone inside because those were the days Katherine stayed with me for hours without any of her usual distractions pulling her away.
By then, we were fifteen, old enough that most girls at Bellamont Academy had started drifting into separate social circles and careful little hierarchies, but Katherine still spent nearly every afternoon either in the staff cottage with me ordragging me upstairs into her room. We existed in each other’s spaces so naturally that sometimes even the staff forgot I technically lived somewhere else on the property.
That week, however, the entire house revolved around Switzerland.
Mrs. Montgomery had lists spread across the kitchen counters and garment bags hanging outside every upstairs bedroom. Suitcases appeared in the halls half-open and overflowing with expensive sweaters Katherine would probably wear once before abandoning them somewhere in Europe.
I sat cross-legged on Katherine’s bedroom floor while she packed, pretending to help while mostly watching her throw clothes into chaotic piles and then reorganize them thirty seconds later because she suddenly hated the arrangement.
Miss Astoria slept sprawled across the bed, watching us both with lazy blue eyes, her white fur glowing gold beneath the lamplight. Rain tapped steadily against the tall windows, and somewhere downstairs, I could hear my mother helping the kitchen staff prepare lunch for the family before they left.
“You’re bringing too much,” I said, folding one of the sweaters she had tossed toward me.
Katherine barely looked up from the open suitcase.
“Last year I underpacked.”
“You brought four coats last year.”
“And I wore all of them.”
“You were there for ten days.”
“It snowed unexpectedly,” she retorts.
I smiled despite myself and reached for another sweater, folding it properly before placing it inside the suitcase. Katherine hated folding clothes. She preferred leaving expensive fabrics in little mountains around her room until someone else fixed them. Usually me.
I smoothed the fabric carefully under my hands, feeling the soft cashmere give beneath my fingers, and tried not to think about how many weeks of my mother’s salary one single sweater probably cost.
“You know,” Katherine said suddenly, sitting back on her heels, “my mother thinks you should come with us one year.”
“Your mother absolutely does not think that.” I laughed softly before I could stop myself.
“She does.”
“She barely survives travelling with your father.”
“That’s fair.” Katherine zipped one side of the suitcase shut and looked at me properly for the first time in almost an hour, her expression bright and earnest in the way it always became when an idea took hold of her completely. “You’d like Switzerland.”
The simplicity of the statement made something ache unexpectedly inside my chest. Because she said things like that without understanding what they cost me.
Not financially. Emotionally. Katherine moved through the world assuming beautiful things could simply be shared if someone wanted them badly enough. She offered pieces of her life constantly, clothes and books and vacations and opportunities, without realizing that borrowing something was not the same thing as belonging there naturally.
I folded another sweater carefully to avoid looking at her. “I’ve never even been on a plane.”
“Seriously?” Katherine blinked.
I looked up sharply. “Yes, seriously.”
“Oh.” Her expression shifted immediately, the bright excitement dimming into something closer to confusion. “I just thought because of France…”
