Chapter 6
Selena (Past)
Katherine came to the cottage three days later with a stack of books pressed tight against her chest and a look on her face like she had spent the whole walk down the garden path arguing with herself about whether she should turn around.
I spotted her from the kitchen window before she even reached the door.
She stood out there in a navy coat that looked too thin for the damp wind coming off the cliffs, her dark blond hair lifting around her cheeks in little strands.
For a second, she just stared at the cottage door, lips pressed together, like knocking on staff housing took more courage than she knew what to do with.
My mother was upstairs changing the sheets on my bed even though they were already clean.
She had started doing small things like that since we moved in, cleaning what did not need cleaning yet, as if she could keep the new life spotless by staying one step ahead of any mess.
I think it gave her something steady to hold onto after all the years of never knowing what the next hour would bring back in Portland.
The knock came soft, almost hesitant. I opened the door before she could change her mind and walk away.
Katherine looked straight at me. I looked back at her while neither of us said a word. Then she held out one of the books.
“You looked bored yesterday,” she said.
I stared at the hardcover.
The Secret Garden. The edges were worn soft from reading, and her name sat inside the front cover in careful handwriting.
Katherine Anne Montgomery.
“I wasn’t bored,” I told her.
“You were reading a book about soil.”
“Okay, I admit I was a little desperate.”
Her mouth twitched like she wanted to smile but had not quite decided if she was allowed to.
I took the book carefully, noticing how clean her hands looked next to mine.
Her nails were short and neat. Mine still had dirt under them from helping my mother carry grocery boxes from the car that morning.
“You can come in if you want,” I said.
She stepped inside and looked around the cottage with open curiosity.
No disgust on her face. No pity either. That made it harder somehow.
I could have handled her looking down on the small rooms and the faded sofa.
I already knew how to feel small in that way.
But Katherine looked at everything like it mattered simply because it belonged to me.
Her eyes moved over the little kitchen, the laundry folded on the chair, the bowl of oranges my mother had bought because they were on sale at the market in town.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” she said after a minute.
My face warmed.
Then she added, “But nicer.”
“Nicer than what?”
“My room.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. “Your room is probably bigger than this whole cottage.”
“It is,” she said, and she did not sound embarrassed about it at all. “That doesn’t make it nicer.”
I did not know what to do with an answer like that.
Rich people complained about things in a different way.
They made their unhappiness sound delicate, like something they kept behind glass so it would not get dirty.
Back in Portland, unhappiness had a smell.
It was beer soaked into the carpet, old smoke in the curtains, and my father’s voice sliding under the bedroom door at night.
Katherine set the rest of the books on the kitchen table. “I brought these too. You don’t have to read them, but they’re better than gardening manuals.”
There were five books altogether. Two novels, one about animals, an old science encyclopedia for children, and a book of fairy tales with real gold on the cover. I touched the gold lightly with one finger.
“Are these yours?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re allowed to give them to me?”
“I’m not giving them to you. I’m lending them.”
“Oh.”
“But for a long time,” she said.
That felt like a real gift. I looked at her again. This time, she looked away first.
My mother came down the stairs carrying a basket of laundry and stopped so fast that one towel slid over the edge and landed on the floor.
“Miss Montgomery,” she said.
Katherine turned.
“Hello.”
My mother’s eyes went from Katherine to me and then to the books on the table. “Selena,” she said slowly, “did you invite Miss Montgomery inside?”
“She knocked.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Katherine straightened her shoulders. “I came by myself.”
My mother looked even more worried. “That’s very kind of you, but your mother might be looking for you.”
“She knows where I am.”
That was clearly not true. My mother knew it too. Katherine kept her chin high, like she was daring either of us to call her on it. I liked her for that. I liked the strange stiffness in her, the way she could look scared and stubborn all at once.
“Mira?” Mrs. Montgomery’s voice came from outside the cottage before any of us could say anything else.
My mother closed her eyes for half a second. Katherine’s shoulders sank a little.
A moment later Mrs. Montgomery appeared in the doorway in a pale coat, cheeks pink from the cold. “Katherine, sweetheart, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I was here.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Mrs. Montgomery’s smile tightened at the corners, then softened when she turned to my mother. “Mira, I’m sorry. She has a habit of wandering when she doesn’t want to do something.”
“I don’t wander,” Katherine muttered.
“You disappear with intention, then.”
That made me smile. Katherine saw it and looked a little pleased with herself.
Mrs. Montgomery’s gaze moved to the books on the table.
“Did you bring those for Selena?”
Katherine nodded once. “She needs something to read.”
“I see.”
The cottage went quiet for a moment. I could feel my mother beside me, tense with the need to apologize again. She held the laundry basket against her hip like a shield.
Mrs. Montgomery studied the two of us.
Then she said, “That was thoughtful of you, Katherine.”
Katherine’s expression changed. Praise seemed to surprise her, like someone had opened a door in a room she thought stayed locked.
“Can Selena come to the library later?” she asked quickly.
My mother stiffened beside me.
Mrs. Montgomery looked surprised. “The library?”
“She can read there. I have homework after school.”
“That may not be the best—”
“I’ll be quiet,” I said.
The words came out before I could stop them. My mother gave me a look.
I lowered my eyes right away.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
Mrs. Montgomery watched me for a moment. I thought she would say no. Instead, she said, “Perhaps after lunch, if your mother agrees.”
My heart jumped. My mother looked caught between gratitude and worry.
“That’s very generous, Mrs. Montgomery, but Selena doesn’t want to be in the way.”
“She won’t be,” Katherine said.
There was something fierce in her voice. Small, but fierce.
Mrs. Montgomery sighed. “After lunch. Only for an hour.”
Katherine looked at me like we had won something big. Maybe we had.
* * *
That afternoon, I walked into the main part of the house for the first time through the family hallway instead of the staff entrance.
It felt different right away. The floors shone dark under my sneakers.
My reflection moved faint and uncertain inside them.
The walls held paintings of people who looked like they had never once worried about rent or groceries or what mood their father would be in when he came home.
I walked carefully, afraid of scuffing anything.
Katherine walked too fast, as if she had never once considered the possibility of damaging a floor just by standing on it.
“This way,” she said.
I followed her past a sitting room with heavy blue curtains, past a staircase that curved upward like something out of a movie, past a closed door where I heard a man’s voice on the phone in a serious tone.
“My father,” Katherine whispered.
“Is he nice?”
She made a face. “He’s busy.”
That was not really an answer.
The library sat at the back of the house, facing the ocean.
When Katherine opened the door, I stopped breathing for a second.
The room reached two stories high with shelves climbing all the way to a carved ceiling.
A ladder ran along a rail on one wall. Leather chairs waited near the fireplace, and a wide desk sat under the windows.
Outside, the cliffs dropped sharply toward grey water, waves breaking white against the rocks below.
I had never seen that many books in one place. Not in school. Not in the public library back in Portland. Not anywhere.
Katherine watched my face. “You can say it.”
“Say what?”
“That it’s a lot.”
“It’s a lot.”
She looked satisfied.
I stepped inside slowly. The room smelled like old paper, wood smoke, and something faintly sweet I learned later was beeswax polish. I ran my fingers along the edge of a shelf, careful not to touch the spines.
“You can take them down,” Katherine said.
“What if I ruin one?”
“Then we’ll put it back before anyone notices.”
I looked at her, shocked. She gave me another tiny smile.
It was easier to talk to her in the library. Maybe because the room was so big, it swallowed the awkward silences. Maybe because Katherine seemed different there, less stiff than she had been in the kitchen, more sure of where to put her hands and her eyes.
She showed me her favourite shelf first. Science books. Anatomy. Biology. Old illustrated encyclopedias with diagrams of plants, animals and cells. She opened one to a page showing the inside of a leaf, all green veins and tiny chambers.
“This is a stomata,” she said.
“A what?”
“Stomata. They’re pores. Plants use them to breathe.”
“Plants breathe?”
“Not like us.” She looked pleased that I had asked. “But yes. Sort of.”
I leaned closer. The diagram was beautiful, though I didn’t understand it. But I liked the shapes. The tiny openings. The neat hidden structures under something ordinary.
Katherine turned another page. “Everything has a system inside it.”
“Everything?”
“Everything alive.”
I thought about that for a while. “Even people?”
“Especially people.”