Chapter 11
Céline
The question about Miss Astoria finally clawed its way out of me. I hadn’t forgotten her. Forgetting would have been kinder. I avoided asking because I already knew the answer would hurt too much, and I had spent days pretending I could carry one more thing without it breaking me.
It hit on a Thursday afternoon right in the middle of molecular biology lab while Julian stood at the bench looking like he might actually pass out from panic. He had just contaminated two tissue samples and was staring at the ruined plates in panic.
“I swear I sterilized the pipette,” he said for the third time, his voice cracking a little as he ran a hand through his hair. “I did everything exactly like the protocol said.”
Dr. Patel stood beside him with her usual calm, arms crossed, watching the mess the way someone might watch a slow-moving storm. “You touched your hair halfway through the transfer.”
“I did not,” Julian insisted, cheeks going red. “I adjusted my glasses. That’s all.”
“With the same hand,” Dr. Patel replied, gentle but firm, the kind of tone that made you feel both corrected and somehow looked after.
Across the bench, Wendy covered her mouth to hide a laugh, her shoulders shaking.
I should have been paying attention to the contamination protocols Dr. Patel was explaining for the second time that week.
Instead, I stared blankly at the centrifuge spinning in front of me while a terrible thought settled heavily in my chest.
Miss Astoria would think I had abandoned her.
The realization landed with humiliating force.
I had not seen the cat once since Katherine’s death.
Not once. Between the police questions, the Montgomery house turning into a quiet mausoleum of grief, the way Bellamont gossip spread like damp rot through the dorms, and Vincent Moreau slowly taking apart my life piece by piece, I had somehow never gone back for her.
My stomach twisted hard. Miss Astoria hated change more than anything.
She hated strangers, hated closed doors, hated loud noises and thunderstorms and citrus scents and the vacuum cleaner and every veterinarian in the state of Maine.
And now Katherine was gone. I kept staring at the centrifuge until the metal blur started to hurt my eyes.
She would be confused and lonely and waiting by the wrong door, wondering why the one person who had always come back had disappeared along with everything else.
“Oh my God,” Wendy whispered suddenly.
Julian had dropped an entire rack of pipette tips onto the floor.
They scattered across the tiles like tiny plastic confetti.
Professor Moreau looked up from the incubators where he had been reviewing data sheets with Christina, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, speaking in that low, measured voice that somehow made everyone feel both reassured and quietly measured at the same time.
The whole lab fell quiet the way it always did when he shifted his attention.
Julian looked one mistake away from actual tears. “I’m sorry.”
Vincent regarded the scattered tips for one long second, then took a slow sip of his coffee. “Congratulations,” he said, voice dry and even. “You’ve managed to destroy approximately four dollars’ worth of equipment instead of an expensive tissue culture. That’s what we call progress.”
A few nervous laughs moved through the room. Julian exhaled shakily, relief washing over his face.
Professor Moreau’s eyes shifted briefly toward me. “You seem distracted today, Miss Martin.”
I straightened immediately. “I’m listening.”
“No,” he said mildly, setting his mug down. “You’re dissociating. Different skill set entirely.”
Wendy choked on another laugh. Heat rose fast in my face.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask whether you were fine,” he said. “I asked whether you were paying attention.”
I hated him in that moment with a sharpness that surprised me.
“I am.”
“Good.” He handed Christina her data sheet back.
“Then perhaps you can explain why sample integrity matters.”
I answered automatically because Katherine had drilled enough biology into my skull over the years to make survival instinctive.
“Because cellular stress responses are highly sensitive to environmental variation. If contamination occurs, you can’t distinguish between legitimate adaptive behaviour and external interference. ”
Professor Moreau watched me for a moment too long. “Excellent,” he said softly.
My throat tightened unexpectedly. For one terrible second, it sounded like approval, and my body still reacted to approval the way starving things reacted to food. I looked away first.
* * *
After lab, I stood outside Westgrave Hall pretending to answer emails while students crossed the courtyard around me in waves.
The wind moved cold through the trees, and my phone felt heavier than normal in my hand.
I stared at Mrs. Montgomery’s contact for almost thirty seconds before I pressed call. She answered on the fourth ring.
“Selena?”
The sound of her voice nearly undid me. She sounded relieved.
“Hi,” I said quietly.
“Oh sweetheart.” I heard movement on the other end, fabric shifting, footsteps across hardwood. “Are you all right?”
The question lodged somewhere painful behind my ribs.
“Yes.” I lie.
“You haven’t been by.”
“I know. I’m so sorry Mrs. Montgomery.”
“No, no.” Her voice softened immediately. “You don’t have to apologize. I just…” She exhaled shakily. “I worried.”
About me. Not about the daughter in the grave. The cruelty of that pressed coldly against my throat.
“How are you?” I asked.
After a bout of silence, she responded, “I rearranged Katherine’s closet yesterday.”
My eyes closed briefly.
Mrs. Montgomery continued in the careful, distracted tone people used when trying not to collapse inside ordinary conversations. “I thought maybe organizing things would help, but then I forgot where some of her sweaters originally were, and suddenly that felt catastrophic.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
“She still has tea mugs in the dishwasher.” A small broken laugh escaped her. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
No. That was grief. Not dramatic enough for movies. Just unbearable in tiny domestic ways.
I leaned against the stone wall outside Westgrave and looked out toward Bellamont’s cliffs. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
The answer came immediately, no hesitation.
“Miss Astoria..,” I said softly.
There was a longer silence this time.
“Oh.”
The single syllable carried so much exhaustion I nearly cried right there in the courtyard.
“How is she?”
Mrs. Montgomery let out a breath that sounded dangerously close to relief. “She barely eats unless someone sits with her.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“She keeps sleeping outside Katherine’s door at night.” Another pause. “And she cries.”
I pressed my hand against my mouth. Across the courtyard, students laughed over coffee cups and backpacks and normal lives.
“She’s confused,” Mrs. Montgomery said quietly. “Animals understand absence more than people think.”
Yes. They did. I remembered Miss Astoria waiting outside my bedroom door as a teenager if I stayed out too late.
Crying outside the bathroom when Katherine locked herself inside during panic attacks.
Curling against my stomach every single time my father appeared in my head unexpectedly, like she could smell the fear on me.
“I miss her,” I said before I could stop myself.
The words came out smaller than I intended.
Mrs. Montgomery inhaled sharply. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“I was actually going to call you,” she continued after a moment. “I just didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
Obligated. As if obligation had not built half my life.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s unhappy here now.”
I went very still. The wind off the cliffs moved sharply through my hair.
“She keeps scratching at the guest house door,” Mrs. Montgomery continued softly. “Mira says she sits there for hours sometimes.”
“She misses you,” Mrs. Montgomery said.
Something inside my chest cracked quietly down the middle.
I stared out toward the ocean. Then carefully responded, “Would you want me to take her?”
The silence afterward felt enormous.
“Oh,” Mrs. Montgomery whispered.
I heard it then. Relief. Immediate and devastating.
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, if you’d like that.”
Like. As if I would not have crawled across broken glass for that cat.
“She’s always really been yours anyway.”
The words landed strangely. Dangerously. Because part of me had always known that was true. And part of Katherine had known it too.
“When can I come by?” I asked.
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
“I can stop by tonight after class.”
“All right.” Mrs. Montgomery’s voice trembled faintly now. “She’ll be so happy to see you.”
We hung up a minute later. I stayed leaning against the wall outside Westgrave long after the call ended.
Students passed around me in waves. Someone somewhere was playing music too loudly from an open dorm window.
The ocean below the cliffs crashed violently against the rocks.
And for the first time in weeks, I wanted something simple.
Not status. Not survival. Not control. Just my cat.
“You look less haunted.”
Professor Moreau’s voice behind me nearly stopped my heart. I turned too quickly. He stood a few feet away, holding a stack of student evaluations, dark coat open against the wind, expression unreadable except for the faintest trace of amusement at having startled me.
“You need therapy,” I said immediately.
“Possibly.”
I glared at him. Vincent’s gaze moved over my face slowly. Not flirtatious but observational.
“What changed?”
I should not have answered, but I couldn’t help but say, “I’m getting my cat back.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“You have a cat?”
“I did.”
The correction slipped out automatically. Vincent watched me carefully.
“What’s her name?”
“Miss Astoria.”
There was a brief silence.
Then unexpectedly, he laughed. Not the polished public laugh. A real one. Warm and startled and brief.
I stared at him in suspicion.
“What?”
“That is exactly the kind of name I imagined your cat would have.”
“She didn’t name herself. Nor did I.”
“No,” he said softly. “I suspect you didn’t.”
The implication hung neatly between us. Katherine. Always Katherine, somehow.
Vincent adjusted the papers in his arms.
“You loved the cat?”
I looked away toward the cliffs again.
“Yes.”
Vincent raised an eyebrow.
“Wow,” he said.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
That irritated me immediately.
“Why?”
“Because people like you usually avoid uncomplicated attachment.”
“People like me?” My jaw tightened.
“People who survive by performance.”
I folded my arms. “You analyzed me psychologically because I miss my cat?”
“Yes.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“Frequently.”
I should have left then.
Instead, I asked, “Did you have pets growing up?”
Vincent looked genuinely surprised by the question. Then something distant moved briefly across his face. “A Doberman,” he said after a moment.
I blinked. “That feels aggressively on brand.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “His name was Hector.”
“That’s worse.”
“He bit three people.”
“Of course he did.”
“He liked me best. He passed away due to old age a few years ago.”
Vincent looked out toward the ocean.
The softness in his voice startled me. Unrehearsed affection. I suddenly had the strange, disorienting realization that Professor Vincent Moreau probably loved animals more naturally than people. He glanced at me again. “You should go before you lose your nerve.”
“For the cat?”
“For the house.”
My stomach tightened instantly. Right. The Montgomery estate. Katherine’s bedroom. Katherine’s parents. Katherine’s absence. Vincent watched the realization move through me. Then more quietly he said, “Take the cat. She’s yours.”
The gentleness in his voice made me angry on instinct.
“Stop acting like you understand me.”
His expression barely changed. “I understand your grief very well, Selena.”
The way he said it made something cold move beneath my skin.
“Why do you keep calling me Selena? That’s not my name.”
He smirks before walking away.