Chapter 14 #2
For one suspended moment, she was alive again. Not physically. But in the rhythm of shared memory. Mrs. Montgomery stood slowly from the desk chair. “You should take some things from your room too,” she said gently.
My chest tightened unexpectedly.
“I haven’t touched anything,” she added. “I thought maybe… someday…”
She never finished the sentence. She didn’t have to.
Someday you might come back. The tragedy was that part of me still wanted to hear it.
Unlike Katherine, I had chosen to live on campus rather than this house when I got accepted into university, desperate to leave Selena behind.
But a part of me still longed for her anyway, the girl who used to stand at the cottage window and dream of belonging here.
I looked down at Miss Astoria sleeping heavily across my legs now, utterly exhausted from whatever grief animals experienced when people disappeared without explanation. “I’ll take good care of her,” I said quietly.
Mrs. Montgomery looked at me then with such raw affection that I almost couldn’t breathe. “I know you will, sweetheart.”
Miss Astoria purred once more in her sleep, warm and steady against me.
Outside, the rain kept falling, steady and cold, while inside Katherine’s room, the past refused to let go.
I stayed on the edge of the bed a little longer than I meant to, letting the cat’s weight anchor me while the house breathed quietly around us both.
Miss Astoria refused to let me put her down.
The moment I stood from Katherine’s bed with the cat in my arms, she hooked both front paws deep into my sweater and clung harder, her blue eyes wide with the kind of desperate attachment that only animals and very small children displayed without any shame.
Her whole body trembled against me, small and warm and insistent, as though she had decided that if I moved even one step away she would simply refuse to exist without me there.
Mrs. Montgomery noticed immediately, her tired eyes softening at the edges in a way that made the lines around them look deeper than they had a month ago.
“She thinks you’re leaving again,” she said quietly, the words settling heavily into my chest like something I had been trying not to name.
“I’m not,” I murmured, more to the cat than to anyone else, my voice low and steady even though my throat felt tight.
Miss Astoria responded by climbing higher against my shoulder until her face pressed into the curve of my neck, her whiskers tickling my skin, and her purring vibrating straight through my collarbone.
I looked toward Katherine’s dresser while Mrs. Montgomery searched the closet for the old pale pink cat carrier, the one Katherine had insisted on buying because it matched the satin lining from the day Miss Astoria first arrived. Everything in the room remained painfully untouched.
A framed photograph from sophomore year still sat beside the mirror, Katherine in her Bellamont uniform standing beside me at the winter formal, both of us smiling too brightly beneath strings of white lights.
She looked elegant even at sixteen, her dark blonde hair pinned neatly back, while I leaned into her side, wearing the dress Mrs. Montgomery had bought because Katherine insisted I couldn’t attend “looking economically distressed.”
At the time, I had laughed so hard that champagne nearly came out of my nose, the sound loud and real in a way that felt foreign now.
The memory hurt strangely, not because it had been cruel but because it had been affectionate.
That was always the problem with Katherine.
She loved me genuinely enough to confuse the damage, to hand me gifts wrapped in her own privilege without ever seeing the strings attached.
Mrs. Montgomery returned carrying the carrier, and Miss Astoria immediately made a low noise of betrayal deep in her throat.
“Oh, stop it,” I whispered, crouching beside the carrier and trying to ease her inside. The cat resisted with horrifying strength for something that barely weighed eight pounds, digging her claws into my sweater and flattening her ears.
“Miss Astoria.” She tightened her grip even more. “You’re embarrassing both of us.”
Another offended noise escaped her, high and dramatic, and Mrs. Montgomery laughed quietly through her exhaustion.
“She gets that from Katherine.”
The sentence lingered between us softly, warm and painful all at once.
I finally managed to settle the cat inside and latched the door, my fingers lingering on the bars for a moment while Miss Astoria pressed her face against them and stared at me with accusing blue eyes.
Mrs. Montgomery touched my arm lightly as we made our way back down the stairs.
“Thank you again, sweetheart,” she said, her voice gentle but threaded with that familiar relief, the kind that came from handing off the practical, messy parts of life to someone else.
When we reached the foyer, my mother was waiting near the staircase. Mom looked from me to the carrier immediately, and her entire face softened in that quiet, protective way she had always had.
“Oh,” she said, the single syllable carrying more understanding than most conversations ever did.
“She’s coming back with me,” I told her, and my mother nodded once like this was the most natural thing in the world.
“Good.”
Mrs. Montgomery touched my arm again, her fingers light and fleeting. The touch made guilt crawl coldly beneath my skin, but Miss Astoria let out another sharp, miserable cry from inside the carrier, and instinct overrode everything else immediately.
“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said.
“Yes. Please.” Mrs. Montgomery nodded too quickly.
The unspoken part hung invisibly in the foyer even after she smiled: Please keep coming back.
My mother walked me to the door while thunder rolled low across the cliffs outside. When we reached the porch, she adjusted my scarf automatically the way she always had before storms, her fingers quick and familiar.
“You look so tired,” she said quietly.