Chapter 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 or dragging 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…”
The sentence died halfway out of her mouth. Silence settled heavily between us. France. Céline. The fake cousin story had existed so long that sometimes even Katherine forgot where it started.
I stared down at the cream-colored sweater in my hands and felt the familiar twist of envy curl low in my stomach.
Not the sharp kind that made me cruel. The quiet kind that made me ache.
I envied the ease with which she could say things like that, the way her life unfolded in summers spent in places I had only seen in magazines or on television.
She complained about packing the way normal people complained about homework.
None of it felt extraordinary to her. That was the part I could never forgive the rich for.
Not the money itself. The blindness. The complete inability to understand what their lives looked like from the outside.
“You’re getting weird again,” Katherine said carefully, tilting her head the way she did when she sensed something shifting in me.
“I’m not weird.”
“You’ve folded the same sweater three times.”
I looked down. She was right. I set it aside too quickly.
“Sorry.”
Katherine studied me for another moment before shifting closer across the bed.
“You can stay in my room while we’re gone.”
I laughed once under my breath.
“Katherine.”
“What?”
“You say things like that as if your house belongs to me too.”
Her expression changed instantly. Not offended, but confused.
“Well,” she said slowly, “you practically live here already.”
There it was again. That invisible line neither of us fully understood.
Because in Katherine’s mind, loving someone meant offering access.
She truly believed generosity erased inequality.
If she shared enough with me, then eventually the distance between us would disappear naturally.
But the distance never disappeared. It simply became easier to ignore until moments like this reminded me exactly where I stood.
I was still the housekeeper’s daughter. Still temporary.
Still, someone allowed inside the world rather than born into it.
Katherine noticed the shift in my face immediately.
“Céline .”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re upset.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You always do that.” Frustration crept quietly into her voice. “You get angry at me for things I don’t even understand.”
The words landed harder than she intended. Because she was right. I looked away toward the rain-covered windows.
“I should help my mom downstairs.”
Katherine sighed softly behind me as I stood. “You’re leaving.”
“Yes.”
“You always leave when conversations get uncomfortable.”
I turned toward the door before answering. “Maybe you should think about why they get uncomfortable.”
Then I left her sitting there surrounded by half-packed suitcases and expensive clothes she would wear in countries I would probably never see in this lifetime.
* * *
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 reorganizing luggage 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 walked past 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.
Katherine stood beside the car afterwards, still blotchy-eyed from crying.
“I swear I checked everywhere.”
“I know,” Mrs. Montgomery said gently.
“No, I really did.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
And just like that, everyone moved on. Except me.
Because I stood there in the driveway realizing something slowly and horribly.
Even when I tried to disrupt their world, their world remained intact.
The only thing I had truly damaged was Katherine’s trust in herself.
She looked at me before getting into the car.
“I’m going to bring you something back from Switzerland,” she promised softly.
The guilt hit so hard I almost confessed right there.
Instead, I smiled.
“Okay.”
Then I stood in the rain and watched the car disappear through the gates while the stolen passport remained hidden beneath the creaky floorboard under my bed in the cottage, already beginning to rot.