The Girl They Chose

That golden patch on the floor must be sunlight. People were always saying sunlight was warm. Nina had never understood what they meant. At St. Catherine’s, summer and winter felt much the same. The old brick building outside Richmond baked in July and shuddered in January, but the cold that mattered had nothing to do with temperature. It lived deeper than that. Somewhere beneath the ribs. The other residents knew it too. They simply handled it differently. That morning, the girls crowded around the mirrors in the second-floor bathroom, straightening their hair, borrowing mascara, trading clothes that almost fit. Downstairs, the boys had discovered button-down shirts. One of them had been practising the same smile for ten minutes. St. Catherine’s called itself a residential youth centre. Everyone who lived there called it the Home. And everyone knew why they were dressing up. “The Whitmores are coming.” A hairbrush stopped in midair. “Who?” “You seriously don’t know who the Whitmores are?” “Should I?” A twelve-year-old girl named Kayla spun around from the mirror with the expression of someone who had just discovered a person who didn’t know what gravity was. “The Whitmores.” “So they’re rich?” Kayla laughed. “Rich? That’s not the point.” “What is the point?” “The point is, when a Whitmore calls, senators call back.” The girl beside her lowered her voice. “My caseworker said General Whitmore used to advise two presidents.” “Three.” “No way.” “And his sons own half of everything.” “They don’t own half of everything.” “Fine. A quarter.” The girls dissolved into excited whispers. At the end of the corridor, Nina stood beside a tall window and watched sunlight collect on the lawn. She wore a faded navy pleated dress that had already been old when it was donated three years ago. The hem had been repaired twice. The fabric had gone soft and pale from too many industrial washes. She was tall and painfully thin, with straight black hair falling halfway down her back. She didn’t turn around. Kayla noticed her. “Look at her.” Another girl snorted. “She always looks like that.” “Maybe she’s practising being dead.” They laughed. Nina continued looking through the glass. “Who’d ever choose her?” Kayla said. “She’s been here forever.” “Four years.” “And she’s fourteen now. She’s basically done.” That part was true. No one adopted a fourteen-year-old. When Nina turned eighteen, St. Catherine’s would begin processing her transition out of residential care. There would be forms, meetings, a small housing allowance and cheerful pamphlets explaining how to become an adult when nobody had ever shown you how. It wasn’t much of a future. Nina wanted it anyway. Freedom didn’t have to be beautiful. It only had to belong to her. She had already waited four years. She could wait four more. “Come on!” someone shouted. “They’re here!” The corridor emptied. Nina smiled faintly at the glass. Maybe one of them will fall in love with your smile. She didn’t believe that. She didn’t believe much of anything people said about families. Children at St. Catherine’s learned early that affection had terms and conditions. Foster parents could send you back. Sponsors could lose interest. Volunteers eventually stopped volunteering. A family could say we chose you today and this isn’t working three months later. Nina preferred contracts. At least contracts admitted what they were. “Nina!” She flinched. Mr Parker, the mathematics tutor, stood halfway down the hall. “Everyone’s downstairs. What are you doing?” “Nothing.” “I can see that. Get moving.” His voice startled her enough that something slipped from her hand. A tiny glass hourglass struck the carpet. Nina crouched immediately. The sand inside was gold. The brass around the glass was scratched, but the seals had held. After all these years, the sand remained as bright as she remembered it. It was the only thing she possessed that had existed before St. Catherine’s. Before the hospital. Before the blank space. She didn’t know who had given it to her. She didn’t know what her surname had once been. She barely knew whether Nina was truly her name. When police found her at ten, she had been injured, terrified and unable to tell them where she belonged. The hospital called her Jane Doe for six days. Eventually, she whispered one word that sounded like Nina. The name had followed her ever since. Everything before that existed only as fragments. Rain. A woman’s perfume. A hand holding hers. Someone calling her baby. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, Nina still woke with the word Mom in her mouth. She slipped the hourglass into her pocket. Then she went downstairs. The recreation hall had been transformed. Someone had put flowers on the tables. The vending machines had been hidden behind folding screens. Even the fluorescent lights seemed to have been bullied into behaving. The residents stood in loose groups while staff members circulated among them with smiles that looked painfully professional. Nina took the last empty place against the wall. Then the doors opened. The director entered first. Beside her walked a young woman. Nina had expected an elderly philanthropist in pearls. Instead, the centre of the room seemed to rearrange itself around a fifteen-year-old girl. She had copper-red hair in loose waves, an ivory summer dress and the effortless posture of someone who had never once wondered whether she belonged in a room. She was beautiful. Not sweetly beautiful. Dangerously beautiful. There was something precise about her face, something almost engineered. At her side walked a young man perhaps two or three years older, dressed in black despite the Virginia heat. One hand rested casually in his pocket. The other hovered at the red-haired girl’s back. He was smiling. Not enough to reveal what amused him. Only enough to make people wonder. Whispers spread through the room. “That’s Vivian.” “Vivian Whitmore?” “Who else?” “And that’s Sebastian.” Nina finally understood the excitement. The Whitmores weren’t merely wealthy. They were one of those American families whose name appeared everywhere without ever appearing in quite the same place twice. General Charles Whitmore had become a national hero decades ago, then a defence adviser, presidential confidant and permanent fixture in Washington’s invisible architecture. His sons had moved into government, defence contracting, finance and law. His grandchildren had inherited the surname and all the doors it opened. Vivian Whitmore was the only granddaughter. Which, according to the whispered mythology surrounding her, made her the closest thing the Whitmore family had to a princess. The director gave a speech about the Whitmore Foundation’s support for transitional housing and educational programs. Nina stopped listening after thirty seconds. Vivian didn’t. She stood politely beside Sebastian, smiling at all the appropriate moments. When the speech ended, she leaned towards him. “What do you think?” “About?” “Them.” Sebastian looked across the room. “You’re the one shopping.” Vivian elbowed him. “I’m not shopping.” His eyebrow rose. “Of course not.” She suppressed a smile. Then she turned towards the residents. “Could everyone stand in two rows?” Silence. Even the director looked surprised. Then years of institutional instinct took over. The residents moved. Nina found herself near the end. Vivian walked slowly between the rows. People smiled at her. Some brightly. Some shyly. Some desperately. Vivian noticed all of them. Then she reached Nina. And stopped. Nina did not smile. For several seconds, neither spoke. Vivian tilted her head. “What’s your name?” “Nina.” “Last name?” “Don’t have one.” Something changed in Vivian’s expression. Interest. “What do you mean?” “It means exactly what it sounds like.” The director hurried over. “Nina came to us under unusual circumstances. Her original identity was never conclusively established.” Vivian didn’t look away from Nina. “Do you want a last name?” Nina almost laughed. “What kind?” “Mine.” The room became very quiet. Sebastian’s smile disappeared. The director blinked. “Miss Whitmore…” But Vivian had already made up her mind. She stepped closer. “Nina Whitmore.” Nina stared at her. Vivian tested it again. “Nina Whitmore. I like that.” “I didn’t say I did.” That should have offended her. Instead, Vivian smiled. A real smile this time. “That’s why I picked you.” “Picked me for what?” Vivian reached out and took Nina’s hand. “For me.” Nina looked down at their joined hands. Vivian’s skin was warm. Her grip wasn’t. “Come home with us,” Vivian said. “You don’t need anything from here. Whatever you need, I’ll get you.” Vivian glanced towards the director. For the first time, the older woman looked uncomfortable. Nina recognised that look. It was the face adults made when something had already been decided but they did not want to admit who had made the decision. Nina felt the familiar cold spread through her chest. She had spent four years waiting for the day no one would be allowed to decide where she belonged. Apparently, that day had just moved further away. Sebastian approached. Up close, he was even more striking, but there was something easier about his face than Vivian’s. Less polished. Less deliberate. He held out his hand. “Sebastian Whitmore.” Nina looked at it. “The youngest of Vivian’s five brothers,” he added. “Unfortunately.” Vivian slapped his hand away before Nina could take it. “Don’t flirt with her.” Sebastian looked offended. “I introduced myself.” “She’s mine.” There was a beat of silence. Then Sebastian laughed. “Right. Of course she is.” “I know you.” “That sounds ominous.” “It was meant to.” Nina watched them. They spoke with the careless intimacy of people who had never needed to protect themselves from one another. She wondered what that felt like. Vivian turned back to her. Her gaze travelled down Nina’s faded navy dress. “What is that?” Nina looked down. “A dress.” “It’s terrible.” Nina said nothing. Vivian pinched the worn fabric lightly between two fingers. The movement was casual. Possessive. “This is what they make you wear?” “It’s mine.” Vivian glanced at her. Something about Nina’s answer seemed to interest her. “Do you like it?” The dress was old, but it had not come from the Home’s donation room. Nina had arrived with it. The hospital had packed it away with the few things found on her four years ago. It might have belonged to her mother. It might not have. Nina no longer trusted the difference between memory and wanting something badly enough to remember it. “It doesn’t matter.” Vivian studied her for another second. Then she said, “Take it off.” The director stiffened. “I don’t like it.” A few people nearby laughed uncertainly, waiting for someone to explain the joke. There wasn’t one. Sebastian glanced at his sister. “Viv.” But Nina had already reached for the first button. The room went still. She undid one. Then another. The director stepped forward. “Nina, you don’t have to…” Nina looked at her. That was almost funny. Adults had been telling her what she did and did not have to do for four years. She slipped the dress from her shoulders. Someone gasped. Kayla stared. The navy fabric fell into Nina’s hands. For a moment she stood there in her underwear, thin shoulders bare beneath the fluorescent lights, her expression unchanged. No embarrassment. No protest. No hesitation. That disturbed the room more than tears would have. Vivian watched her with open fascination. Sebastian did not. His gaze moved immediately away. He turned towards the driver standing beside the doors and murmured something. The man removed his jacket and crossed the room. He draped it around Nina’s shoulders. It was far too large. The dark fabric swallowed her almost to the knees. Nina looked at him. “Thank you.” The driver gave a small nod and stepped back. Nina’s eyes shifted to Sebastian. He was still looking elsewhere, giving her the privacy the rest of the room had forgotten to offer. Maybe he was a good person. Nina had learned not to trust first impressions. Still. Maybe. Vivian reached out and adjusted the driver’s jacket around Nina’s shoulders, fastening one button near her throat. “There.” Nina looked down at herself. The jacket smelled faintly of cedar and tobacco. “Come on,” Vivian said, satisfied. “Let’s go home.” Home. The word passed strangely through Nina. She had lived at St. Catherine’s for four years and never called it that. Vivian had known her for perhaps five minutes and was already using the word as though it were a fact. As Nina walked towards the doors, Sebastian watched her more carefully than before. The girl was painfully thin. Too thin. Her wrists looked fragile enough to circle with two fingers. Malnutrition, perhaps. Neglect. Or simply four years in a place where being fed and being cared for were not necessarily the same thing. Yet it was her eyes that held his attention. Dark, captivating eyes. At first glance, they seemed quiet. Obedient, even. But there was something underneath. A stubbornness. A tiny spark of defiance buried so deeply that perhaps Nina herself had forgotten it was there. Sebastian knew his sister. Vivian had seen it too. That, more than anything, was probably why she had chosen her. Nina put one hand into the pocket of the oversized jacket. Her fingers closed around the little hourglass. Still there. Good. She had been willing to wait another four years for freedom. Instead, she followed Vivian Whitmore out of St. Catherine’s. Years later, Nina would wonder whether that had been the moment everything changed. Or whether everything had changed much earlier, and she had simply failed to notice.