I returned.
But I'm not the same subject.
Dana packs up her bag at ten past ten and tells me I'm progressing ahead of schedule. I thank her warmly. She leaves. The house goes quiet.
I sit on the edge of my bed and rotate my shoulder slowly — forward, back, testing the range, feeling where the resistance lives and where it's loosened since last week. Better. The ribs still pull when I breathe deep, but that's healing too, the kind of healing you can feel happening if you pay attention to your own body the way I've learned to pay attention to everything.
I pay attention to everything.
I stand and walk to the window.
The grounds below are immaculate — my father's doing, the same gardening service that has maintained this property since before I was born. Hedges trimmed to geometry. The gravel drive raked clean. Everything is ordered and controlled and exactly as it should appear from the outside.
My father is good at appearances.
I learned from the best.
I think about Adela's voice on the phone this morning. Warm, slightly sleepy, the sound of a girl who picked up on the second ring and performed ease so naturally I almost missed the performance entirely.
Almost.
I've been almost missing it since she walked into my hospital room.
I reach for my phone.
Serena answers on the first ring.
"Twice in one week," she says. "I should buy a lottery ticket."
"Tell me about the library."
A pause. Brief, barely there, the half-second of someone recalibrating. "What about it?"
"You mentioned it before that she'd been spotted on the third floor. Political science section." I keep my voice easy. Just catching up. Just curious. "You said she wasn't usually alone."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Serena."
"I don't know anything for certain," she says carefully.
"You're not going to start anything. I just want to understand what she's been dealing with while I was out. She's been alone on this campus, and I wasn't there for her." I let the right amount of weight settle into that. Not an accusation. Concern. A boyfriend catching up on the weeks he missed. "I feel terrible about it."
The pause this time is different. It’s softer. I hear her deciding to believe me, a decision I've watched Serena make a hundred times because she always wants to believe the version of things that requires the least of her.
"There's a guy," she says. "I've seen them together a few times. Always in the library. Third floor." A beat. "He's not from our circle."
"What does he look like?"
"Dark. Tall. Serious looking." She pauses. "He's not on the team."
Something cold moves through me and settles quietly at the base of my spine.
Not on the team.
So not Theo.
"Has anyone else seen them together?" I ask.
