He stood over her in the dark.
My hands are flat on the desk, and I am pressing them there deliberately because the alternative is putting one of them through the screen, and I need the screen. I need the footage. I need every single second of it.
I press play.
I watch all of it.
By the time I close the laptop, I am completely calm.
They are going to wish they had finished what they started.
Then I called Julian.
He came over at nine.
He sat across from me at the kitchen table with his easy expression, and I watched him decide, over the course of seven minutes of careful conversation, that telling me the truth was less dangerous than continuing to manage it.
He was right.
"She had the laptop," he said. "I took it to Gary to unlock a video, but I made sure he knew only to expose one. I wanted her to stop digging."
I looked at him.
"That’s all, though, and she threw a fit. She accused me of putting you in a coma. She was scared, and—" He stopped. "I knew you’d come to me when you were ready for the truth."
"Yes," I said.
"Cody—"
"Which one did she see?"
He told me exactly which video it was and who it was with.
I sat with my coffee going cold, and I listened. Then I needed him to leave. I thanked him for coming and showed him to the door.
I stood in my father's hallway for a long moment after it closed.
She watched one video.
She knows.
She has known since before I woke up, and she sat on the edge of my hospital bed, held my hand, and said, of course, we're okay with that, steady, perfect face, and she knew.
My girl.
My brilliant, composed, perfectly performing girl.
She looked me in the eyes, and she lied.
She did it so well that I almost missed it.
Almost.
The room behind her smells like someone else.
I clock it immediately — cologne, something clean and familiar that I can't place yet but will. Her bed is unmade in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. Her coat is on the floor. Books everywhere on every surface in a way that is not how Adela keeps spaces because Adela keeps spaces ordered, always has, the daughterof a mayor who learned early that the appearance of control matters.
This room looks like someone who stopped performing for the walls.
