Chapter 12 Adela
The nurse closes the door behind me with a soft click.
I walk to Cody's bedside and find his hand. The tears come quietly, the way they do now — no buildup, no warning. Just there.
"Cody," I whisper. "I hate seeing you like this. Can you hear me?"
The heart monitor beeps its steady, indifferent rhythm.
A knock. Then the door opens before I can answer, and a delivery person carries in a massive bouquet — white lilies and red roses, an arrangement so large it crowds the small room.
I wipe my tears, feeling happy to see that someone bought Cody lovely flowers.
"Who are they from?" I ask, my voice too high.
"Just delivering them, ma’am." He sets them on the table and leaves.
I look at the flowers for a moment. "Someone bought you flowers," I tell Cody softly, trying for lightness. “They’re really pretty.”
I lean down to smell one of the lilies. Too sweet. Almost cloying. I pull the small envelope from the plastic card holder and open it.
Crying won't bring him back.
I read it twice. Then once more.
The room doesn't tilt. My lungs don't seize. Something colder happens — a slow, precise stabbing feeling that moves through me slowly.
The timing is wrong. I didn't tell anyone I was coming today.
I set the card down on the bedside table and look at the door. The window. The ceiling. I'm not searching for a camera — that's not the thought that comes to mind. The thought that comes is quieter and worse; they don't need a camera. They just need to know my patterns.
I've been here every day at the same time, parked in the same lot, and taken the same hallway.
I pick up the bouquet carefully, like it might prove something if I handle it right. I look at Cody — still, pale, present only in the sound of machines — and I don't say goodbye. I just leave.
I'm parked outside my parents' house before I've consciously decided to drive here. I sit in the car for a moment, flowers in the passenger seat, card in my hand.
Crying won't bring him back.
I text the group chat: Emergency. My house. Come now.
They arrive within the hour. Maeve, Julian, Ryan, Elena, Penelope — some together, some separate. My mom appears briefly, reads the room, and disappears back to wherever she came from. We take the stairs to the second living room.
"What's with the flowers?" Julian asks.
I set the bouquet on the coffee table and hand him the card.
He reads it, goes completely still, and passes it to Maeve without a word.
The card moves around the room in silence. That's what I'll remember — not the gasps, but the quiet. The way each of them read it and looked up at me differently.
Penelope says, "This isn't random."
"No," I say. "It's not."
I hold up Cody's laptop. "When I opened this a few days ago, a man in a mask appeared on screen through the camera. The whole thing is wiped — there's one locked folder I can't get into."
Maeve closes her eyes briefly. "Adela."
"I know."
"You should have told us."
"I'm telling you now."
Julian is already on his phone. "You should’ve told me it was this,” Julian says. “I have someone who can open it."
Ryan shakes his head. "He's not exactly legitimate."
"Neither is any of this," Julian says, looking at me. "Your call."
I think about the card. About patterns. About someone who knows when I cry.
"Call him," I say.
Maeve catches my eye across the room. She doesn't say anything about Beckett. I'm grateful. I don't have the energy to defend something I'm not sure I can defend.
"Only Adela and me," Julian says, phone to his ear, already moving toward the hallway. "It's in the city."
Maeve nods once. "Text us."
I hug her last, and longest. She holds on.
"Be careful," she says quietly, into my hair.
"I will."
An hour into the city. A building full of half-lit storefronts. Julian jimmies a back door and leads me down a dim hallway to the third door on the left.
Gary is exactly what the room suggests — mid-forties, multiple screens, the particular stillness of someone who spends most of their time alone with machines. Julian does the talking. Cash exchanges hands. Gary opens the laptop.
An hour passes. Then most of another.
Then Gary makes a sound.
"Got something."
He opens a folder. The screen loads.
It's dark. Too dark to see much at first.
Then I hear his voice.
A laugh — low, loose, the particular sound of someone relaxed in a way he never quite was with me. And then a woman's voice. The angle is unstable and handheld, and the image cuts in and out. A flash of skin. His jawline. The curve of a shoulder that isn't mine.
I don't see her face.
I don't see enough to be certain of anything — except his voice, which I know better than almost any sound in my life. And then there’s a flash of Cody’s lips on hers. I freeze.
"Adela—" Julian starts.
"How many more files?" I ask Gary.
He gestures. More money.
"No." I reach over and close the laptop. My hands are steady, which surprises me. "Thank you."
I walk out.
Julian finds me in the parking lot.
"Adela."
"Don't."
"You don't know what that was—"
I turn around. "We know exactly what that was, Julian."
He stops.
"I know it." My throat burns, but I swallow it down. "And I know he never sounded like that with me."
Julian's jaw tightens as he looks away.
"Did you know?" I ask.
"Adela—"
"Did you know?"
He looks back at me, and something crosses his face — not guilt exactly, but proximity to it. "We all knew Cody wasn't—" He stops. Closes his mouth.
"Wasn't what?"
He doesn't finish. And that unfinished sentence is heavier than anything he could have said.
"This is probably why he's in that hospital bed," I say. My voice doesn't shake. I almost wish it would — the steadiness feels wrong. "He was living an entire life I didn't know about. And I transferred here. I rearranged my entire life, Julian."
"I know."
I glance up. “If you knew… How can I trust you? How do I know you didn’t put him in the hospital?”
Julian flinches. "You can’t be serious, Adela."
I look at him. "Someone who knew him did this to him. Someone who knew enough to be angry."
"Cody is my best friend," he argues.
"And that’s why you didn’t tell me he was cheating on me? Is that why you’ve always made your little crush on me known?"
He doesn't answer, doesn’t even meet my eyes.
And then he says, “I would never do that to Cody. And I didn’t want to see your heart get broken. I tried to warn him that this wouldn’t end well, and now look.”
I get in my car. He stands in the lot and watches me go, and I don't look back in the rearview.
I drive for a while without direction.
I pass Maeve's name in my contacts. I can't let her be right. I can't face the friends who might have known, or the ones who definitely didn't, and explain what I saw in that flickering, dark, inconclusive video that I still can't stop hearing.
I stop at a red light.
He doesn't ask. He just takes.
Beckett’s voice lingers in my mind. He said it like he was telling me something I was almost ready to hear.
I grab my phone and find Beckett's name.
I call him.
He answers on the second ring. "Adela."
Not cold. Not warm. Just present.
"I need you," I say. "524B. Elm Hall."
A brief pause.
"I'll be there."
I hang up and drive toward the only home I have left.