“Yeah. But I don’t think he’ll be there now. He got pretty drunk last night after you left. He’s probably still in bed.” She rolls her eyes skyward, as if she can’t even believe she’s going to say what she’s about to say. “He left his ID here to claim the pool table and he forgot to pick it up. I guess you could take it, if you want.” She gets up from the table and walks behind the bar, procuring the card from the lost and found. She holds it out for Finn and her whole face is a warning. But Finn takes it anyway. Sometimes, even the Warning Girl needs to live on the edge a little.

—

If this were a movie, then Nicki would die, and Dallas and Finn would be thrown back together to raise her children. It’s a terrible thing to fantasize about, and obviously not something that Finn actually wants to happen, but she lets herself imagine it for a few moments before she reminds herself that the man she is fantasizing about raising her sister’s children with is still working at the same coffee shop he did in high school. Is there a Desi’s equivalent on the island where he ran off to? she wonders. Did he father any more children out there? Is there an army of mini-Dallases running around B.C.? Did he really even leave at all, or did he just hide out in his parents’ basement for eight years, waiting for the Parkers to forget about him?

Dallas’s apartment is only a few blocks from Barkley’s, over a Chinese restaurant that doubles as a government cheque-cashing facility. The door to the upstairs apartments is nestled between the entrance to the restaurant and a vacant storefront. A strung-out woman with two missing front teeth sits on the stoop, blocking their way. Despite the heat, she is dressed in a heavy camo jacket and pink fleece pants. “Hey, little man,” she says to Ross as they squeeze past her to get in the door. “Don’t suppose your mom has any smokes on her?”

“She’s not my mom,” Ross says.

“Oh come on,” the woman calls after them as they head up the stairs. “You two look exactly alike.”

Finn knocks on the door of apartment 212 and waits, fidgeting with a loose thread on the hem on her T-shirt, smoothing out a piece of hair that has come free from her ponytail. Ross stands perfectly still, staring at the wall. The hallway is stifling, and Finn can feel herself suffocating just imagining the apartment – old and stuffy, with no air conditioning or windows that catch any kind of a cross breeze. She smooths her hair down again. Dallas, she thinks. Dallas. Dallas. Dallas.