Tanya knows where Dallas is. She has known ever since that day six months ago when she found that shirt under the couch in the living room, the ugly pink one with the red lace trim. It didn’t take her long to find out who it belonged to. A couple of minutes alone with his phone. A few casual questions at Desi’s. A trip to the Super 8 on Memorial to confirm, sitting at a chain coffee shop across the street waiting for them to come out. Drinking hot black tea as they opened the door to their room and, without acknowledging each other, walked to their cars, drove away.

She just wanted to know. Became obsessed with knowing, convinced that once she knew, everything would be okay.

After she saw them come out of the motel, Tanya went home to Dallas’s and made supper. A tuna melt and salad with Catalina dressing. Dallas had gone straight to work from the Super 8, which for some reason upset Tanya more than anything else – he couldn’t even bother putting on a show for her, bringing her flowers or whatever it was guilty men were supposed to do. When he got home, it was late, but Tanya stayed up and they watched a movie together, the kind that Dallas liked, with a lot of things blowing up and a man saving the day.

She wears the pink shirt sometimes, even though it is ugly and too big for her. Dallas has never noticed.

But still. He loves her. He lets her lean against him on the couch when they watch television, her head nestled in the crook of his arm. He makes up nicknames for her. He cooks her dinner. Someday he is going to write a play for her.

And this is my family, Tanya thinks. I need to protect it.

And so she pulls out the only weapon she has left: Dallas’s biggest failure. For the sake of the boy, she leans over and whispers in Finn’s ear the secret that she has been carrying since she found that pink shirt. And for the first time, she says the name out loud. Nicki.

—

After Finn and Ross leave, Tanya takes the bus to school. She goes to the library and sets up her laptop in her carrel, then just sits there and stares at the screen. Numbers on an Excel spreadsheet, words on a page. None of it means anything to her right now. Tanya is doing her master’s in geology. She started studying geology because she liked rocks. She kept studying geology because she wanted to stay in school. School is something she can handle, she understands how it works. You do the work, you get a grade, you pass or you fail. In the rest of life, from what she can tell, nobody grades you, and you just keep failing and failing.