Chapter 4: What Dana Had Been Carrying for Three Months
I stared at Dana's message for a long moment.
Then I typed back: *I'm outside now.
Calling you.*
She picked up before the second ring.
"Dana.
What's going on?"
A pause.
I heard her exhale.
"I've been trying to figure out how to tell you this for three months.
I kept thinking it would stop.
That it was nothing.
That I was reading it wrong."
"Reading what wrong?"
Another pause.
Longer.
"Dana."
"Her name is Melissa," she said.
"She works in his office.
I saw them together in February.
At the coffee place on Garfield Street.
It might have been nothing, but the way he touched her arm when she laughed — it wasn't nothing.
And then I saw the texts on his phone when he left it on my kitchen counter in March.
He came to fix my sink, remember?
He left his phone when he went out to his truck."
The sprinkler two houses down clicked off.
"What did the texts say?"
"I didn't read all of them.
I saw enough.
Her name.
A time.
The word *miss* and then a word I won't repeat." Her voice dropped.
"I'm sorry.
I should have told you sooner.
I kept thinking — you had just had Noah, you were exhausted, and I thought maybe it had already ended and telling you would only hurt you for nothing."
"But you don't think it's ended."
"No," Dana said quietly.
"I don't."
I looked at Noah.
He'd lost interest in the bird and was now studying his own fingers with great seriousness.
"How long?" I asked.
"I don't know.
At least since February.
Possibly longer."
I did the math without meaning to.
February.
Noah was four months old in February.
I was still waking up twice a night.
Still wearing the same two pairs of sweatpants on rotation.
Still learning how to be a mother while Travis came home, sat in his chair, and told me he was tired.
"Does anyone else know?"
"I don't think so.
I haven't told anyone."
"Okay," I said.
"Are you okay?"
"No.
But I'm not falling apart either." I paused.
"Thank you for telling me."
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart."
"Don't be sorry.
I needed to know."
I hung up and stood on the corner for a minute.
Maybe two.
Then I turned the stroller around and walked back toward the house.
I didn't cry.
I noticed that.
I kept waiting for it and it didn't come.
What came instead was a strange, cold clarity — the feeling of a picture coming into focus after a long time of being blurry.
The money control.
The dismissiveness.
The way he'd made me feel small for wanting a $109 chair while he spent $1,800 on himself without a single conversation.
The phone.
The angle of his shoulders.
The practiced flip.
It all fit.
It had always fit.
I just hadn't let myself see it.
I came through the front door.
Travis was on the couch, the ruined recliner still sitting in the corner of the room like a monument to everything wrong with the last several months.
He looked up.
"Good walk?"
"Yes."
I unstrapped Noah and held him against my shoulder.
"Travis," I said.
"Who is Melissa?"
The color left his face the same way it had when he'd seen the ruined chair.
Instantly.
Completely.
He said nothing.
"Your sister saw you together in February," I said.
"And she saw your texts in March."
His jaw tightened.
"Dana had no right—"
"Don't." My voice was quiet.
"Don't make this about Dana."
He stood up.
"It's not what you think."
"Then tell me what it is."
He looked at the floor.
At the wall.
At anywhere that wasn't me.
May you like
"Travis.
Tell me what it is."
