Page 174 of The Fire Line

Across the yard, Evan glanced over, took in the gesture, and looked away again.

Jay looked down at the horse in Harris’s hand. “Want me to stay?”

Harris looked back at what remained of the cabin. “Yeah.”

Jay sat beside him again, and for a while they said nothing while the ranch carried on around them.

29

Four Days

By Thursday, the ranch had settled into the first ugly rhythm of recovery.

Priya turned her laptop toward Jay and Eli. “We can finish the remaining interviews tomorrow, pickups Saturday, final backups Saturday night. We leave Sunday morning.”

The conference room had already begun returning itself to the ranch. Charging cables were coming off the walls, equipment cases stood closed near the door, and the table where Jay had spent most of the summer reviewing footage was covered now with insurance folders and contractor estimates. He looked at the date in the corner of the screen. Thursday. Four days, if he counted the hours Sunday morning they would spend loading cases and checking equipment before the drive to Bozeman.

It was enough. They had the interviews, the fire footage, the return to the ranch, and more material than Jay would ever be able to use. Staying longer because disaster had given the film a more dramatic ending would be exactly the kind of thing he had spent his career trying not to do.

“Sunday,” he said.

Priya watched him for one beat longer than necessary. “Unless there’s something you think we still need.”

There were things Jay wanted to see: Harris repairing fence, Rain back in pasture, the first ordinary morning when the fire was no longer the most important thing that had happened to everyone. None of it was editorial need.

“We’re good.”

Priya moved on to flights and equipment assignments, and Jay took notes while the room became a departure list around him. Leaving was not usually difficult. He liked movement and had spent most of his adult life learning how to belong intensely somewhere without mistaking that for permanence. A room stopped being theirs, the cases closed, and whatever attachment had formed became messages everyone genuinely intended to send.

This felt different, and not only because of Harris, although Jay knew how useful that qualification was. The ranch was damaged. The north barn was gone. Harris’s cabin had become a chimney and a handful of objects dug from ash. Leaving now felt less like completing the work than stepping away precisely when the spectacle ended and the harder, less cinematic part began.

All of that was true. It simply wasn’t the whole truth.

Jay closed his laptop. “I’ll tell Harris.”

* * *

Harris was repairing the lower pasture fence when Jay found him. The bandage on his hand had shrunk since the hospital, though he was still working mostly left-handed and pretending the adjustment cost him nothing. He noticed Jay before he reached the fence line and rested the post driver against his thigh.

“Everything okay?”

“We’re leaving Sunday.”

Harris went still for half a second. “That soon?”

“We have what we need.”

His gaze moved toward the unfinished fence. “Probably makes sense.”

Jay had crossed the pasture knowing perfectly well that Harris was unlikely to object, but hearing him fail to object still landed badly.

“We’ll finish tomorrow and Saturday. Leave early Sunday for Bozeman.”

Harris nodded with exactly the reasonable, practical response Jay had expected, which irritated him more than it should have.

“You’re taking this very well.”

Harris still wasn’t looking directly at him. “What’m I supposed to do?”