Page 187 of The Fire Line

Professional contact would require them to pretend there was nothing beneath it. Silence, at least, did not ask Jay to participate in the pretense.

“I don’t really know,” he admitted.

Romy’s arm tightened briefly through his. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”

Jay looked down toward the subway entrance. “I’m fine.”

After a moment, she asked, “Have you thought about going on a date?”

Jay turned his head slowly. “That was a fairly aggressive change of subject.”

“It’s not entirely unrelated.”

“I don’t need to be rehabilitated through cocktails with a stranger.”

“I’m not trying to rehabilitate you.” Romy leaned lightly against his shoulder. “I’m asking whether you plan to keep your entire life on hold while you wait to find out what Harris does with his.”

It was difficult to imagine Harris putting anything on hold for Jay.

Harris was probably too busy rebuilding fences, negotiating insurance, and making decisions about the ranch to spend much time grieving whatever had ended between them. Jay could picture him moving through each day with the same grim competence he brought to every other disaster, accepting the additional work without complaint and sleeping only when his body forced the issue.

Harris had an entire life arranged around being useful. Pining over a man in New York did not seem like something he would permit to interfere with it.

Perhaps he had already begun moving on.

The possibility had occurred to Jay more often than he would have admitted even to Romy. Harris could have downloaded an app, selected a photograph in which he did not look actively hostile, and driven into town to meet someone. Jay had practically encouraged him to do exactly that. He had even pretended the prospect sounded exciting.

Five weeks later, the thought still pressed against the same small place behind Jay’s ribs.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

“Okay.”

Romy did not tell him he would be eventually. She did not insist that someone better was waiting within a geographically reasonable radius or that he needed closure before the feeling became chronic.

“You’ll call tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Romy squeezed his arm once before releasing him and disappeared down the subway stairs.

Jay walked the remaining blocks alone.

His apartment looked reassuringly familiar when he entered: jacket over the chair, work notes spread across the table, and several coffee cups that had reached the stage where washing them felt like an accusation.

His new copy of Middlemarch lay facedown on the couch.

The bookstore display with the dark-rimmed glasses had sent him inside a few days earlier, before he could decide whether that counted as a lapse in judgment. The handwritten recommendation beneath the book described it as surprisingly funny, which Harris would almost certainly consider an inadequate assessment.

Jay had bought two copies.

He had made it considerably farther than the fifty pages he once identified as meaningful progress, partly from stubbornness and partly because reading the book had become a way to be near Harris without actually speaking to him.

The second copy was already somewhere between Brooklyn and Montana.

It wouldn’t replace the one taken by the fire. Jay understood that more clearly after watching Harris search through the cabin ruins. Still, it had felt wrong for Harris not to have a copy.

Jay had spent four days staring at the blank card before finally writing: