Page 81 of The Fire Line

Harris’s stomach tightened, but Jay didn’t even hesitate. “His name’s Miles.”

Della paused with the serving spoon halfway back to the bowl, surprise crossing her face before she recovered. “Oh. I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah.” Jay took another bite of potato, as if there were nothing remarkable about the exchange. “He was an urban planner in New York.”

“Still is,” Priya said. “Unless something dramatic has happened since Christmas.”

Jay glanced at her. “You talked to him at Christmas?”

“He texted me.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes me.”

Eli looked up from his plate. “He likes me too.”

“This feels unnecessarily hostile.”

Elise laughed, and Della’s momentary surprise had already settled into ordinary curiosity. “Do you still see each other?”

“Sometimes. We have friends in common.” Jay gestured between Priya and Eli with his fork. “Apparently some of them have also chosen him in the breakup.”

“Miles made better coffee,” Eli said.

“Get out.”

The table laughed, and Harris became abruptly aware that he should probably say something. Everyone else had taken the new information, fitted it into what they already knew about Navarro, and kept going while Harris sat there with his whole body wound tight around two completely ordinary words.

His name.

Harris already knew that. He knew considerably more than anybody else at this table knew, which was part of the goddamn problem.

Say something normal. Don’t make this weird.

“Five years is a long time to put up with you,” Harris said.

Jay’s eyes came straight to him, and Harris had half a second to wonder whether he had managed to make it weird anyway before Jay smiled. “Thank you. I was wondering when you’d offer some emotional support.”

“That was it.”

“I’ll treasure it.”

Evan laughed, Della asked Priya to pass the green beans, and the conversation began moving somewhere else almost immediately. Harris wished his brain would do the same.

Jay had corrected Della without embarrassment or explanation, without even the smallest pause to decide whether he should tell the truth or not. His name’s Miles. That was all. He hadn’t watched the table afterward to see who might react or softened the fact into something easier for anybody to hear.

Harris knew better than to think that ease had cost Jay nothing to acquire. But sitting here now, Jay seemed entirely comfortable letting the truth belong to him, and Harris admired the hell out of that.

Only Walt seemed to have withdrawn from the conversation.

It was subtle enough that Harris doubted anyone who didn’t know his father would have noticed. Walt kept eating and answered when Evan spoke to him, but he had stopped contributing much of his own, and when Jay made Priya laugh a minute later, Walt’s attention remained fixed deliberately on his own plate.

Harris knew him too well to miss it.

Irritation stirred, followed quickly by the urge to do something about it. Della had asked Jay about his relationship and Jay had answered. That was all. If Miles had been a woman, Walt wouldn’t have gone quiet over it, and Harris wanted badly enough to point that out that he had already started assembling the words.

Saying them aloud was another matter. If he came to Jay’s defense too quickly, somebody might wonder why Harris had been paying such close attention to Walt’s reaction in the first place, why this mattered enough for him to intervene, or why, for that matter, Harris had taken Navarro into the high country alone and spent half the summer finding reasons to be around him.