Page 63 of The Fire Line

The room was wrong—too white, no windows, light without warmth. Nell sat propped against the pillows looking twenty and eighty at once, her hair gone and her face narrowed to bone and anger.

You said you’d check her.

“I did.”

Then where is she?

“I don’t know.”

She gave him an old, familiar look, the same one she had used when they were kids and he tried to lie badly, or when they were grown and she thought he was being stubborn for no good reason. Entirely Nell, except for the thin hands gripping the blanket.

“I’ll find her.”

You said that already.

He turned toward the door, but there wasn’t one. Only a blank wall where it should have been. Somewhere beyond it, Rain called once, distant and sharp.

Harris put his hand against the wall, searching for a seam or a handle. “I’ll find her.”

Behind him, Nell said his name.

He turned, and for a second she looked like herself again—hair braided over one shoulder, sun across her face, one eyebrow raised at him. Then she was back beneath the hospital blankets.

Where is she?

“I don’t know.”

The words landed wrong, too close to something else, and Nell’s expression changed.

Harris—

He came awake hard enough to strike his shoulder against the cabin wall.

Darkness. Wood beneath his palm. The low red seam of coals inside the stove. His heart working too hard against his ribs.

Across the room, blankets shifted. “Harris?”

“Fine.”

Navarro pushed himself onto one elbow. “You were dreaming.”

“Wasn’t.” Harris sat up and put his feet on the cold floor. “What time is it?”

“Uh… Four forty,” Navarro replied sleepily.

“Fuck.”

Harris opened the stove even though the coals were holding and added another piece of wood, needing something practical to do with his hands.

“Nell,” he said eventually, still facing the stove. “Dream was about Nell.”

“Okay.” Navarro accepted the piece without treating it like the loose end of a rope he could pull. After a moment, he asked, “And Rain?”

Harris looked over.

“You said her name.”

He hadn’t known that. Harris rubbed both hands over his face. “Near the end, Nell worried about her all the time. Called Dad asking if she was eating, if we’d moved her pasture, if her feet got done.”