2. The Space Between Answers #2
Nell had once asked him almost the same thing beside the horse barn. What do you actually want this place to become, Harris? He had answered in fence lines and feed costs because those were easier.
“She died last year.”
The concentration in Jay’s face eased instead of tightening. “I’m sorry.”
Harris nodded.
“We can move on.”
Jay reached for his water and gave Harris a moment without making a display of giving it. People usually got greedy around grief. They lowered their voices, moved closer, and mistook witnessing pain for earning access to it.
Jay did none of that.
“What else?” Harris asked.
They kept going through staffing, insurance, fire mitigation, grazing, and land value. At forty-one minutes, Eli lowered the camera, and Harris stood immediately.
Jay glanced toward his chest. “The mic.”
Harris removed it himself and placed it in Jay’s palm.
At the door, Jay said, “One thing.” Harris paused. “If anything about your sister ends up in the film, I’ll show you the relevant sequence before it’s locked.”
Thanking him would have been too large for what Harris could manage with Eli and a camera still in the room. He gave Jay a curt nod and headed for the north fence.
He spent the next two hours replacing a damaged section of wire. The work required measurements, tension, and enough force to leave little room for anything else. Grief was easier when it could be turned into labor. So was nearly everything.
Still, the interview returned in pieces: Jay’s fingers beneath his collar, the way his face had eased when Harris said Nell’s name, the fact that he had known when to stop.
Harris drove the first staple crooked.
“Shit.”
He pulled it free and began again.
* * *
By the time Jay got upstairs that evening, Harris’s interview had transferred to the drive. Eli sat at the conference-room table checking the footage while Priya worked across from him.
Onscreen, Harris looked even less cooperative than he had in person, one forearm braced across his thigh and his attention fixed on Jay somewhere beyond the frame.
“Forty-one minutes,” Eli said. “I had twenty-five.”
Jay set his notebook on the table. “You were betting on how long he’d tolerate me?”
“Priya had thirty-five.”
“I had thirty,” Priya corrected without looking up.
“Excellent team culture we’ve built here,” Jay muttered.
Eli dragged the playhead forward. Watching it back, Jay could see the pattern of the interview more clearly.
Harris answered quickly when the subject was practical—water, grazing, fence lines—but anything personal came slowly, usually after a silence long enough that most interviewers would have rushed to fill it.
It was good footage. Better than Jay had expected from a man who had entered the room looking prepared to survive an interrogation.
Eli reached the question about Eleanor. Harris changed before he spoke. His shoulders went still and his gaze shifted away for the first time in several minutes.
Jay leaned across the table. “Mark this section. Nothing involving Eleanor gets used until Harris sees it.”
Eli nodded and added the note without asking why.
Jay watched another few seconds, then moved the playhead forward himself.
There were interviews where silence meant someone was deciding whether to trust you, and others where it meant you had reached the edge of what they were willing to give.
Knowing the difference was part of the job.
* * *
The following morning, Evan proved considerably easier to film.
He talked while he worked and seemed incapable of becoming self-conscious around a camera.
Jay followed him through the guest side of the ranch while Evan explained the trail operation, the cabins, and the increasingly lucrative wedding business, pausing only when Willa appeared with one boot on and demanded his immediate attention.
“June says he’s alive,” Willa announced, holding out a dirt-covered palm. A worm lay motionless across it. “I think he’s dead.”
Jay lowered the camera and conducted a brief examination. “I regret to inform you that your assessment appears correct.”
Willa frowned at him.
“He’s dead,” Jay clarified.
Her whole face brightened with triumph. From behind Evan, June began to wail.
Evan closed his eyes briefly. “Thanks for that.”
“I’m just here to document the facts.”
Evan carried the dispute toward the porch, Willa trotting beside him.
It was easy to understand why guests liked him.
Evan moved comfortably between both sides of the ranch, discussing occupancy rates one minute and crouching in the dirt over a worm the next.
Harris seemed to belong almost entirely to the other version of the place, the one beyond the lodge where something always needed fixing, moving, feeding, or keeping alive.
By early afternoon, they had worked their way north of the guest cabins. From higher ground, Jay could see a dark interruption across the distant slope where standing dead timber rose above younger growth. Lower down, a narrow band of green followed the creek through the otherwise dry land.
He lifted the camera. “That’s the restoration area?”
Evan followed his gaze. “Part of it.”
“How do we get there?”
“Old access road around the north pasture, then you’re on foot.”
Jay lowered the camera. “Can you take us? I’d love to get out there tomorrow.”
Evan glanced toward the lodge, where a delivery truck had just pulled into the drive. “Sorry man, can’t tomorrow. We have a wedding coming in.”
Of course.
“Could someone else take us?”
Evan’s expression changed just enough to become suspicious.
Jay sighed. “Ah.”
Evan grinned and started toward the delivery truck. “Harris knows the route.”
Naturally.
Jay looked once more toward the scar, then folded the production map beneath his arm.
* * *
Late that afternoon, Harris was beside the north-pasture trough resetting the float valve when he heard footsteps coming through the dry grass.
He knew who it was before he looked up. Most people on the ranch either called out or had the sense to leave him alone when he was bent over something with a wrench.
Navarro seemed constitutionally incapable of either.
Harris kept working.
Navarro came to a stop on the other side of the trough, a folded map in one hand and his sunglasses pushed into his hair.
He had spent most of the day filming with Evan on the guest side, which meant Harris had managed several uninterrupted hours without him appearing somewhere in his line of sight.
Apparently that was over.
Navarro had been on the ranch barely long enough to unpack and had already become a remarkably persistent thorn in Harris’s side. Worse, Harris was beginning to recognize his footsteps. A man shouldn’t become identifiable by sound that quickly unless he was family or livestock.
He tightened the bolt. It was already seated properly, but another quarter turn gave him something to do besides look at Navarro.
“The burn scar,” Navarro said.
“No.”
Silence.
“Interesting.” Navarro unfolded the map. “I was under the impression questions traditionally came before answers.”
“Know what map that is.”
“Then we’re saving time.”
Harris finally looked at him. The sunglasses had pushed Navarro’s hair back from his face, which was worse than when it fell forward. Harris had already spent forty-one minutes across from that face yesterday. He did not need another unobstructed view of it today.
Navarro’s mouth twitched. There was no discouraging the man. Harris had tried bluntness, silence, direct refusal, and looking openly annoyed. Navarro treated all four as conversational conditions rather than deterrents.
The burn scar and creek restoration had been included in the production agreement from the beginning, along with ranch support for locations the crew could not reasonably reach alone.
Harris remembered arguing about that provision until Evan and Elise had reminded him, repeatedly, how much the production was paying.
Money the ranch needed. A fact that had already forced Harris into one interview and was now standing in front of him wearing sunglasses in his hair.
“Priya says somebody from the ranch has to take us,” Navarro said.
“Yup.”
“Okay, so who?”
“Me or Evan.”
“And Evan has a wedding arriving tomorrow.”
Harris stared at him.
Navarro gave him an innocent look that fooled nobody. “I do occasionally gather information when nobody is filming.”
Persistent bastard.
Harris could tell him to wait until Evan had time. Next week would be reasonable. So would the week after that, depending on how difficult Harris felt like being.
Unfortunately, the agreement said otherwise.
“We need the footage,” Navarro continued. “One day. Small crew. We follow your rules, close every gate, stay where you tell us, and nobody touches anything they shouldn’t.”
“You always make promises for other people?”
“Only professionally.”
Something at the corner of Harris’s mouth threatened him. He turned back to the trough before Navarro could mistake it for encouragement.
“When?” Navarro asked.
Harris should have said next week. “Wednesday. Six.”
For once, the man had nothing ready. The silence lasted just long enough to be satisfying. “Done.”
“One camera operator. Pack light.”
“We’re making a documentary, Harris. There will unfortunately be some equipment.”
There it was again. The man could make agreement irritating.
Harris set the wrench on the edge of the trough. “Wednesday at six. Don’t be late.”
Navarro folded the map. “I’m from New York. Apparently three minutes early counts.”
He walked away before Harris could answer.
Harris watched him go for half a second before catching himself and looking back at the float valve. He had no reason whatsoever to notice how Navarro’s jeans fit from behind.