I'd been to enough of these to know the basics—Peggy's food, everyone talking over each other, at least one argument that wasn't really an argument—but I still hadn't quite learned all the pieces. Dakota I recognized from Millie's stories, which meant I'd been vaguely prepared for him. The rodeo thing, the noise, the way he took up space without seeming to notice. Wyatt I'd met at the wedding—quiet, watchful, the kind of man who only said as many words as necessary. His wife Haven was younger than I'd expected, direct in a way I immediately liked, with a baby on her hip and a dog at her feet.
The man sitting next to Adam, I didn't know at all.
He looked like Sawyer. Not exactly—different build, quieter in the face—but enough that I'd looked twice when I came to the table. Same jaw. Same economy of movement. He'd introduced himself as Forrest and shaken my hand and that had been the extent of it. He ate steadily and said almost nothing and occasionally caught my eye across the table with an expression I couldn't read. Millie had told me about him—the fiancée, COVID, coming home—but knowing about someone and sittingacross from them were different things. He looked sadder in person.
Adam had asked me three questions about the film industry that had nothing to do with each other, all of them genuine. Peggy had refilled my water glass twice without asking. The cornbread had been extraordinary.
Bea fell asleep in her high chair between the main course and dessert. Gage carefully extracted her and disappeared upstairs. Blaise had been put to bed a while ago. Haven gathered Ethan, who'd been passed around all evening like a very content parcel, and Wyatt put his hand at the small of her back as they said their goodbyes.
I watched them walk out into the dark toward their little house and felt something I wasn't going to examine.
And then it was just Millie and me at the kitchen table with the last of the wine, and Sawyer somewhere I'd lost track of during the dishes.
"He went to check on the horses," Millie said, without looking up.
I looked at her.
She looked back with all the obnoxious serenity of someone who had been waiting six months and had decided not to say a word about it.
"I didn't ask," I said.
"I know."
I drank my wine.
"Bishop's in the south paddock now," she said. "They moved him in October."
"Millie."
"I'm just saying." She picked up her glass. "In case you wanted to say hi."
I looked at her for a long moment. She looked back, perfectly pleasant, perfectly aware.
“You act so innocent, but you’rebad,” I said.
She sipped her wine. “That’s why you love me.”
She wasn't wrong.
Millie had been the only person I'd told. I'd called her from the Albuquerque airport in July, three hours after leaving Sawyer's trailer, still smelling like him and running on approximately no sleep, and she had listened to the whole thing without saying a word.
She'd been remarkably restrained about it. No crowing, no immediate interrogation, noI knew iteven though she'd clearly known it. She'd just asked if I was okay and if I wanted to talk about it and when I'd said I didn't know yet she'd saidthat's fineand changed the subject.
She'd held it for six months. Never mentioned it in texts, never brought it up when she called, never once referenced Sawyer in a way that felt pointed. Just held it quietly, the way Millie held everything I gave her.
And from what I could tell, Sawyer hadn't told a soul. Certainly not Millie—she would have told me if he had, or at least her face would have, because Millie could keep a secret but she couldn't keep her face. And not Gage. Gage had looked at me tonight the way Gage always looked at me—like Millie's friend, like a guest at his table, like someone whose name he knew and whose business he had no interest in.
Nobody here knew.
Just Millie and her wine glass and her perfectly serene expression.
I pushed back from the table.
"I'm going to go say hi to Bishop," I said.
"Of course you are," she said.
"That's a real reason."
