Page 105

“Eighty-one,” he said, and scrolled.

Adler, Ruth. Albright, Samuel J. Atkins⁠—

Nothing. Nothing. Leo took up his post at the end of the table and read. The eighties went by in gray columns. People died and were filed. Many of the surnames repeated as the same families went into the same ground. Small town life.

Or, in this case, death.

Barnes. Bauer. Beckett.

Nothing.

Nate kept the pace. He drank the first coffee and got up and poured another, and Leo waited out the interruption with his arms crossed until Nate sat back down and scrolled on without being asked. The window over the sink was full dark now.

Still, they continued.

Nineteen ninety-one. Nineteen ninety-four.

Slowly, Leo stopped dreading each name before he read it. He wasn’t growing numb, exactly, but…

The boy wasn’t in the seventies, and every year the list moved forward was another year the boy hadn’t been buried, hadn’t died.

At least not here.

Cooper. Cranford. Cruz.

Nothing.

Around the turn of the century, Nate’s scrolling slowed, and in the middle of two thousand and two, the names stopped moving entirely.

“Nate.”

“Mm.” The scroll resumed.

Ferris. Finch. Flores⁠—

Nate stopped again, his chin making its way to his chest.

“Nate. The list.”

“’M reading it,” Nate said, eyes closed.

“You are not reading it. Your eyes are closed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nate.”

Nate’s head came up. He blinked at the screen, scrolled for a few more columns and then he stopped again. His breathing went long and even. The cursor sat blinking in the middle of the alphabet, next to Kowalski, Edward.

Leo stared at him.

“Unbelievable,” he said.

The man was gone, asleep sitting up, in a kitchen chair, with his arms crossed, like sleep was a thing that happened to him and he’d decided not to fight it.

Leo looked at the trackpad.

He looked at his own hand.