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Leo fixed him in his sights immediately. “Well?”

Nate looked at him and didn’t know how to say what he had to say.

Leo drew his own conclusions from that. “Nobody recognized me,” he said. “Did they?”

“None of them.” Nate licked his lips. “But maybe the right person wasn’t at the diner tonight. This doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Leo nodded. Kept nodding, a little too long. “Well. I told you. Didn’t I tell you? It’s a useless town. Absolutely useless.” He turned toward the house. “It doesn’t matter. It was your idea. I only went along with it.”

“Leo.”

“I said it doesn’t matter.” But Leo’s voice went up in a thin way that suggested it very much did.

He ascended the porch steps without touching them and through the front door without opening it. Nate followed as quickly as he could.

The sitting room light was on. Leo stood in front of the mantel with his back to Nate.

“It was a stupid plan,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“What did we think was gonna happen? You painted me on a cupboard board and showed me to a bunch of old men in a diner. How ridiculous is that?” He still hadn’t turned around, but his voice was going up and up. “Seriously, what were we thinking?”

“I thought somebody might know you.”

“Well, they don’t!” He whirled around, eyes blazing. “Nobody knows me!”

“Leo, stop.”

Leo did not stop. “Fifty years! Fifty years I’ve been in this house, and before that? Who knows! I don’t! You want to know what I remembered today, waiting for you? I tried to make a list. One thing I did with my life. One! A job. A friend. Anything!” He threw his arms wide. “There’s nothing there, Nate! There’s a boy whose name I lost and a house I can’t leave, and that’s it, that’s all of it.”

“That’s not all of it.”

“How would you know?” Leo’s voice cracked. “How would I? Maybe there was nothing to take! Maybe whoever tore me apart did me a favor! Maybe I was a nobody who wasn’t worth remembering and that’s why⁠—“

“Stop.”

“Why? It’s true! Nobody knew me alive and nobody knows me dead, and the only proof I ever existed is⁠—“

He flung a hand at the painting.

He only meant to point. Nate was sure of it. But Leo was burning too hot, too solid, and his fingers scraped across the painted surface.

The drag was short. Cheekbone to jaw, across the mouth. A pale gouge exposed the primer beneath.

The room went silent.

Leo pulled his hand out and stared at it. His fingers were clean. No paint. Of course no paint. He looked from his hand to the ruined face and back, and everything that had been blazing in him a second ago just went out.

“No,” he said. “No, no— I didn’t— Nate, I didn’t mean⁠—“

“I know.”

“Fix it. You can fix it. Can you fix it?” He was reaching toward the gouge and stopping, hand hovering an inch away from the painting. “It’s the only… It’s the only picture of me that remains and I…”

He sat down, collapsing on the floor in front of the mantel, knees up, arms around them, the way Nate had found him once on the turret floor.

He was shaking.