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He still wanted to.

“He had freckles,” Leo said.

“Yeah?”

“Across his nose. Not many.”

Leo closed his eyes.

The face was there.

After all that reaching, all those hours spent trying to get more than a pair of eyes and a smell, he could finally picture the boy he’d loved.

Crying.

“I wanted to drive to a hospital, but he⁠—”

Leo opened his eyes again. “Do you think he was talking about me?”

Nate looked at the cot before answering.

“It crossed my mind.”

Leo had almost hoped he’d say no, but Nate wasn’t one for lies, even when they were comfortable. Leo liked that about him. Most of the time. “He said we,” Leo pointed out. “He didn’t want to come here, but we came anyway.”

“Do you remember coming here with him?”

“No.”

Leo tried picturing it. The two of them approaching the house. Had they knocked? Had the woman opened the door?

He drew a blank.

“Maybe I was hurt.”

“We don’t know that.”

Leo looked at him.

“We don’t,” Nate repeated, more quietly. “You heard part of a conversation. We don’t know what happened before it. Or after.”

Leo knew that. He knew it, and still he looked down at himself, as if there might be some sign of whatever had happened. His hands looked fine. His clothes were intact.

He was dead, of course.

That seemed relevant.

“He was crying,” Leo said.

Nate’s fingers uselessly tried to tighten around his.

Leo looked back at the blanket. “I can’t shake the feeling that it’s my fault he was sad. That it was always my fault.” Not only in the moment he remembered. The feeling reached farther than that.

“I doubt that’s true.”

Leo shook his head. “It’s another thing we don’t know.” He pictured the boy he’d loved again. Finally, he could remember his face. Even if it was sad in his memory. How long had it been since…

“How long do you think this room’s been empty?” he found himself voicing the question that surfaced in his mind.