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Nate put the pencil down and waited.

Leo had entered the room without a complaint on his lips. Whatever this was, it was bound to be important.

“I have a request,” Leo said.

“Okay.”

“It’s a renovation request.”

“Okay.”

Leo looked at the window. Looked back. Fidgeted. “I want you to open the wall in the basement.”

Nate felt his own eyebrows lift. “Really?”

He knew immediately what wall Leo was talking about.

“I thought you didn’t want people down there,” Nate said, remembering the way the ghost had freaked out the last time Nate had ventured into the basement.

“I know. I don’t.” Leo fidgeted again. “But… I know there’s some of my memories down there. I want them back.”

Okay. That made sense. Still, Nate wasn’t fully convinced of this plan. “Why now?” he asked. “Where is this coming from?”

Leo scowled. “Do I need a special reason to want my memories back?”

“No, of course not. It’s just…” Nate paused. “You were very adamant that you don’t want me down there.”

“It wasn’t me,” Leo said. “Not really.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Leo didn’t answer right away, which was unusual for him. He wasn’t normally shy to speak his mind. “I don’t know how to say this.” He looked down at his hands. “The last time you went down there, I was upstairs one moment, and then I was downstairs the next, and the lights burst and you were covering your head, and I don’t remember making a single decision. I wasn’t in control.”

Nate sat with that. On some level, he’d suspected this, but he couldn’t be sure how self-aware Leo was regarding this issue.

“There’s something in me that guards that wall,” Leo said. “Something old, I think. Something that survived when I lost my memories, but now I have no context for it and it just makes its decisions on its own.” He looked at Nate. “My ‘duty.’ I don’t want to be bound to it anymore.”

Nate felt himself nod. “It must be difficult when you don’t know why you’re doing it.”

“Yes. I want to understand. I need to understand, and the only way I will is if that wall comes down.”

Nate couldn’t argue with that. They’d tried other ways to get Leo’s memories back, and they’d failed, so it came down to this.

He picked his pen up again and put a line through the list he’d just written.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a new list.” He wrote: sledge. Pry bar. Work lights. “Forget about the auction. I’ve got something more important to do.”

“But you were excited for the auction!”

“I’m way more excited about this.” Nate kept writing. Dust sheets. Spare bulbs. He was definitely going to need a couple of spare bulbs.

Leo stared at him.

“Maybe excited is the wrong word,” Nate admitted. “But I want to know what is behind that wall, and I hope this will help you.”

“Okay,” Leo said slowly. So slowly Nate could tell there was something else weighing on his mind.