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There were tears in Walt’s eyes now. Leo started to reach toward him, then put his hand on the arm of the chair instead.

“I was yelling at you not to leave me,” Walt said. “And then you slipped away.”

“But I didn’t leave,” Leo said, and now he understood why. His job had not been done. He’d needed to make sure that Walt was safe, and then his role had grown to making sure that anyone who sheltered in this house was safe. “Tell him. Nate, tell him that I didn’t leave.”

Nate told him.

“I know,” Walt said. “I know you didn’t.”

Leo stayed beside Nate’s chair. There was more he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t seem to get past the thought of Walt kneeling in the hall, begging him to stay. He wished he remembered it at the same time he knew the memory would be terrible.

He looked toward the doorway again.

“What happened to my body? I wasn’t buried at the cemetery, was I?”

Nate glanced up at him before passing on the question.

“You’re here,” Walt said. “In the garden. Under the foxgloves.”

“The foxgloves?”

That was…

Nate repeated it, sounding almost as surprised as Leo felt.

“Yes,” Walt confirmed. “Out front.”

Leo moved without thinking, through the wall without waiting to see if anyone would follow him.

The bed looked much better than it had before Nate came. The flowers were thriving.

Thanks to Nate.

Leo stopped at the edge of the bed.

His body was under there?

Leo looked back toward the house. Nate and Walt were crossing over to him from the porch.

“Here?” Nate asked.

“Yes.”

Leo floated over the bed as he’d done a million times before, but suddenly it felt wrong. He moved over the grass instead. Nate caught him doing it, a strange look on his face.

Walt knelt down by the flowers, looking for all the world as if he’d done this a few times before. Leo watched him settle, then turned back to the foxgloves. A bee disappeared into one of them. He waited for it to come out again.

Waited and waited.

What was he supposed to be feeling?

He’d been dead for a long time. Finding out where they’d put him shouldn’t have made much difference, but he kept looking at the soil and trying to imagine himself beneath it.

He looked down at his hands instead.

These were the hands he knew. He could see them. He could move his fingers. It was difficult to believe there was another pair under the flowers, even though those would have been the ones Walt had held.

“Leo?” Nate asked.