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“What?” Nate asked.

“Nothing,” Leo said. “It’s just funny you want their approval because you can’t get your mom’s.”

Nate opened his mouth to shoot back that he was filming the videos for the income, but that was not how it had started. He’d just wanted to connect with like-minded people who could appreciate what he was doing. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t need my mom’s approval. I’m an adult.”

“Who sleeps with a stuffed seal.”

“Leave Bartholomew out of this.”

“Even the seal’s name is silly.”

“Worse than Herbert Cudlow?”

“Nothing is worse than that.”

Nate decided to tease. “For all we know, it could still be your name. I could start calling you that.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Nate took another sip of his coffee and smiled. “Whatever you say, Herb.”

Chapter

Nineteen

Leo hadn't expected to miss being called Herb.

For the first two days after they’d gone over the cemetery list, Nate had kept up the jokes. Saying things like, “Morning, Herb,” or, “Herb, you’re in the shot.” Leo had a biting remark ready for every one of them. It was some of the most fun he’d had since dying, to be honest.

Over the following week, though, their verbal sparring had ground to a halt.

Nate didn’t go silent; he still narrated. To his camera, mostly. But his videos grew short, and one evening, he stood in front of the mail box for a long time before opening it, and after he opened it he went out to the truck and sat in it, not driving anywhere, doing math on his phone with his jaw set.

The day after that, he didn’t talk into his camera at all.

Leo watched him from various corners of the house. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t very well go up to Nate and say, Hey, you seem sad?

They didn’t do that. They argued about names and vacuums and whether the east shutters were urgent (they were). They didn’t show concern for one another. At least not in a way that Leo would admit to.

But he kept watching.

The following afternoon, Nate checked his phone four times while sanding the same stretch of railing. He started a video, but abandoned it halfway through a sentence. And finally, when the sun started to set, he pocketed the phone, muttered something about checking the gutters, and walked out the back door.

Leo followed him out—avoiding Nate’s line of sight. He wasn’t sneaking, exactly, he just wanted to know what was going on with the person occupying his house.

Wasn’t that his right?

Nate stopped at the edge of the garden, past the foxglove bed, where the property sloped away toward the fence. He looked back at the house once.

Leo ducked behind the nearest hedge.

Nate took out his phone and put it to his ear.

“Hey,” he said after a minute. “Yeah. No. Why do you assume something’s wrong? Am I not allowed to call my brother?”

He was talking to Jonah then.

Leo continued to listen.