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“I thought you’d found an old picture,” he said. “When you were asking about him at the diner. Then I saw what you posted. That’s what he looks like to you?”

Nate came to stand beside him. “Yes.”

Walt lifted his hand toward the painted face, then lowered it without touching anything. There was an almost painful note to his voice as he spoke again. “He hasn’t changed.”

Leo looked at the painting too. Of course he had not changed. He never changed.

The rest of the world did.

Mercilessly.

“I’m sorry,” Walt said.

“What for?”

Nate passed on the question.

Walt rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know where to start.”

Leo shook his head. “You don’t have to start anywhere. I just wanted to find you. I didn’t know if you were alive.”

He waited while Nate told him. His hands were at his sides now. He was keeping them there deliberately, because he still wanted to reach out to wrap his arms around Walt. Part of him still hadn’t understood that he couldn’t.

“We went through the burial records,” Nate added. “He was afraid you might be in them.”

“Oh, darling.”

Leo pressed his lips together.

He’d wanted to remember what Walt might have called him. Now he knew.

It made speaking difficult.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he managed. “Please tell him that.”

Walt reached for the mantel as Nate spoke. For a moment, Leo thought he was going to fall, but he just stood there with his hand braced against it, looking at the painting.

“I wish you could see him,” Nate said quietly.

“So do I.”

“He’s glad you got to live.”

Walt shut his eyes. “He should have got to live too.”

Leo stared at him.

Oh.

He’d been so relieved that Walt had survived that he hadn’t considered the other side of the issue. He’d wanted Walt safe.

Walt must have wanted the same for him, only that he hadn’t gotten it.

And now Leo couldn’t stop wondering what it would have been like, if they’d both lived. If they’d gotten to grow old together. He could almost picture it, could picture himself complaining about the cigarettes until Walt gave them up, or at least stopped smoking them where Leo could smell them. He could picture lazy Sunday mornings together, doing yard work, ordinary things.

They might have had a good life.

If things had been different.