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He had been trying to restore Leo. He had! But that was not what his mother had heard. She’d heard the ghost’s cries caught on camera.

“Yesterday,” Miriam said, “I got the evidence of what my son does with a torn soul in his care. He grows an audience.” She let the sentence hang. “I raised you. Explain to me where I went wrong.”

Nate’s blood pumped in his ears, and all the words he hadn’t been able to say before burst out a little faster now than they maybe should have. “I’m not exploiting Leo. I’m trying to help him. I sat at my kitchen table to read the names of decades of dead people to him for nearly a whole day just to see if he would remember one of them. He didn’t, and maybe he never will, and I feel terrible about that. Somewhere out there is a boy Leo loved more than anything, and he can’t even remember his name. Leo’s had to face troubles I never had to, and still⁠—“

Nate stopped himself. What was he saying? What was he doing, revealing Leo’s history like that?

He glanced at Leo, who was looking at him with his lips slightly parted. As if, for once, he had been rendered speechless.

Nate swallowed and focused back on his phone. “You can’t claim that I don’t care about Leo. I do. If I didn’t, I’d sell this house and let you take over on the ghost restoration, because I’m not making nearly enough money on it. Everything the channel generates goes into the house. Everything I’m doing here is for him.”

Miriam had gone very quiet on the other end of the line.

“I thought Jonah was exaggerating,” she said after a moment. “Maybe he was not.”

Nate scrubbed a hand down his face. “Mom. This isn’t like that. You have to know that.”

“It never looks ‘like that’ when you’re in the middle of it. That’s an outside point of view. You just think you’re doing the work, and caring about the spirit is part of that. But then one day you look up and you realize you haven’t spoken to a living person in a month and you didn’t even notice.”

“I talk to living people all the time.” Nate tried to make it sound like none of the accusations were hitting home, but he didn’t quite succeed.

Leo stood very close to him now. “What is she talking about?” he whispered.

Nate waved him off.

“Be very careful,” his mother said. “You know you can’t keep him.”

Something inside of Nate drew tight. “I wasn’t planning to.”

“I hope that’s true.” Her voice had gone soft. That was worse than the rest of it. “Eat something. Call your brother back. Goodbye, Leo.”

“Goodbye,” Leo said.

The call ended. Nate wanted to throw the phone at the wall. He set it down on the counter instead.

Leo didn’t say anything at first. He hovered by the counter with his arms crossed, and Nate drank his coffee, which had gone cold. Neither of them looked at the phone.

“You told her about him,” Leo said.

“I did.” Nate set the mug down. “I’m sorry. It just came out.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

Nate looked at him.

Leo’s chin was up, but his voice wasn’t. “I don’t mind that she knows.” He paused. “You feel terrible for me?”

Had Nate said that? He had. There was no taking it back. “I do.”

Leo nodded slowly, processing. Nate could tell there was something else the ghost wanted to ask, so he waited.

“What did she mean,” Leo asked eventually, “when she talked about keeping me?”

That was another topic Nate wished he didn’t have to discuss but could not avoid now.

“It happens sometimes in my community.” He made himself say it plainly. “A medium gets so attached to a spirit that they lose sight of what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to move spirits, not keep them.”

“Oh.” Leo took that in. His too-green eyes went to the phone and back. His brows furrowed. “I’m not for moving or keeping. I’m not an object. I’m here because I’m choosing to stay, not because you’re keeping me.”