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The cemetery was silent, the kind of quiet that made birdsong sound rude. Sunlight filtered through, pressing down in slow, heavy fingers, catching the granite edges of the headstones and warming them like old bones. Through leaves still holding tight to their summer color, the warm summer light stippled the ground with gold, dancing as a gentle breeze tickled the trees that lined the pathways. Overhead, the sky blazed blue, an indelible color—rich, haunting, beautiful. Poignant.
Damien and Erik stood for a while. Saying nothing, the moment breathing between them.
The epitaph stared back at the brothers. “Edward Nathaniel Wilson. Beloved father, husband, brother, and son.” His birthdate served only as a reminder that he had been taken too young. And it was never as important as the day he died—September 11, 2001.
The ground beneath their feet felt sturdy, but hollow—a terrestrial reflection of the empty casket beneath the dirt.
Erik turned a small stone in his palm, thumb tracing its contours. It was smooth—far too smooth to have come from the parking lot—but one that felt right in his hand, in his soul, in his memory. He leaned forward and placed it atop the headstone.
Damien followed, pulling his from the pocket of his slacks—more deliberate, more angular in movement. His stone was smooth too, but it had the shine of one having been tumbled for days—from the state museum, probably, perhaps a lifetime ago. Erik never asked. Maybe he should’ve.
The stone held fast where Damien placed it, just beside Erik’s. A lifetime of stones already surrounded them—jagged gravel, river rocks. Damien’s past—gleaming stones of agate and quartz and imperfectly textured, marbled rocks. It was the only one of the sort in the row of graves—the only one speckled with markers of the earth, of life, of death, of the tether between them.
After a long moment, Erik spoke.
“Every year on this day, I half expect a call from my landlord saying the building is on fire. Started by a candle in my house.”
“Isn’t yours electric?”
“Yeah, but it’s the same one I’ve always had, and the building is from the 19th century. Who knows how the wiring is holding up—of either thing. Looks like hell but it keeps going. Like me.” He shrugged, folding his arms, a half-hearted grin on his lips. “How’s yours?”
Damien didn’t look over. “Mine’s an electrical grid the size of the East Coast.” He paused. “Dad would’ve said you need a new one. They’re like twenty bucks on Amazon.”
Erik snorted. “And yet, it’s still more reliable than your grid infrastructure.”
Damien sighed. “We are trying to fix that.”
Another long minute of silence passed.
Erik slid his hands into his pockets. “Do you ever wonder if he’d have hated what we turned into?”
Damien blinked. “All the time.”
“...Think he’d have hated me?”
Damien turned to look at him then. Not a long look. Not a dramatic one. Just… an honest appraisal.
“No.”
Erik smiled weakly, flicking a dead leaf with the toe box of his boot. “It’s surreal to know we’re basically older than he ever got to be.”
Damien nodded, a strand of hair falling from behind his ear over his face, only offering a pensive “yeah.”
“You ready to go?” Erik asked, giving Damien a nudge. “Or do you need more time?”
“Hm. I’m fine. Our ritualistic dinner with Valerie awaits,” Damien said with a humorless chuckle, backing away from their father’s memorial.
“Mom will be thrilled with your enthusiasm.”
The brothers’ cars stood out among the rows upon rows of stone markers in the cemetery—Erik’s white SUV and Damien’s lime green Lamborghini. Erik rolled the window down as he crept by Damien on the narrow driving path. “See you in a few.”
The doors of Damien’s car whispered upwards, but he didn’t get in right away. He paused, gazing back out across the expanse of granite-speckled green in the direction of their father’s headstone.
There was a long, long breath before Damien spoke—and when he did, it was so quiet it got swallowed by the breeze. “Your memory is a blessing, Dad.”
And then he climbed in. The engine roared to life, but even its rumble was not loud enough to drown out the grief that still coiled inside him—for everything his father never got to see. And never would.