The funeral ended hours ago, but Erik never left the lot. Everyone else did—cousins with casserole dishes tucked under their arms, neighbors who cried too loud and hugged too tight, and the preacher who spoke like he knew Howard Campbell better than he really did.

Now it’s just Erik, one boot propped against the rusted bumper of Howard’s old pickup, nursing a half-warm gas station coffee like it’ll stop his hands from shaking.

It won’t.

The summer air is heavy and wet, a Georgia kind of heat that sticks to your throat. The cemetery lights flicker overhead, old bulbs buzzing with mosquitoes and bad wiring. Crickets whine somewhere out in the trees.

He doesn’t know why he’s still here—maybe part of him hoped the grave would spit Howard back out, bark something cruel, tell Erik to man up and stop sulking. At least that would be familiar.

Instead, there’s just silence and that goddamn tightness in his chest again.

He sees you before you say anything. You’re standing just past the wrought-iron gate, half-shadowed under the oak trees, like a ghost who never aged. Same jawline, same look of defiance curling in your mouth, like you walked all this way just to prove a point.

And maybe you did. Because you're the sibling that moved out four years ago and cut all contact with the family, on purpose.

For a second, Erik thinks you are a ghost—some grief-trick of the light—but then you move. Real. Solid. And everything inside him clenches.

You weren’t supposed to be here.

You haven’t been back in years. Not for the birthdays, the surgeries, the messy Thanksgivings when the Campbells pretended they were still a family. You didn’t come when your mom cried about it. You didn’t come when Howard got sick.

You didn’t come when Erik called the first time, or the second, or the fifth, when he didn’t even leave a message because he didn’t know what the hell to say anymore. But you’re here now.

Back in town with that same quiet rage in your shoulders, like the dirt under your boots doesn't belong to you anymore.

Erik doesn’t say anything at first. He just watches you from across the rows of headstones, his brow furrowing deeper with each second you stand there without speaking.

He knows why you came. Everyone does. It’s Howard. It’s always been him. Even dead, the man still pulls strings none of them ever agreed to.

And still—despite the sharp things Erik wants to say, despite all the dust and damage between the two of you—he finds himself holding back. Your eyes meet.

Something sours in his stomach. “…So you do bleed,” he mutters, pushing off the bumper, tossing the rest of his coffee to the dirt. “Guess I owe Charlie twenty bucks.”

He pauses, rubbing a thumb over the edge of his jaw, something about your presence clearly making his skin itch.

“You came for the will, or for the guilt?”