📖 Part 7 – The Things We Bury
The song ended with a soft crackle, like the sigh of something long overdue.
Tommy stood still for a moment, one hand resting on the edge of the workbench. Harold watched him, trying to memorize the moment — the quiet, the posture, the peace. It wasn’t every day that time bent back on itself and gave you a second chance.
“Let’s take a walk,” Tommy said suddenly.
Harold tilted his head. “Where to?”
“The cemetery.”
The word landed with more weight than either of them expected.
The brothers didn’t speak as they drove. The truck rolled through the backroads of Belfast, past sugar maples in early bloom and rusting fences they once climbed over barefoot. The cemetery sat on a hill at the edge of town, the same one where they’d buried their mother thirty years ago. Their father’s stone stood beside hers now, weathered and simple.
Harold hadn’t been back since the funeral.
He thought about turning around more than once, but something in Tommy’s silence kept him moving forward.
They stood side by side in front of the stone:
GLENN DUNN – 1929–1991
MARTHA DUNN – 1930–1988
Together at last. In peace.
Harold let out a long breath.
“He never said goodbye to me,” he muttered.
Tommy’s jaw flexed. “He didn’t know how.”
“I hated him for that.”
“I did too.”
They stood in silence for a while.
A robin landed on the headstone, chirped twice, then flew away.
Harold reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded note. “I wrote something. For him. Years ago.”
He knelt, placed the paper at the base of the stone, and pressed a small rock over it to keep it from blowing away.
Tommy watched, eyes damp but steady.
Then, softly, he asked, “Do you ever think we turned out like him?”
Harold didn’t answer right away.
Then: “Sometimes. When I’m angry. When I don’t say what I should. When I hold on too long.”
Tommy nodded. “Me too.”
“But we came back,” Harold added.
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “We did.”
Back at the house, they didn’t go inside right away.
They walked the yard like they used to — past the empty chicken coop, the old swing, the stump where their dog Rusty used to nap in the sun. They stopped at the treehouse and looked up.
Tommy smiled. “Wanna finish it?”
“You mean the window?”
“No,” he said. “The sign.”
They climbed up together. Harold pulled out the wooden plank he’d carved a week ago but never hung.
It read:
DUNN’S DEN – REBUILT 2025
Tommy added a smaller plaque beneath it:
“No girls allowed. Unless they bring cookies.”
They both laughed like boys again.
Then Tommy’s face turned quiet.
“I got diagnosed last year,” he said.
Harold froze. “What kind?”
“Pancreatic.”
Silence.
“I’m stable now,” Tommy said. “But they said it could come back. Might already be creeping back in.”
Harold felt like the floor shifted beneath him. The treehouse suddenly seemed too high, too fragile.
Tommy continued. “That’s why I came back. Not just the TV. Not just the letter. I didn’t want to die without this — without us — being right.”
Harold looked at him. “You’re not dying yet.”
“No,” Tommy agreed. “But I don’t want to wait till I am.”
Harold leaned forward and gripped his brother’s shoulder.
“We still got Saturdays.”
Tommy smiled.
“Then let’s make them count.”
📖 Part 8 – When the Light Turns Warm Again
For the next few weeks, the days fell into rhythm — not the tired kind Harold had grown used to, but something better.
Each morning, the brothers met on the porch with coffee in mismatched mugs. Tommy liked it black, Harold added a dash of powdered creamer that clumped. They didn’t argue about it. They just sipped and listened to the birds.
They repaired the swing set. They raked the yard. They built a birdhouse and nailed it to the side of the barn, laughing when a squirrel claimed it first. They drove into town to buy nails and came back with licorice ropes and a chess set from the thrift store.
At night, they sat in the living room with the old black-and-white TV flickering in the corner. Sometimes it showed cartoons. Sometimes just static. But the static didn’t feel lonely anymore.
One Thursday afternoon, Tommy caught Harold scribbling something in a spiral notebook.
“What are you writing?” he asked.
Harold hesitated. “A list.”
“Of what?”
“Things I forgot to do with you.”
Tommy raised an eyebrow. “Like…what? Start a band?”
Harold smiled, closing the notebook gently. “You’ll see.”
On Saturday morning, Harold pulled a tarp off something parked beside the garage.
It was a tandem bicycle — rusted, bent, the back tire flat, but unmistakably familiar.
“No way,” Tommy said. “That’s the two-seater from high school?”
Harold nodded. “Found it under a stack of hay bales last year. Was gonna toss it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Didn’t feel right.”
They spent the next hour fixing it, patching the tire, oiling the chain, arguing about who was going to steer.
They rode down the gravel road like a couple of fools — Harold in the front, Tommy in the back, both laughing too hard to balance properly. A car passed and honked. They waved like royalty.
When they reached the lake, they collapsed in the grass and stared at the sky.
“You ever think about Marianne?” Tommy asked.
“All the time,” Harold said.
“She was the one who kept us close. After Mom died.”
Harold nodded slowly. “She was the bridge.”
Tommy picked a blade of grass and twirled it. “I never told her I was sorry. For staying away.”
“She forgave you anyway.”
“You sure?”
“She married me, didn’t she?”
Tommy chuckled. “Fair.”
They sat there until the sun dipped low, casting orange streaks across the water.
Tommy turned to his brother.
“I don’t want you to be alone again when I go.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
But they both knew that wasn’t true.
That night, the static returned. Louder than usual. Harold stared at it from the couch, the shadows long across the floor.
Then, slowly, the screen cleared.
It wasn’t a cartoon this time.
It was a home video — fuzzy, black and white — of two boys climbing into a treehouse, one pushing the other up, both laughing. Then a woman’s voice, off camera:
“Smile, boys! That’s it. Say cheese!”
Harold’s hand gripped the edge of the couch.
He didn’t remember this footage. Didn’t know anyone had filmed it. But there it was.
The screen faded again, replaced by a single sentence, typed in blinking letters:
“Don’t wait for goodbye.”
Harold stood.
And walked to the porch.
Tommy was already there, wrapped in a quilt, looking up at the stars.
Harold sat beside him.
Neither said a word.
Because some nights, the quiet says everything.
