It had been ten years since Simon had felt the need to visit his brother. Guilt settled in his stomach. There had been a point in his life when all he had thought about was visiting his brother, to make sure the poor kid never felt alone, but life liked to go in wild directions. He had a family of his own, a job he loved, and so little time to take care of himself in between, let alone driving a few hours out of his way to the cemetery to lay flowers on a crumbling grave.

Simon rested white flowers on Larry’s tombstone. When they had been kids, they had played in fields full of white flowers, and since neither of them had cared much about them, he thought any kind of flower would do as long as it was that familiar color.

The inscription was generic: “Taken from Us Too Young.” While it was true, there was something so impersonal about it. So many other tombstones said the same thing, and he wondered if it would be all right if he commissioned a new one for him.

There was so much to tell him, not so much to relieve the guilt he felt for never visiting his brother, his only sibling, and it took him a long time, two hours longer than he had intended to stay there. At least his daughter had had her graduation party over the weekend instead of the birthday of the uncle she had never gotten to meet.

“I’ll come back more often, little brother,” Simon promised with a sigh, and with a lighter feeling in his body, he left.