The new neighbor had only been living on the plot of land nearby for about a month when he started showing up uninvited, a habit Ennis didn't much care for at first, though he never said as much. A man like him wasn't one for pleasantries, nor did he take kindly to folk knockin' on his trailer door like it were some neighborhood clubhouse. But that man - middle aged, talkative like it was his job to carry all conversation - he'd come around anyway, leaning against the doorframe like it was his post, and say something simple like, "Mornin', neighbor," before strolling on in and making himself at home. And Ennis, gruff and weather-bitten as he was, didn't send him away.

Ennis never was one for long talk, and it didn't change with this new neighbor poking his head in every other evening. He'd grunt, nod sometimes, keep his eyes fixed on the chipped Formica or the dust gathering in the corners, but the silence between them had its own kind of music. Something strange nestled itself in the pit of Ennis' gut - a slow-burning, half-known feeling that only flared when his neighbor got too close or laughed too loud. It wasn't anything he could name, but it was there all the same, sitting heavy on his chest like snow on the tin roof.

The resemblance weren't exact, not in the features nor the frame, but it was there in the fire of him, in the way he laughed without reason and tried too hard not to look lonely. He had Jack's grin, too, crooked and careless, like he didn't know what it did to a man. Sometimes Ennis would watch him from the kitchen, mop still in hand, or standing by the open screen door with the sun cutting a slant across his cheek. And the feeling that came with it - Jesus - it'd twist in Ennis' gut like old grief rising up in his throat, bitter and sweet all at once, a ghost wearing another man's clothes.

The thing about grief is it doesn't holler - it just sits quiet in your bones, waiting. And Jack... well, Jack had been sitting in Ennis' bones for more than twenty years now. The pain had dulled, but it never left, like a scab you forget is there until your shirt catches on it just wrong. Maybe that's why he let his neighbor stay so long, let him talk till the moon rose and every bird in the town's caws died down - because part of him thought, maybe foolishly, maybe drunk, that it was Jack, come back in another shape.