I spent years thinking Greg got the hard version of Dad and I got the good one. At the funeral-home table, I was still trying to prove it.

The program was blank except for Dad’s name. Martha Vance, the funeral director, had a clipboard in front of her and a pen lined up beside it. Greg wanted the hymn from our childhood church. I wanted “On the Road Again,” the Willie Nelson song Dad played on our trips after he retired.

“He already picked the hymn,” Greg said.

“He never said that to me.”

“He didn’t have to.”

I said Dad had asked me to choose a song. Greg said I was making the whole thing about my road trips. I said he was making it about the church, as if Dad had spent his entire life sitting in a pew. Neither of us said the thing we were both thinking: which one of us knew him better.

Martha let us go on longer than she needed to. She didn’t interrupt when Greg’s voice got sharp, or when I reminded him Dad had spent half our later trips singing along with Willie Nelson. The room smelled like paper and old coffee. I remember the coffee because I’d taken one sip and set it down untouched.

Then Martha opened a drawer and set a small cassette player on the table.

“He recorded something for both of you,” she said.

Greg pressed play. Dad’s voice came through with a little hiss, then he said Greg’s name.

Greg shoved his chair back. Martha reached over and pressed pause before he could leave.

That was the part I kept seeing later. Greg’s hand on the chair. Martha’s finger on the button. The tape stopped after one word.

Greg looked at her. “Why did he say my name first?”

Martha didn’t answer right away. She folded her hands on the table, then told us Dad had come in alone two weeks before he died. He’d taken a taxi and brought his old pocket recorder. He’d given her instructions: let us argue until we reached an impasse, then play the tape. If either of us tried to walk out, she was to pause it and ask us to stay.

“He was very clear about that,” she said.

Greg looked at the door. I knew he wanted to go. I also knew that if he did, I’d probably let him, then tell myself it was his choice.

I’d been doing that for years. So I got up and stepped between him and the table, not blocking the door, just making it harder to pretend I hadn’t noticed.

“Sit down,” I said. “Please.”

He stayed standing for a few seconds. Then he pulled his chair back in.

Martha set the cassette player in front of him. My hand was close to the button. He nodded once, and I pressed play.

Dad took a breath on the tape. There was a small click, like he’d bumped the recorder.

“Greg, I should’ve said this a long time ago.”

Then the tape hissed, and I heard Dad clear his throat.

He talked about Sunday mornings when Greg and I were kids. The drive to church was not long, but I remember sitting in the back of the truck and watching the road through the gap between the seats. Dad would hum “Farther Along.” He never asked us to sing with him.

He never explained the hymn. Greg had been the one sitting beside him in the front seat, old enough to notice when Dad’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Dad said he’d been scared in those years. He said money was short, the mortgage was close to slipping away, and he was doing a poor job of keeping his fear from landing on us. He was ashamed of how often he was angry or silent. The hymn, he said, wasn’t proof that he had everything right.

“It was the only thing I could hold onto,” Dad said on the tape. “I was trying to make it through the week and get you boys to church.”

Greg stared at the cassette player. His jaw moved once, but he didn’t speak.

Dad admitted he’d used the church routine to look steadier than he felt. He’d hummed because the words gave him something to do with his mouth when he couldn’t tell us what was wrong. It was a prayer, he said, though he didn’t know if he deserved one.

I’d never heard Dad say anything like that. He was not a man who explained himself. When he was alive, he’d rather change the oil than sit across from one of us and talk about what he’d done.

On the tape, he said Greg had taken the brunt of those early years because he was the oldest. Dad had expected him to understand too much, too soon. He’d leaned on him without asking, then acted like Greg was difficult when he got tired of it.

“I’m sorry, son,” Dad said.

Greg bent forward and put his elbows on his knees. He didn’t cry, not then. He just sat with his eyes on the table, listening to the quiet tape hiss between Dad’s words.

I had always known our childhood was harder for Greg. Knowing it and admitting it were different things. I’d told myself Dad and I got close because we had the same kind of humor, because we both liked the road, because that was simply how things worked out. I didn’t think about what Greg had been carrying while I got the easier version of Dad.

Dad went on. He said he wished he’d been more like the man Greg got to know later. That line hurt in a way I didn’t expect. I had wanted to be the son who got Dad’s best years. I hadn’t wanted to hear that Dad wished Greg could have had them, too.

Then Dad said my name.

He talked about the camper he bought after retirement and the trips we took when he was older. We drove through Texas and New Mexico, sometimes with no real plan past finding a place to stop for the night. I remember the road dust along the camper’s back window, and how Dad kept a little jar of peppermints in the glove box even though he rarely ate them himself.

He played “On the Road Again” on the tape deck. Too loud, usually. He’d tap the steering wheel and sing a few words, then make a face like he hadn’t been singing at all.

Dad said those trips were the first time in a long while he could breathe. He’d been sober for years by then. He didn’t say it had fixed everything. He said he was grateful that he’d lived long enough to laugh with me and learn how to be a father without being so afraid of failing at it.

“I loved those miles with you,” he said.

I rubbed my thumb over a nick in the table. I’d spent years feeling guilty that Dad had seemed happier with me. I didn’t know how to say that without making it sound like I wanted credit for the good part.

Dad’s voice got quieter. He said the hymn belonged to his hardest years, and the country song belonged to the years when he finally let himself enjoy being alive. Neither song was the one true answer. Neither son had gotten the whole man.

“I don’t want either of you fighting over which one of you had me,” he said. “You both did.”

The tape ended with another click.

No one moved for a bit. Greg’s face had softened, but he still looked tired. I wanted to say something kind. What came out was the plain thing I’d been avoiding.

“You had it harder than I did,” I said. “I knew that, but I didn’t want to admit how much.”

Greg looked at me. “I thought you got the dad I kept waiting for.”

“I did, some of the time.”

He rubbed his palm against his trouser leg. “I was jealous.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean I was really jealous. I thought you got the fun version because he liked you more.”

I was ashamed of how fast I wanted to argue. I still wanted to say that Dad and I had earned those miles somehow, that our closeness was its own thing. Instead I told Greg the truth I could manage.

“I thought you were the one he trusted.”

Greg shook his head. “I was just there first.”

That got to me. Not because it was a grand line. Because it was probably true.

Martha brought the cassette case over. Inside, folded together, were two handwritten lyric sheets. Dad had written “Farther Along” on one and “On the Road Again” on the other. Beside each title, he’d added dates. The hymn had the years of the Sunday drives. The country song had the dates of our trips, written in his cramped block letters.

He hadn’t made a list of his favorite songs. He’d written down the parts of his life where we were with him.

I asked Martha if we could copy the tape. She said she could have it done, and that she’d already made a note to keep the original safe. Greg asked if he could take the lyric sheets to the service. Martha said we could keep them, and the original cassette too, if we both wanted it.

We sat down again with the clipboard between us. This time, the pen didn’t feel like a weapon. Greg suggested the hymn as the processional, so it could play while we carried the casket into the chapel. I said we should use the country song for the recessional, when everyone walked out.

“That works,” Greg said.

It wasn’t some grand reconciliation. We still had years of not calling each other unless there was a reason. We’d both let Dad act as the middleman when he was alive, then kept the habit after he was gone. But the choice was ours now. We signed the paperwork together.

At the service, the hymn played while Greg and I carried Dad’s casket. I heard the same tune Dad used to hum in the truck. I knew what I hadn’t known as a kid: he wasn’t showing off his faith or telling us how a family was supposed to look. He was trying to get through one more Sunday.

The country song came on as people filed out. Greg stood beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. He didn’t smile, but he nodded when Willie Nelson’s voice came through the chapel speakers.

After the service, Martha gave us two copies of the recording. Greg put the cassette case in his breast pocket. I asked if he wanted to ride with me to the cemetery. He said yes.

We didn’t solve everything in the truck. We talked about the service, then about the old camper, then about a time Dad got turned around outside Las Cruces and insisted he knew where he was going. Greg remembered a different part of that trip than I did. I let him tell it.

When we reached the cemetery, the cassette case was still tucked in Greg’s coat. We stood by Dad’s grave while people finished saying goodbye. I kept thinking about how easy it had been to turn the songs into a contest, like one of us had to prove he owned more of Dad.

On the drive away, Greg sat in the passenger seat with his coat collar turned up. The country tape hummed softly through the cab speakers. My keys clinked against the console between us when I took the turn out of the cemetery.

Greg didn’t ask me to turn the music down. I didn’t reach for the volume.