The Skydivers

Pete Hamilton is an aspiring musician. His older brother Leo is an aerospace engineer. They have almost nothing in common, and what little they share becomes a problem when their father dies and leaves them the family dairy farm in Vermont. Pete wants to keep it. Leo wants to sell.

The one gesture they can agree on is a jump: skydive over the fields their father worked and scatter his ashes from the air. It is the kind of theatrical send-off the old man would have enjoyed. Then the plan goes wrong, and a single unlikely witness is left holding the truth about what actually happened up there.

A short story by Chris Bohjalian, part of the Alibis collection of short fiction about lies, truth, and deception. It reads in one sitting.