Chaon, Fitting Ends #7

Fitting Ends
Dan Chaon
First published in Triquarterly
Best American Short Stories 1996
#7  in the I will read and take brief notes on 300 short stories series

The story starts out with the ghost of the narrator's brother appearing on the train tracks a couple of years before he actually dies on those same tracks. But this isn't a supernatural story, but is rather a psychological haunt; the narrator is wracked and ruined with his lingering and unspoken guilt over a lie he told that pushed his brother over the line from rehabilitation to deep despair.