My father never told me how my mother died.
"I'm going to this concert. I don't care what you have to say."
She passed when I was born, so I never knew her.
"Cortney, you aren't going. I forbid you. You nearly got stomped to death."
My sister says father seemed distant after that, not that she was old enough to tell the difference.
"It was a little rumble. No big deal. Rose has my back now."
To me, he was always this way. No point in regretting before you were born.
"She's going too? Since when?"
He's up there with my mother, now.
"Since she bought me a ticket. I'm getting off this godforsaken farm, out of this town, and away from here. Mom would have wanted me to. She wouldn't let you squash my effort like a bug."
Irony, it seems, happens in the last place you expect it. It was he who got squashed. The whole planet, really. Should I have warned him I was leaving? Hell no. Was it right to yell it out? No. Do I regret my decision?
Not in the least.
***
Cortney's boyfriend Ros (short for Roswell) was in the passenger seat, asleep. Their favorite band, Galactic Errand, was having its last concert in its last tour just two states away, and they were going. An earthquake wouldn't scare them away from it.
An old hit, Generic Melody, from their first album, was on the radio. Cortney turned it up. Ros blinked a couple times, and wiped the drool from his mouth. "How're we on gas?"
Cortney looked at the dashboard. "We'll need some soon."
"How long was I asleep?"
"Couple hours. Not sure how you fell asleep in the first place."
