Free Little Red Gem by D L Richardson Page A

mourners engulf my mom.
I watched her zombie eyes stare over their shoulders. Friends and
neighbors offered her their sympathies. “We’re so sorry for your
loss.” “A parent should never have to bury their child.” “Such a
tragedy.” “They ought to fill in those old mine shafts.”
    My mom accepted these
sentiments with a stone face. I’d have given anything for my mom
not to have gone through this ordeal alone. She’d gone through
everything else in her life without support – sometimes without
mine – and I guessed that had a lot to do with my vow not to follow
in her footsteps. It was also a major reason why I’d driven up to
the cabin to confront Leo and demand to know the true extent of his
love. I hadn’t wanted to raise our child on my own. Yet I was the
one who’d walked out on him. The irony didn’t escape me.
    The car my mom stepped out
of drove off and her body stiffened. A shaking hand flew up to her
temple.
    Dad came charging through
the crowd and placed his hand under her elbow. “You’re doing well,
Suzanne,” he said. “I’m here. You can do this. Are you
ready?”
    The relief that washed
over my mom was epic. She nodded her head, albeit weakly, and let
Dad guide her into the chapel, offering the mourners a polite smile
along the way.
    “ Thank goodness you’re
here, David,” Mom whispered. “There’s no way I could do this
alone.”
    “ You’ll never be alone
again. I promise, this time things will be different.”
    Mom leaned her head
against his shoulder. “Perhaps getting away from this town is
what’s called for. You always did know what was best for
me.”
    Staring at her as she took
her seat at the front of the chapel, I wondered if she’d gone soft
in the head. She hated Dad. Besides, how could Dad promise her
things would be different this time…when he was married?
    I looked around for Mishi,
his third wife, but instead I spied Audrey and her mom walking
toward me. Audrey’s mom had carried on an hour long conversation
with me due to her ability to see ghosts, and I couldn’t risk her
glimpsing me now – and not because she may have harbored desires to
fulfill the psychic reading she’d robbed me of. I ducked inside the
chapel and forced my spirit body into the drapes. After a minute I
sighed heavily, regretting once more not heeding Audrey’s warning
about coming here. “Love can make you do
crazy things, Ruby,” my mother had once
said.
    Crazy I could deal with;
what I was doing was starting to venture into morbidly
idiotic.
     
     
     
    ***
     
     
    Shanessa, Natalie, and I
were in a girl group called Violet Dreamy Youth. Shanessa had an
incredible musical talent. She could play practically any
instrument…piano, guitar, violin, empty bottle; whatever made a
tune could be mastered by Shanessa. Natalie did okay strumming away
on acoustic guitars but her instrument of choice was the violin. I
used to practice the piano three afternoons a week until studies
forced me to cut back to one. When we came together, we rocked. Or,
at least we mustn’t have sucked because we got asked to sing each
week at the Heavenlea Home.
    We’d leapt at the chance
to sing in front of anybody when we’d accepted that gig, ignoring
the need to understand our audience. We’d turned up and sang songs
that we liked and it soon became apparent we needed to learn songs
from the era before music was downloadable. Since then, we’d gotten
pretty good at understanding our audience.
    I understood the audience
in the chapel loud and clear. They were here to mourn the death of
a seventeen-year-old girl.
    Leo avoided eye contact
with my dad like he wasn’t here to mourn my death but to accept
blame for it, and while my dad was many things, he wasn’t cruel.
The moment he copped a glimpse of Leo’s distress he rushed with Mom
in tow to embrace Leo. He arrived seconds before Leo’s mom and dad
and the five of them clung to each other like they were on a life
raft in the ocean. Leo’s