You ever notice that deep rumbling in the ground that happens with an earthquake? Well I just heard it and got all prepared for the shaking and it never came. It was so odd. But it got me thinking about earthquakes and I remembered this.

My father had once been a university lecturer so we had many students pass through our lives. There was one particularly solemn young man who stayed with us for a day or two in Venezuela that I intrinsically associate with earthquakes. Before he arrived, my father told me he had been in Caracas when there was a massive, devastating earthquake back in the late sixties. He had lost his parents and had grown up an orphan. I remember wondering as we took him sightseeing what it was like to revisit the city where his life had so drastically changed. He was introverted and quiet.

A few years after his visit there was a huge and equally devastating earthquake in Mexico, I think in the late 80’s, and this time he wasn’t so lucky. I always thought it so odd that earthquakes should feature so prominently in someone’s life, especially considering that he had been from neither of those countries.

The most interesting part of the story was yet to come. Years later my father was on a flight when he noticed a young woman studying him intently. She eventually came up to him and asked him who he was. Somehow she recognized him and introduced herself as the former girlfriend of that very student. It turned out that unknown to him, she had been pregnant at the time of his death. She was now a single mother to their son. Despite his horrible luck, part of him had survived to carry on. It was the completing chapter to end his short story.