Escape POD, Episode, Episode, end, by Jenny Ray Rappacort. I'm Mer Lafferty, your co-editor. This week's story is Sweetness at the End by Jenny Ray Rappapore. Jenny Ray is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing

Workshop and holds a BA in creative writing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Her work has previously appeared in Castelland and Strayon.

She lives in New Jersey with her family where she divides her time between writing and hurting small children.

It's narrated by Diane Sefferson Mori, singer, voice teacher, poetry narrator, and podcast producer.

This is an escape pod original.

So perhaps you will sit down and listen,

perhaps you'll ignore it.

Regardless, it's story time.

The Sweetness at the End by Jenny Ray Rappaport. This is how it happens. Tony and Ma are in their seats in the

skimmer, strapped in and grinning at us. Daddy and I kiss them goodbye,

take a photo of them in their spacesuits for posterity,

and wave at them.

We stay behind at the Kennedy Space Center.

There's a viewing room that has live GPS tracking available

for suborbital flights.

This is a huge thing for Ma, positively absolutely huge. She's wanted to go to space since she was a little girl and watched that old space shuttle explode on TV, the one with the teacher and all, way before I got here, of course.

No one takes you to space when you're old, or if you take a medicine or two here or there, because

again, old.

Old rules you out of almost everything fun.

Money can overrule some of the old, but we don't have that much money.

But then Tony got a suborbital license, and no one regulates who you take up in a suborb plane.

...