Beard Up(51)

And for some reason, that made my heart pound.

"Alrighty then," I said breathlessly. "Will I see you when I get off of work?"

He grunted in reply. "Spent enough nights without you, Minnie. I don't want to spend any more time alone."

With that he hung up, and I said ‘I love you' to dead air.

But I knew that he felt it, just as he knew I felt the same way.

Sighing and tossing a look beside me at Dr. Tommy Tom, who hadn't even acted like he wasn't listening to the entire encounter, I stuck my tongue out at him.

Today I'd given him a reaming for withholding information about my dead husband not being so dead, and he'd only smiled.

Now, here he was, unabashedly listening to my conversations with my now very much alive husband, and he was listening in like he had something to do with my husband's miraculous reincarnation, so to speak.


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Glaring at the man who continued to just smile at me, I searched through my latest calls and hit go beside Audrey's name. I'd called her a few days ago to let her know where we were, and she'd called me the next night to make sure I was settling in all right.

"Hello?" Audrey answered.

I immediately frowned.

"Audrey, what's wrong?" I asked instantly, sitting up in my seat.

"Nothing," Audrey lied.

We both knew when the other lied. We'd been doing it so often to each other over the course of our friendship that it was almost second nature to know.

Our ‘yes, I'm all right' had always meant ‘no, I'm not all right. I'm hurting and it's hard to breathe.' But we always said we were all right, because admitting that we weren't felt like we entirely way too close to the breaking point.

Audrey sighed. "I'm in trouble."

I relaxed a small amount.

She wouldn't admit that if she was in danger.

"What's going on?" I asked, leaning back in my chair.

I noticed that Tommy had relaxed once again, too, going back to leaning casually in his seat as he listened to me instead of being on alert.

"I made a mistake." She didn't sugar coat it. "I got this package. It was delivered to my place by mistake, but it was addressed to my parents. Instead of opening it, or throwing it away like I should have, I delivered it to their place while I was visiting some friends in Benton. I was going to just drop it off on their doorstep, but when I got there, a guy was outside. He'd fallen and had hurt himself pretty badly. His arm was dripping blood from a gaping wound on his forearm and training just kicked in. I helped him stop the bleeding, and in return for staying as long as I did, my mother and father arrived home."

I sighed.

"And they decided you were useful, and requested you to help them in some way," I groaned.

"Yep," she said.

I'd been getting that for the last five years. Calls to ‘check on my welfare' that were also requests for me to come work for them at their company.

One drunken night, over a bottle of wine and some pizza, Audrey and I had compared stories, and then we'd questioned why a company that specialized in electronics would need a nurse at all. We'd come up with the fact that the parents were just trying to look out for us.

Now, I didn't have such tame ideas. More likely it was due to them being into something they shouldn't be, and needing a medical professional to help them or someone who worked for them if shit hit the fan. 

"So what happened then?" I questioned.

"Then I told them no and drove home. After I arrived back home and got unpacked, I was woken in the middle of the night. When I went to investigate the noise, it was to find the guy who I helped breaking into my house."

"What?" I screeched.

She started to laugh.

"I shot someone."

"What?" I screeched again.

"Yep," she confirmed. "I did. But the guy was wearing one of those vest thingies, and he ran away before I could get another shot off at him."

"And?" I pushed.

"And now I'm packing all of my shit, and moving the hell away from here without giving two weeks notice on my job because my parents want me to do their bidding, and I don't want to."

Audrey wasn't moving with her parents. She was moving away from them.

I was sure she didn't even realize that her parents were moving, too, or she might not be bothering.

But I wanted her here. Tunnel wanted her here.

So that was what I did.

"I have a suggestion" I said, diverting from the plan. "How about I send out some help, and you come here?"

I heard her inhale. "That's where I was going anyway, but I'm glad to officially have an invite."