Beard Up(6)

       
         
       
        

Mina

Present Day

"Sienna, did you get your homework done?" I yelled across the house.

Sienna, my eight-year-old daughter, poked her head out of her room.

"Yes, I did it with the tutor," she explained. "Why?"

I resisted the urge to snap at her.

I was in a bad mood. I'd had a bad day at work, and I was literally trying to hold my anger inside until after she was in bed, and I could drown my problems in a bottle of wine.

My phone rang, and my heart jumped into my throat.

That was normal, though.

Six years ago, I'd received a visit that no wife of a police officer wanted to receive. One that rocked my perfect little world and left my life, as I knew it, in ashes.

My husband, Tunnel Morrison, had been killed doing what he loved. Like the hero that he was, he'd gone into a burning building to help someone and had died from smoke inhalation. However, that wasn't his only injury-not that I'd been able to look at his body for confirmation.

Although my husband had been a police officer, I hadn't really thought about the fact that something could happen to him. I refused to admit that it was a possibility.

Sure, he routinely went into dangerous situations. Sure, he'd been involved in something that had to do with his sister, Audrey. Sure, in the back of my mind, I knew it was possible that he could get hurt -but death? That had been a shocker. I hadn't even acknowledged to myself that it might happen.

We'd talked about it, yes, but talking about it and it actually happening were two different things.

I let myself drift back in remembrance of that night, feeling him hug me as he told me all those wonderful, lovely things, things I had needed to hear. Things that had left with me one last beautiful memory of him.





***


"Baby, we need to talk about this," Tunnel said.

I whirled on him. "We don't need to talk about anything!" I yelled. "Because I'm leaving you! I can't do this if you're going to die."

He reached out and pulled me to him so fast that I didn't even have time to blink.

"You're not going anywhere," he snapped. "Now sit down, let's go over this, just in case, and shut up."

I bared my teeth at him, and his lips twitched.

"You're just turning me on here, darlin'," he admitted. "I know you don't want to sign a will. I know you don't want to even think about a will because you think that if we make this decision, that it might happen, but you have to put those feelings aside. And this isn't just about me passing away. Just think if something were to happen to both of us," he paused, letting that reality sink in. "If we're both in the car, Sienna's with Silas or one of the other brothers, and we got into a wreck and both died. Who would you want Sienna to go to?" 

I bit my lip.

"Not my mom," I finally admitted.

My mother hadn't been a very good mother. Sure, she'd provided for me, but that was about all she did. She hated my guts, hated that I was the reason she had to work. Hated that because of me, she was forced to get a job when what she really wanted to do was live a life of leisure and do something that the rest of society did when they had enough money.

So she took it out on me, repeatedly telling me how I had ruined her life. Slapped me whenever she felt like it. Though, my dad hadn't been aware that she was doing all that. But then again, he wasn't much better. He had a drinking problem, and he knocked my mother around when she didn't get dinner on the table fast enough. She then took her frustrations out on me. I hated every single day of my life with them.

"No, not your mother," he agreed. "How about my mother?"

I shivered. "Damn."

That was something that neither one of us wanted to happen. However, if we had no wills, the next of kin was usually chosen, which just hammered the point home that we really needed to get our wills done.

Son of a bitch.

He was right. If we didn't do this, and something happened to both of us at the same time, then Sienna would go to her maternal or paternal grandparents. Neither of which were who we wanted her to go to.

"Fine. Fine. Fine," I growled and took a seat at the dining room table.

Tunnel didn't like that much, and he picked me up before sitting down himself. He then placed me on his lap and pulled the document titled Last Will and Testament closer.

"It'll be okay, baby. This is only a precaution."

I tilted my head to rest against his neck. "It better be."





***


"Mom!" Sienna yelled.

I snapped back to the present, dashed my fingers across my eyes and sniffled as I tried to compose myself.