Beast to your Beauty

CHAPTER 20

 A quaint little house in the country.

Acres of land filled with growing vegetables and fruits of all kinds. Laughter echoed through the air and seconds later a little girl appears running along a field filled with corn, an older man not too far behind her.

"Ahh!" she screamed and laughed happily the moment the man wrapped his arms around her and picked her right off the ground. He swung her over his shoulders and started running around as if she were inside a rocket ship. "Daddy I'm getting dizzy!"

"Alright, alright, let's put you back down," Alfred laughed, setting her down. He knelt and looked at twelve-year-old Hannah. "That's the first time I've seen you laugh in ages, kiddo."

Hannah smiled sheepishly, "I know, I'm sorry."

"Now don't you apologize," Alfred shook his finger, "It's okay to feel sadness and to cry sometimes. I was just wondering when I'd see that little smile again."

"I just miss her," Hannah answered in a quiet voice. Her little lips started to pout and her tiny eyes filled with tears.

"I miss her too," Alfred frowned. "It's been a hard couple of weeks, huh? I know how you feel, princess. I know it's difficult to see it now, but we're going to be all right. She's our angel now, and she is looking down at us from a very, very comfortable cloud."

Hannah smirked and let her father hug her tight.

"Don't you worry, sweetheart," Alfred whispered into Hannah's ear. "I'm still here to make things easy for the both of us. We'll push through this."

We'll push through this.

Hannah opened her eyes. Her mascara had smeared and her cheeks were stained with tears. She was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. Julian sat near her with his arm around hers in comfort, his face grim. Hannah drew her breath. Her heart ached, her world was crumbling down around her as the familiar sense of loss and anguish filled every part of her.

We'll push through this.

Alfred's words of comfort stuck in her mind. Words he had used to comfort her as a child after her mother passed away. Her father had been there to pick her up and slowly get her back to the happy child she used to be before her mother died. Now that she had lost her second parent, who was there left to help her out?

Hannah could not believe it when she got the call – another fire. She had been hungrily eyeing all the food that was in the dining room when the phone rang. The moment they told her there had been a fire and her father was taken to the hospital it shook Hannah to the core. For a second she must have thought it was someone's cruel joke, surely her father couldn't have been stuck in a fire for a second time in his lifetime.

But it happened.

Julian had seen the color disappear from Hannah's face and he took the phone from her, got the details, and then called a cab. They urged the driver to take them to the hospital as fast as he could.

When they arrived, the doctor gave them the terrible news that Alfred had died on the way to the hospital. His lungs were just too weak for all that smoke a second time around. Hannah screamed and screamed, falling to the ground in hysterics. Julian tried to hold her but to no avail.

Erma was unconscious and getting treated for burns and some smoke inhalation. Thankfully, someone in the building saw the smoke coming out of the apartment and quickly called the firefighters. Erma was very close to death. Julian sighed, unable to believe how quickly the night had taken a turn for the worst.