Welcome! This week we have a picture prompt and a 300-word limit. My snippets from my WIP, "Overtime" will continue for another few weeks. It's the last book in the First & Ten series and will be published soon.
This week we have Griff's story. His wife, Lauren, has sprung a surprise vacation on him. They headed to the beach in Florida. Seems there was a bigger surprise in their future than either had anticipated.
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He’d made
plenty of mistakes in his life, but marrying Lauren wasn’t one of them. He
blew up an inflatable beach ball and
bounced it to the kids. After a lively game of catch, they ran to the ocean,
where Griff took their hands and waded into the surf, ankle-deep. They shrieked
with joy and ran up on the warm sand, then back into the water over and over.
He layed out a blanket. The kids sat long enough to eat the food
Lauren had packed. They pelted the quarterback with questions, which he
answered as best he could. Where did the ocean go? Where did pelicans
come from? He didn’t know the answers. Their curiosity charmed
him.
As their
beach time edged toward two hours, Chip and Gracie slowed down. His daughter crawled
into her stroller and Chip lay down on the blanket. Griff knew it was
time to head home. He brushed the sand off them as best he could then layed them
in their beds and covered each with a light blanket.
Lauren’s
face had appeared drawn when they got in the car at the airport. Concern
knitted his brows as he wondered if she was coming down with the flu. He had
hoped not as this vacation was her idea and he wanted her to enjoy it, too.
Feeling
pooped, he popped a beer and sat in the shade outside on the deck. Lauren often
took naps, but never quite this long. On a hunch, Griff climbed the stairs to
the master bedroom. Before he arrived, the sight of a bloody towel on the floor
stopped him cold. He picked it up. The blood hadn’t completely dried
yet, but it wasn’t fresh. Something had happened to Lauren and not in the last
hour.
Thank you for coming.
