2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (22 page)

“Can I just say I told you so now before I explode?”
Catherine said triumphantly, as soon as they stepped inside the house. She’d
held her tongue as long as possible. “Did I not tell you three weeks ago?”

“I guess you mentioned something,” Fynn said blandly,
putting the doggie bag of leftovers into the fridge.

“Do I have to go to bed right away?” Cara asked.

Catherine snuck a look at the clock and realized that
it wasn’t even eight yet. “No, sweetie, you can watch a little TV.” When Cara
traipsed off into the family room, she set her sights back on Fynn. “I totally
called it. I just want that to go on the record.”

He smiled at her from across the kitchen, a
self-satisfied smile.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just like to see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Effortlessly swapping between kindly caregiver and
gloating gloater-pants.”

“Gloater-pants?” Catherine smirked.

“I think it fits.”

She waved him off, preoccupied with more important
issues like her forty-something sister-in-law-to-be’s egg situation. “So, do
you know if they’ve been trying long?”

“Who’ve been trying what?”

“Your sister and Klein. Have they been trying to have
another baby? Or was this a happy accident?”

He shrugged.

“She’s your sister, how could you not know?”

“We don’t talk about stuff like that.”

“Like family?”

He stared back at her blankly.

“For a guy who is so free to give of himself sexually,
you really don’t like to talk about sex,” she noted.

“I can talk about sex. I just don’t like to discuss
that stuff with my sister.”

“Do you want to have kids?”

She watched him carefully, looking for a reaction,
wondering how this could possibly be the first time she’d ever brought it up.
They hadn’t discussed kids other than Cara, and even there she feared they’d
fallen woefully short.

“In theory, yes… I guess,” Fynn said.

“What exactly does that—”

“Can I have a drink?” Cara asked, coming back into the
kitchen and stopping the conversation in its tracks.

Catherine saw the look on Fynn’s face—
relief?
But
this was their future! They had to discuss it sometime. She wanted numbers,
time frames—the important stuff. Was he going to turn around after their vows
and demand they throw out the birth control, or would she be begging to talk
about kids when she was on the doorstep of forty? Where were they headed and
how fast would they be getting there? Drew’s news brought it all home to her. Even
though she didn’t know if she was ready to have kids, she felt like everybody
was whipping past her at a hundred miles an hour and she hated being left
behind.

“So what are we going to do tomorrow?” Cara asked as
Catherine poured her some juice.

“I was thinking we could all go to the mall and pick
out wedding gifts!” she announced, springing her wicked, evil plan on Fynn. The
registry
did
need to be done and Cara
did
need to be
entertained—two birds….

“The Mall of America?” Cara asked, eyes wide with
amazement.

“The one and only.”

“Mommy says it is
huge!
She said I’d get to go
there one day. Can we really go tomorrow, Fynn?” Cara asked, looking up at him hopefully.

He shot Catherine a touché glance before answering. “If
that’s what my girls want to do, then I guess that’s what we’ll do.”

*****

They made love in silence under the cover of darkness,
unlike their usual throw-caution-to-the-wind-with-the-lights-on-and-doors-wide-open
abandon when it was just the two of them alone. There was something intensely
intimate and powerful without sound and sight, a heightened sense of touch that
overwhelmed her. It was sexy as hell.

Afterward, Fynn spooned around her. “Finally.” He
breathed the word into her hair, completely spent.

“Is this all you want me for?” she whispered.

“Just to love me,” he said sleepily.

“With my insides?” she giggled, snuggling deeper into
his embrace.

“That part is a bonus. I just want you right here with
me every night.”

“Sweet, but that’s the sex talking.” She slipped from
his grasp.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to pee.
Ouch!
” she whisper-growled, stubbing
her toe on the footboard and hobbling across the floor to the bathroom—she
wasn’t used to traversing his place in the dark. She could make herself a
sandwich in her apartment in the middle of a blackout, but here, going to the
bathroom was an obstacle course. This would take getting used to.

When she got back in bed, he snatched her close to him
again.

“You got dressed,” he said lazily.

“Cara’s down the hall. What if she needs something in
the middle of the night?”

“Throw on a robe.”

“I will not sleep naked with her in the house,” she
snapped. “And you shouldn’t either, by the way. Even more so.”

She heard him groan as he slipped out of bed and
rooted around for his underwear before slipping back in again. “This is as far
as I go,” he countered.

“Better.”

“Now can we go to sleep?”

She snuggled back against him in answer, feeling his
heartbeat against her, the soothing thump of her forever right there.

Thursday, January 27
^th
 

“Stomp off the snow, sweetie. Like this,” she said, stomping
her feet on the porch mat, an armful of firewood in her grasp. Cara stood
beside her, stomping her feet too, one piece of firewood cradled in her arms
helpfully.

As Catherine opened the front door, Magnus shot past
them inside.

“Magnus!” Cara reprimanded. “You didn’t stomp the snow
off your paws!”

“We need to teach him better than that, don’t we?”
Catherine agreed, shutting the winter out behind them and walking over to the
hearth to set the wood on the metal hoop that held dwindling fuel for the fire.

“He’s shaking snow everywhere!” Cara squealed.

But Cara’s words were lost on Catherine as Fynn came
around the corner, ghostly pale, the phone in his hand hanging limply at his
side.

“What is it, Fynn? What happened?” she asked, her
heart rising quickly into her throat at the same time her stomach dropped out
of place. She immediately wrapped her arms around her midsection to protect the
hollowed out places, feeling herself as if to prove that she was there and
okay. Her eyes flashed to Cara first and then back to him. They were all fine
and safe and right there with each other. This wasn’t like Josey….

But that was exactly what came to mind when she saw his
face.
Oh God, something’s wrong.
The phone was still clutched in his
hand though, not falling and clattering to the floor at her mother’s feet like
it had that day. And her father wasn’t there to rush in and catch her mother
before she crumbled to the floor after it. Her mind raced along all of the
inroads of her heart, her life, at dangerous speeds—her parents, her brother’s
little family, Georgia’s young family, Drew and her husband and the boys—
God,
they’re Fynn’s only family left
! She felt ill, certain that what was on the
other end of the line was death itself, finding her again—calling her family
again. Just when she was truly happy. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. For a
moment she thought she saw Fynn mouth,
Josey drowned
. She was back in
those nightmarish moments all over again. She was tunneling in on herself,
everything slowing down around her, the sounds of life in the room seemed a
world away—the TV, Magnus’s collar jangling, Cara’s giggling—

Fynn wasn’t even looking at her, though. He was
looking at Cara, saying the same thing over and over again. Catherine tried to
calm her heart, breathe deeply, stay on her feet, stay in this world. “Magnus,
down!” she heard, now that her heartbeat wasn’t overwhelming all else. She was
back in Fynn’s house in Nekoyah; no longer trapped in a waking nightmare that
had coalesced past and present, recreating a moment that had haunted her since
childhood.

“Magnus, down!” Fynn commanded yet again, trying to
settle the spunky golden retriever. “The snow puts the dickens in him, Cara.” A
light tone of voice that didn’t match his pallor at all.

“Can you help her? I have to make a phone call,” he
said, turning to Catherine abruptly.

“Of course. Is everything okay?” she asked, worry
unguarded in her voice.

But he was already turning to leave the room, life
moving at a normal pace again, the sound of buttons being pressed and then his
buttery smooth voice, unintelligible, from the depths of the house.

She turned to Cara as lighthearted as possible. “Let
me get those boots off you.”

Cara came over and sat on the couch willingly, letting
Catherine tug off her boots and unzip her jacket. “Magnus wanted to dance with
me.”

“I’m sure he did. You’re the prettiest girl in the
room.”

She beamed; her chubby little-girl cheeks a bright
pink from the cold, her messy brown pigtails peeking out from under a pink and even
brighter pink striped hat. Catherine gathered her into a hug, suddenly worried
not for herself but for Cara. If Fynn had heard something about Catherine’s
family, he would have told her, not walked off into privacy. What if it was
Cara’s mom? No matter how much Fynn and Renée had prepared this little girl, it
would be awful to think she had come here to spend the week and have no home to
go back to after—

“There you two are!” Fynn spoke up suddenly from
behind them.

“We’ve been here all along!” Cara giggled.

“I got lost in this big castle,” he said, swooping in
to hug them both.

They had been getting along famously, everything
happy-happy-happy. At times it even felt like a real family of three. It was
warm and toasty and cozy and all the things it should be, but it was also
completely surreal to Catherine… at times entirely overwhelming. It wasn’t like
they hadn’t spent time as a threesome before, but now… with
the ring
on
her finger, these moments had
permanence
under the surface. Cara was
there with them—not just in the house, but everywhere. All the freedom that Catherine
had cultivated for herself her entire adult life was suddenly gone. She was
woken up in the morning. She was followed to the bathroom and watched intently
while she put on makeup. She couldn’t just eat when she was hungry; she had to
think of when and what Cara would eat too. And Cara needed constant supervision
and help—doing things and reaching things and making things. And she asked a
lot
of questions. Catherine was shadowed and tailed and basically never left
alone
.

She wondered if Fynn felt the same way. If it was
normal for her or even fair for her to feel that way. Perhaps he was used to
the idea of sharing his life with Cara; he’d known her since she was a baby and
had been preparing for this eventuality since before he met Catherine.
She
was the third wheel, the latest addition, the one who was out of place in the
equation.  

Fynn growled to add sound effects to his big bear
hugs. “I’m getting hungry,” he said.

“Don’t eat me!” Cara giggled.

“But little girls are such tasty treats!”

“But I’m a princess,” she said seriously, putting a
hand on Fynn’s heart that put tears in his eyes.

“Oh, forgive me your highness,” he said, unleashing
his arms, pulling back, and bowing to her.

“Why don’t I make both the bear
and
the
princess a snack,” Catherine offered.

“Yes—yes—yes!” Cara sang.

“Come on, Mr. Bear, I need some help.” She pulled Fynn
toward the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” she asked as soon as they were
alone.

The expression on his face was tortured. “It’s Renée.
I got a call—”

“What? Oh my God, is she—”

“She’s back in the hospital,” he said gravely, cutting
her off before she could say the “D” word. “She’s taken a turn for the worse.”

“Can I have hot chocolate?” Cara asked, wandering into
the middle of everything awful in her life right now without even knowing it.

“Why certainly, your highness,” Catherine said
tightly, curtseying. “Why don’t you go watch some TV and we’ll eat our snack in
the family room.”

“And then will we go to the mall?” she asked sweetly.

“Let’s just have our snack first, okay?” Catherine
said evasively; the mall was the least of her concerns at the moment. Once Cara
was safely out of earshot, she turned back to Fynn. “I don’t understand. They
just let her go home after Christmas. I thought she was stable. I thought—”

“They think she caught some kind of virus. Something
that wouldn’t do a thing to you or me,” he said angrily.

“So you need to take Cara back home?” She tried not to
feel anything but a sense of understanding even though a selfish part of her
was frustrated that their extra-long weekend was being ruined—
by a woman on
her deathbed,
Catherine Marie rightfully reminded her.

“No.”

“Excuse me?” She was sure she hadn’t heard him properly.

“Cara can’t be around her right now. Renée needs to
get stronger, and kids—they’re carriers of all those things her body is too
weak to fight off.”

“But what if she doesn’t get better? Cara never said
goodbye….” She knew what it was like to be haunted by that.

“Of course she’ll get better,” Fynn snapped, his eyes
flashing with pain and anger.

Catherine felt a chill sweep through her, unable to
begin to know how to respond. He was fooling himself if he believed that. Renée
was terminal. One of these close calls or hospital stays was going to be the
end. What if this was the one?

“She’s going to sign a DNR order,” he said, suddenly resigned,
giving into the truth. “She wants me to go and finalize the paperwork so she
knows that after she’s—that Cara is—that her guardianship is ironclad and she
doesn’t end up in foster—” But everything he tried to say was too hard to
finish as it all skirted around that place where his dear friend was dead and
her daughter orphaned.  

They stood staring at each other, a stalemate of
worry.