2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (23 page)

This was all so completely bizarre. Thinking back to
the conversation, Catherine wondered what on earth she’d been thinking. What
was the point she was trying to make, and how had
that
point led her to
this
point: on a plane with a five-year-old little girl buckled in next to her. All because
she was hurt that Fynn was otherwise going to leave Cara with Drew—a much
better mother figure, mind you (exceedingly qualified and pregnant yet again to
prove it).

Catherine knew that he probably thought he was being
helpful by having Drew babysit while he was in Iowa, but if she was going to be
Cara’s guardian mom or fill-in mom or whatever she would come to be, she needed
to be able to do
this
now, even though it terrified the hell out of her.

She felt a tug on her sleeve and turned to her charge.

“I want to have a plane like this when I’m growed up,”
Cara said simply.

“A plane? Really? Where will you park it?”

“In the garage.” She was adorably definitive.

“You’re going to need an awfully big garage,”
Catherine chuckled.

“Oh, I’ll have one.”

To be that certain!
She envied the little
fighting spirit that was so sure that it was perfectly possible to own a
passenger jet and park it at her house. Catherine didn’t think she’d ever told
anyone, but when she was little she was sure she’d own a mountain one day and
call it Mt. Catherina. And she remembered Josey was about Cara’s age when she
professed she was going to live under the sea like Ariel from
The Little
Mermaid
… but her sister’s seemingly innocuous dream made Catherine’s blood
run a few degrees colder. She pushed it back into the dark recesses of her
brain where she put stuff she hoped to lose. The problem was that one never
lost the things they wanted to discard, only the things that mattered.

“Where are we going again?” Cara asked, tugging her
sleeve for the hundredth time since they’d taken off.

“We’re going to New York City; where I live.”

“Why do you live there?”

“Because that’s where my job is.” 

“But why work there?” Cara asked, staring at her
expectantly.

“That’s where I got a job out of college.”

“Then how did you meet Fynn?”

“I was lucky,” Catherine admitted.  

“Are you going to come live with us?”

“Well, I—”

“You’re getting married to Fynn, right?”

“Yes.”

“So are you going to come live with us?”

She hesitated. She’d never really thought of it as
moving in with an “us”. It sounded so strange being interrogated by such a
little girl who had obviously taken ownership of Fynn.

“Well?” Cara demanded.

“After the wedding… I guess I’ll be moving to Nekoyah.”
She hadn’t actually thought this part through at all. Like how she would get
all her stuff out there—box it and ship it? freight on a train? hire movers? rent
a U-Haul? She had a decade-plus-some worth of independence to uproot and it
unsettled something deep in the pit of her stomach to even think about it.

“Does your wedding really cost goshmillion bucks?” Cara
asked, her eyes twinkling with amazement.

“Excuse me?”

“Fynn told my mommy that the wedding was going to cost
goshmillion bucks.”

“Gazillion?” Catherine asked bitterly, her skin
prickly with the realization that her fiancé obviously didn’t approve of the
wedding preparations he had left entirely to her.

“No, I think it was goshmillion. Is that even more?”
Cara asked innocently.

Catherine couldn’t believe it. Here she was trying her
ass off to be the kind and accommodating bride-to-be, offering to take Cara
with her back to New York and continue planning their wedding, and he was
talking behind her back about the cost of it all? He’d never mentioned a
thing
about the money to
her
.

They hadn’t discussed their financial situation at
all. On any level. Ever. When was the time to talk about such things? Was that
supposed to happen before the proposal? Before the wedding? Within the first
year? When? Maybe they should have said
something
by now. At least run
the proper reports and exchange them. Full disclosure: savings—slim-to-none; credit
cards—too many to count; 401k—not maxed for matching, to the chagrin of any
financial guru; CDs—dropped those for digital long ago; bonds—cashed them in last
decade; annuities—what the hell are those; mortgage—long-term renter, just
throwing money away; finance charges—stratospheric…. There was plenty of
conversation to have. On paper she looked “questionable” at best. But a lot of
the baggage she was carrying had only grown bigger at the cost of dating him.
He didn’t make it easy being in Nekoyah all the time. Loving him wasn’t cheap.

How did people do this whole combining lives thing?
How had Georgia done it? People always talked about the sweaty palms and
butterflies “love” part of relationships. They talked about the “moments”—when
they first kissed, first said the “L” word, first slept together. But the first
sharing of financial statements was hush-hush. Nobody warned you that there was
coming-together-as-one that happened monetarily as well as physically and
emotionally. Of course Georgia was no help—she married rich. When there was
ample money to go around, how difficult could it be? She was probably just
absorbed in.

Catherine wished someone gave seminars on the issue, warning
people about the ugly numbers game under a human merger. She had no idea how
the pieces of her marriage puzzle fit together. Maybe this is what jumping the
gun felt like.

Friday, January 28
^th

She made it exactly 17 hours, 9 minutes, and 22
seconds before she realized just how unprepared she was for this venture as
“babysitter” or “single mom” or whatever it was she was trying to be. And one of
those hours she was counting was actually a “gimme” what with the time change
from Minnesota to here. The only reason she even made it this long was because at
17 hours on the nose she’d found a single pouch of Pop-Tarts in the pantry
behind her curlers—how food got in there in the first place was beyond her. But
at least she’d fed them breakfast before getting on the road… that had to count
for something.

“Where are we going now?” Cara asked in awe.

Catherine had already dazzled her with the plane ride,
and the cab ride, and the festival of lights that was New York City at night. And
then to stay in an apartment for the first time in her life too! She’d
introduced Cara to so many new things, but now they’d reached the bottom of her
bag of tricks and unfortunately their next stop would be noticeably less
amazing.

“We’re going to visit my mom and dad,” she said
lightheartedly, trying not to show weakness, not to let on that she was totally
panicking underneath her cool exterior. She had no idea how to entertain a
child left in her care for days on end. She couldn’t cook at all, and suddenly
that little shortcoming was coming back to bite her. Who knew it really
was
a
useful skill. All those years of living alone it had seemed entirely
unnecessary, which explained why she had curlers and hair products in her
pantry—well, that and the fact that she had a tiny bathroom in which the only
storage space was an ancient medicine cabinet over the sink.

“Do they live in an apartment too?”

“No, they live in a house in the suburbs.”

“Where is Suburbs?” Cara asked studiously.

“The suburbs aren’t actually a town,” Catherine said,
smiling to herself. She hadn’t realized just how many normal conversational
words were new to someone Cara’s age. “The suburbs are….” And that is when she
realized she was entirely undereducated. She
knew
what they were, but
how to explain it to a child who has no frame of reference? “… It’s a word
people use to talk about a type of place that is outside the city but not in
the country. It’s where people live in neighborhoods and developments rather
than in apartment buildings or on farms.”

Cara nodded her head lightly, wheels in motion.

Before she could ask anything that would test her
knowledge further, Catherine said, “They live in Chesterton.”

“Is that where Chester Cheetah lives?” Cara giggled.

I wish,
Catherine thought. “It’s in
Pennsylvania.”

“I’ve never been to Pennsylvania.”

“Just like I’ve never been to Iowa; where you live.”

Their conversation flowed easily enough, mostly with
Cara asking questions about things they passed along the way. Then they hit the
Jersey Turnpike and she started asking about why they hardly seemed to be passing
anything along the way, and why you had to pay to drive on this road and not
other roads… and why the exits were so far apart… and why the signs were all in
different colors… and whether you
had
to stop at “rest stops”—like it
might be against the law not to. Actually, the answer to that last one was
yes
,
you had to stop, because otherwise it went against the law of nature, mainly
that little girls had tiny bladders. Catherine did the best she could with the
trivia, but she had a sneaking suspicion she was too stupid to have children.

“We’re here,” she said with relief as she pulled to a
stop in front of her childhood home.

Cara’s eyes fluttered open in surprise, having fallen
asleep about ten minutes out after exhausting her cache of questions.

She didn’t even have the key out of the ignition when
she saw her mother—dishtowel in hand—evacuating the house, pulling her father
along with her. Her mouth was moving excitedly as she headed straight for the
car.

Catherine tried to get unbuckled and out before her
mother reached them, but there she was, wily and quick Elizabeth Hemmings, at
the back door, opening it and releasing Cara.

“You must be Miss Cara,” her mother said, giving her a
hug. “I imagine you two girls are
starving
after the ride, and you’re in
luck because I just made lunch.” She released Cara from the hug and then took
her by the hand before turning to Catherine. “I hope you drove carefully—”

“We made it here, didn’t we?” As if that proved her
point better than anything.

Her mother gave her the hairy eyeball, telling her she
was out of line. “At least you put her in the backseat, but really, Catherine,
a phone book? She needs a proper booster seat.”

“I gave her a pillow too.”

Elizabeth Hemmings didn’t bother with a response as to
the merits of her daughter’s ingenuity. “We’ll all go out and pick one up after
lunch.”

“Shouldn’t Cara stay here until she has that booster—”

But her mother was already leading Cara up the
driveway, and Catherine could hear them chattering away to each other like they
were catching up on old times. She looked to her father who was standing
forgotten on the edge of the driveway. “Seems like Mom found a new friend.”

“Seems so,” he chuckled, eyes dancing. At least
he
looked happy to see her.

“I didn’t realize that calling ahead would prompt
service like that.” She gestured toward the front door that was already closing
behind her mother and Cara.

“She has been positively buzzing for two hours.
Cleaning. Cooking. She even ran to the store to get ‘foods fit for the young’.”
All things Catherine hadn’t given a single thought to doing when she got home last
night or even when she got up this morning. As a nurturing sort she was
completely inept.

“And she called all her friends,” her father warned.
“So don’t be surprised if a steady stream of old blue-hairs starts showing up.”

Catherine giggled at the picture her father brought to
mind. “Really?” she asked, bewildered. Elizabeth Hemmings was excited about her
visit? Not that she had paid a bit of mind to her daughter except to point out
where she was being lax, but the warm and inviting and entirely grandmom-ish
welcoming of Cara made up for that. She had never really considered how she
would introduce Cara into the conversation, let alone the family, and here she
was being sucked right into Elizabeth’s waiting and capable arms.

Her parents had known about Cara from the beginning,
when they first met Fynn, and at the time she was sure she’d seen a dubious
look on her mother’s face that her daughter would be able to handle a grown-up
relationship that involved mothering a child—which was entirely different than
becoming a mother from the egg-and-sperm moment it seemed. That was actually
part of what lit the fire under Catherine that she
could
handle a
relationship with a man who would already have a child to raise as his own.
Maybe she should thank her mother for that someday….

“Don’t forget to get Cara’s things from the car!”
Elizabeth yelled out the front door, closing it again quickly.

“Like I’m going to make Cara come out later and get
her own stuff,” Catherine groused.

“Some things aren’t worth the battle, my daughter,”
her father said, pulling her into one of his glorious hugs and then helping
unload the trunk.

Saturday, January 29
^th
 

“You can’t actually wear that dress,” Tara said, gravely
serious.

“What do you mean I can’t wear this?” Catherine
twirled toward Georgia for her opinion. There was nothing wrong with the dress.
Definitely nothing wrong enough to provoke such grim certainty.

“I think it has potential,” Georgia said with a curt
nod, the same answer she’d given to the last eighteen dresses Catherine had
tried on.

“But is it
me
?” she asked, waffling under the
weight of Tara’s disapproval.

“I think it’s pretty,” Cara offered, skipping by on
her way to another rack of dresses within which to hide. Considering she had
said the same of the lavender-hued dress across the way, Catherine was pretty
certain that her opinion was of little help.

“It depends on what you’re going for,” Georgia said,
tapping her pen against her mouth and looking her up and down, then walking
slowly around her where she stood on her pedestal.

“I’m going for
me
,” she stressed—
why else
would I ask?
She remembered the boys back in high school complaining that
they asked a girl out because they liked the way she looked, only to have her
change everything about her appearance for the date. False advertising.

“You can always go ‘80s fantabulous,” Tara noted,
dragging a doozy out from one of the back racks that looked more Halloween
costume than wedding dress—satin, satin, and extra-shiny satin. “This and some
powder blue eye shadow from lid to brow and you’ll be stunning.” She kissed her
fingers like a high-end chef.

“Can you just be serious?” Catherine snapped sternly.

“Who says I’m not being serious? Maybe I want to rock
an ‘80s bridesmaid dress—it could be a whole theme. Besides, this would be
better than that thing
you’re in right now. That’s a regular death trap.”

It might not be perfect… perhaps too puffy… and the
ruffles are kind of large… maybe even a bit overboard…. But a death trap? What
are they going to do, come unlatched and strangle me?
Catherine focused on
Georgia and mouthed,
help
.

“Just take the pictures so we can move on to the next
dress,” Georgia commanded sternly. They’d given Tara the job of photographing
her in each dress, hoping it would keep her from having an opinion, but instead
of just quietly shooting the dresses, she’d proven herself capable of shooting off
her mouth too.

“I’m just trying to save you the trouble,” Tara said
simply.

“What trouble?” Catherine asked.

“Your wedding, let alone your entire marriage, will be
an utter nightmare if you wear that.” Tara gestured toward the dress she was wearing
with distaste.

“What the heck are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the cut and the fit. Doesn’t it
remind you of anything?” Tara looked at her expectantly and rolled her eyes
when Catherine just stood there dumbfounded. “Princess Diana?” she prodded.

“Di’s was kind
of similar….” Georgia reappraised
the dress. “But this one is much more modern and less… stodgy than hers. Less
material overall. Although the color is spot-on.” Of course she would know
exactly what Princess Diana’s wedding dress had looked like considering she’d
been wedding obsessed since she was something like seven years old. But Tara,
too? All while Catherine couldn’t remember what she herself had worn last week?

“Mmm-hmm, it is. Just like hers. And she ended up
divorced and then dead. You don’t want that now, do you?” Tara challenged.

Catherine stood her ground the best she could, seeing
as how she was on a tiny raised circle of platform and she was feeling a little
woozy all of a sudden. “Maybe if it was her
exact
dress, or even an exact
replica
of her dress. But this isn’t even really in the same ballpark.”
She thumbed toward Georgia who had just corroborated that information, but who was
now too busy to back that up as she was on the phone again, probably checking
on Nell.

“Close enough that I wouldn’t chance it,” Tara shuddered.

“Then how about that one?” Catherine pointed to the
next dress in line for the dressing room.

“Seriously?” Tara smirked. “The tulle halter? Tiny
seed pearls all over the bodice?
That
is definitely Jennifer Anniston.
Another gruesome wedding end awaits the wearer. Five years tops.”

“Where do you get this stuff from?” Catherine
demanded, frustrated that she’d brought the rainman of celebrity weddings along
for this excursion.

“Just a little extra something I keep on file up here.”
She pointed proudly at her head.

Catherine didn’t have time for superstition; the clock
was ticking on this wedding. But unfortunately she wasn’t above superstition either,
so Tara’s tidbits of wedding doom were seeding themselves in her mind at this
very moment.

“Oh, and that one over there with the circle design…. That
is Jackie O. all over again,” Tara spouted, high with power and ready to abuse
it.

“I didn’t even plan on trying that on,” Catherine
practically whimpered, wondering if there was a single dress on this planet
that didn’t have some kind of bad juju.

“Good, because I can’t let you wear it. Next thing you
know you’ll be telling me you’re honeymooning in Texas and—”

“What’s wrong with you?” Georgia demanded, hanging up the
phone and eyeing Tara sharply.

“I’m being a good friend who
cares.
”

“You’re giving her a complex,” she said, pointing
toward Catherine who looked ready to crumble into a fetal position. “All of
this from the woman who will eat fries off of a stranger’s plate at a greasy
diner—fries left behind for the garbage. What about the doom that comes from
that? Like a bad case of food poisoning.”

Tara sloughed off the charges. “I don’t eat out of the
garbage.”

“Someone else
touched
them. They might have
sneezed on them or licked them or—”

“I only did it twice. And in my defense, I was
really
drunk. Besides, you know alcohol is antiseptic; it’ll kill anything. I’m
standing here now, aren’t I? … But this—we are talking about a lifetime
commitment here, not just a midnight snack. You don’t tempt the fates when it
comes to a wedding.”

Catherine nodded her head the slightest bit,
hypnotized by Tara’s diatribe that made all the sense in the world to her right
now.

“Don’t listen to her,” Georgia commanded, looking deep
in Catherine’s eyes and speaking slowly and clearly like she was too simple to
understand otherwise. “Now, sweetie, take this dress and try it on. I think
it’s going to be perfect. Maybe even
the
one.” She shoved a strapless
dress with a full tulle skirt at her. It looked like it belonged on a prima
ballerina.

Tara gasped as the dress exchanged hands.

“What? What is it?” Catherine dropped the dress right
then and there like she was just handed beautifully disguised bad luck.

“Seventy-two days,” Tara murmured.

“We don’t even have that much time,” Georgia noted,
looking at her calendar. “That’s why you need to shut your—”

“The marriage. I give it seventy-two days if you wear
that.” Tara pointed at the offensive material.

Catherine and Georgia both stared at her, pinning her
in place.

“Kardashian ring a bell?”

“You cannot compare Kim Kardashian’s wedding or
relationship to Catherine’s with Fynn. That’s ridiculous,” Georgia humphed.

But Catherine wasn’t so sure. She was kind of short
like Kim. And Fynn was a lot taller than she was; maybe not the same height
difference as Kim and her man, but still taller. And she did have brown hair
and brown eyes like Kim. And she was voluptuous too. Everything was eerily falling
in line. “What am I supposed to do?” Catherine practically wailed to Tara,
ignoring reason in favor of unabashed superstition.

“Well, whatever you do, don’t go shopping for a dress at
a consignment sale or garage sale or whathaveyou. If you think a design replica
is bad, actually wearing a dress someone already got divorced or jilted or dead
in is far, far worse.”

Catherine shivered at the totally gross image of a
dead body in a wedding dress.

“It happens—I think I saw a special on
20/20
,”
Tara assured her.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Georgia said, the voice of
reason sounding slightly less than certain herself. “I can see why you’ve yet
to be married.”

“It’s a risky proposition, most definitely,” Tara
agreed.

“Help me. We don’t have all the time in the world here,”
Catherine reminded them, cocking her head toward a rack of veils where they
could all make out the ghostly form of a little face and hands under layers of
tulle. Cara had been reasonably content all day so far, hopping from one dress
shop to another, but too much longer and they were only asking for trouble. “Not
every dress in this place is possessed, right?”

“
This one
has great vibes. I can almost feel
Duran Duran in the fabric—no, wait, that’s Tears for Fears,” Tara said, dancing
the ‘80s special over to her, the shiny glare off the material making Catherine’s
eyeballs ache.

“I’m hungry,” Cara said, tugging on her arm.

“We’ll get a snack in a minute.”

“You said that
five
hours
ago,” she moaned
theatrically, walking over to the couch where Georgia had taken up residence
and throwing herself across it. Catherine couldn’t help but crack a slight
smile. She remembered being that dramatic—last week when Fynn still hadn’t sent
her the addresses for his side of the guest list.

“Remind me why we brought that one along.” Tara pointed
to the sprawled five-year-old. “It’s not like she’s being any help.”

“Welcome to my world,” Georgia piped up, eyeing Tara.

“She’s part of the wedding party,” Catherine warned. “She
needs a dress to wear too.” Actually, she would have preferred to leave Cara
with her mom, but she got the distinct impression that would be unacceptable
when her mother said,
and what are you girls up to today?
Definitely a
passive-aggressive statement that Elizabeth Hemmings
was not
babysitting.
She’d been more than willing to entertain Cara yesterday and let Catherine tag
along, and they’d spent hours shopping together, but now that Cara had a proper
booster seat, she was holding her daughter’s feet to the fire to follow through
with her commitments as caregiver.

“Well, I guess her vote counts then, and I second the
call for a snack break,” Tara announced.

“This shouldn’t be so hard,” Catherine said under her
breath to herself.

Georgia humphed loudly, while Tara let out something
more like a raspberry.

“What’s that about?” she challenged them both.

“Didn’t you realize who you were shopping with?” Tara
asked.

Georgia cut a look at Tara, incensed.

“I’m talking about
her
,” Tara stressed through
gritted teeth, thumbing toward Catherine.

“
Me
?” Now it was Catherine’s turn to be
incensed. “You’re the one adding dead brides into the equation.”

“I’m just trying to help. If you weren’t so picky—”

“Picky?”

“No brilliant white?” Tara reminded her.

“That was Georgia’s advice,” Catherine countered,
selling out her friend.

“She
is
over thirty,” Georgia leveled, like
there was no fighting the numbers.

“What the hell should age have to do with anything?” Tara
exclaimed. “If you want to wear white, then wear it. You’re driving me nuts
with the whole ‘this one is too white and that one is too cream and this ivory
is really more of an ecru—’”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

Catherine whirled around on her pedestal to face the newest
offender, wishing she didn’t have to hold her dress up at the same time to
prevent flashing whoever had the gall to call her ma’am while she was wearing a
wedding dress
. Ma’am was bad enough any day… but now? Here? She was a
blushing bride—in the prime of her life—not a
ma’am
.

“Is this yours?” the saleswoman asked, probably
another decade older than herself. Her bony and ringless, spinstery pincer grip
was clamped firmly around a small child’s arm.
Always a bridal dress
saleswoman, never a bride,
Catherine thought piteously.

She looked to the couch where she’d last seen Cara, as
if this little girl couldn’t possibly be one in the same, then turned back to
the woman. “
That is my daughter
,” she enunciated forcefully, “and you
can take your hands off of her right now.”

“She was playing in the veils,” the saleswoman
tattled, releasing Cara’s arm distastefully.

“Thank you so much,” Catherine said, suddenly syrupy
sweet. “I think I’ve made my decision.”

“Wonderful! And let me say that that dress is truly
exquisite on you.” The woman suddenly amped into gushing sales mode.

“Actually, I meant that we’re done. I would like to
think that when my daughter is sent to pick out a veil for her mom so she can
be part of the wedding, that a true saleswoman would
help
her, not drag
her around like she was some kind of—”

“Vermin,” Tara offered quickly, making both Georgia
and Catherine look at her confused—since when had Tara become Yosemite Sam?

“Well I never—”

“You should probably think about having that removed
while you’re at it,” Tara said.

Stricken, the woman touched a large yet benign-looking
mole on her face.

“I’m talking about that stick—the one up your ass.”

Catherine watched Georgia pull Cara close, her hands
moving to cover little ears right before the swearing started.
Thank God.
She
didn’t need to send Cara home with a burgeoning vocabulary.

*****

“Next time you might want to think about waiting until
I am actually ready to leave before you do that,” Catherine noted once they all
met up on the sidewalk outside the shop. As it was she’d been completely
handcuffed, still wearing the dress she wasn’t going to purchase, while the
rest of her posse disbanded immediately—Georgia taking Cara out of the store and
Tara wandering off to godknowswhere.