2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (10 page)

“Can you believe that?” she growled, looking to Fynn
for corroboration that what just happened was rude.

“Believe what?” he asked, like there was nothing hinky
on his radar at all.

“That they went off like that ‘to get settled’. Who
does that?” She’d wiped her slate clean for the day, like a proper hostess,
there for her guests. Nothing to do. Nowhere to be. “She’s probably in there
right now bouncing a quarter off of the bed to check my hospital corners.”

“What?” Fynn’s face was screwed up in confusion.

“That’s what people do.”

“People?” Dubious.

“The pros. And don’t think I didn’t see the way my
mother looked at the stack of sheets in the linen closet. My flat sheets aren’t
folded into perfect rectangles, and don’t get me started on the fitted
nightmare in there.

“Paranoia will destroy you…. You know that, right?”

Catherine groaned.

“They’re just tired. It was a long trip. Let them get
settled or decompress or rest or whatever. Not everyone is out to get you.”

“Come on, I’ve made that trip over and over and I
never once did that to you.”

“That’s because you were always throwing yourself at me
the moment you got here. And remember, we took a lot of naked naps afterward so
obviously you also needed your rest.”

She rolled her eyes. “All I’m saying is this is going
to be the longest two weeks ever if she can’t just sit and talk to me about… anything.
This house isn’t big enough for the two of us to avoid each other. We have to
have something in common.”

“Don’t get all riled up. They’ve been here all of
twenty minutes.”

“I’m not getting riled up. I am just pointing out a
fact. Like the fact that she didn’t even ask about me or the baby. Didn’t even
want to know anything at all.”

“I thought you were going to spit nails if she even
said one word.”

“I never said that.”

“I think your exact words were, ‘You’re going to have
to hold me back, Fynn, or so help me I’ll spit nails if she says anything about
how big I’ve gotten—’”

“That’s quite enough out of you.” Firm. But she was
stunned because if that was what she’d said, “spit nails”, and she wasn’t conceding
to it just yet, not without concrete evidence (a tape, something), then it was
happening already. Her mother had planted all kinds of things deep in her
subconscious and they were going to come to the surface more and more.

He sighed lightly. “Listen, I have some work to do.”

“You would,” she grumbled.

“Wow, you are really being something else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Something other than the woman I love and married
and—”

That did it. The tears started burning in her eyes.
She needed Fynn to be on her side. It was the two of them against her parents.
And he didn’t get it.

“Like I said, I have some work to do. If I do it now,
I’ll be around when everyone’s together. A buffer for you,” he acquiesced.

“But what am
I
supposed to do? I have been so
busy getting ready for this moment; now it’s here and I can’t just sit and
twiddle my thumbs.”

“Why don’t
you
rest. Lie down and take a nap.” Words
he called back to her as he was already halfway out the door to the garage.

“I’m not tired,” she humphed. And she wasn’t. She was
hungry. Reuben hungry. No wonder, it was just about that time. She would
usually be making her way to the diner, enjoying her afternoon snack, then
heading home for Cara. Could she actually leave? Walk out? Would that be any
ruder than, say, getting settled in?

She couldn’t believe that in the blink of an eye
everyone had left her behind. She flopped onto the couch, staring at the tree
and the stockings, noting what a difference a year could make. It wasn’t just
her and Fynn anymore, and it wouldn’t be for at least eighteen years to come. Not
that their life together had ever really been about just them. From the
beginning, Cara had been considered in every decision they’d made. They’d
always been a party of two-plus. Encompassing her in their love and life was
tantamount and now they would add another little girl to the mix. Unplanned?
Yes. But not thoughtless.

She rubbed her belly, caressing the mound that was
soon enough going to be a living and breathing person in her arms. Eve. It was
exciting and terrifying all at once. Two little girls growing up in this
wonderful home that she and Fynn would fill with love and life. Maybe even
another baby someday.

“Were you resting?”

Catherine startled, sitting up to attention as her
mother came back in the room. “No. I was just taking a… moment.”

“Your father is napping, though he would never admit
it. Resting his eyes,” she snickered.

“Of course,” Catherine smiled. As far as William
Hemmings was concerned, that was all he ever did. She was surprised he’d ever
slept a wink his entire life.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” her mother asked.

“Of course.”
Why? Do I look like hell, Mom? Bags
under my eyes? Dark circles?

“Because you do realize that once the baby comes, that
is all out the window. You need to store up some energy if you can.”

“It’s not like collecting nuts for the winter,”
Catherine joked.

“You need to sleep whenever you can. At least you will
have Cara at school during the day, so whenever the baby sleeps, you need to
sleep.”

“I’m sure that I’ll manage,” she bristled slightly,
still sensitive to the all-knowing tone her mother used best.

“But, that is just some old advice that my mother gave
me that I didn’t listen much to either. Not until Josey. By then, with three of
you, I couldn’t even try to fight it. I was exhausted.”

Catherine softened her heart just a little.

“And I was still in my twenties at the time.”

Wow, she hadn’t even heard her mother unsheathe her
sword before it was plunged right into her gooey center, just missing Eve and
her vital organs.

“But all of you women today are having children
later.”

Damn straight we are. Lacey is over thirty too and
you think she’s the cat’s pajamas.

“I don’t know how you all do it.”

The medical community doesn’t have a problem with
it, or God for that matter, so what Elizabeth Hemmings thinks matters not one
little bit.

“I guess there are tradeoffs.” Elizabeth ran her hand
surreptitiously along the mantle like she wasn’t doing a dust check but rather
admiring the wood, even though they both knew well enough what was going on.

Forget your white glove, Mom?

Her mother suddenly turned to her. “So, your father
and I want to take you all out to dinner. Make it easy. Have a nice outing.
It’s been a busy day and nobody should have to be caught up in the kitchen—”

“I already had plans for dinner.”

“You did?” Elizabeth Hemmings seemed genuinely
surprised that her daughter knew what
plans
were.

“Yes, I did.” She wished that at this point she could
unleash some fabulous seven-course meal rather than takeout pizza.
Damn you,
Catherine Marie, for spending the last eight months eating and growing and not
getting a season pass for every cooking show on TV
. She could have learned how
to make something. But she’d taken the path of least resistance, relying
heavily on the fact that Fynn and Cara didn’t mind that her culinary tricks
were limited to things that were precooked, frozen, ready-to-heat.

“Well, isn’t that… nice,” her mother said, pausing
just enough to get her point across that it wasn’t exactly her idea of ideal.

But life is real, not ideal, Mother.

“Pizza? In Minnesota?” William Hemmings scoffed upon
hearing the dinner menu.

“It’s pretty good, Dad.”

“Some guy from New York owns the place,” Fynn offered.
“As one Italian in a city full of Italians he was limiting his profit share,
but here—no competition.”

Her father raised an eyebrow, a nice capitalist
success story speaking to his sensibilities. Catherine didn’t even know if it
was the real story about Frank’s pizza—not Franco’s or Luigi’s or Sal’s—but it
sounded good. And she wasn’t lying about the taste; it was pretty close to
home. Certainly better than any of the chains.

“It’s Cara’s favorite,” she added to further the cause.

“I
love
it!” Cara jumped up and down, willingly
playing the pawn.

“Well, how could I argue with a pro?” William chuckled
with grandfatherly good humor, like her opinion, six years in the making, was golden.

“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea,” her mother
added. Nice and agreeable.

Too agreeable.

Wonderful as in
wonderful
or wonderful as in
thank-god-we-don’t-have-to-eat-what-our-daughter-cooks? Catherine’s cynicism
was warranted considering she didn’t know that she had seen her mother eat
pizza more than a handful of times in her life. Meaning five. Five times. Each of
those times with a fork and knife for that matter because she didn’t like to
get her hands messy—the same hands that had been up a turkey’s ass over and
over through the years, pulling out innards and shoving in mountains of
stuffing. It seemed that pizza ranked higher than guts on the
eew
scale.

At least the pizza would be fresh, unlike anything her
daughter would be serving.
That
was probably what she was thinking when
she said “wonderful”. Catherine was quite sure she’d heard her mother open the
freezer door when she was resting on the couch. Not just a blip either, like
she accidentally did it, but a full-on stock-taking perusal. You could tell a
lot about a woman from the state of her freezer, and hers said nothing about
taste or nutrition.

This was the part about having company that no one
covered in all those homey magazines. She’d bought up a whole shelf of them and
studied them like she was studying for her SATs. It seemed that there was a widely
held assumption that anyone who had visitors over would already know a certain
basic level of cooking and entertaining. The articles that assured her she
would learn how to “Entertain in Thirty Minutes or Less” and “Create Company
Comforts” and “Give Your Guests a Gouda Time” were all directed toward people
entertaining
better
. What about some sort of remedial class? For people
who hadn’t so much invited their guests but had guests thrust upon them through
a mix of Catholic guilt and obligation? Where were those how-tos?

Catherine had considered bringing in outside help,
begging Drew for her services. Her sister-in-law had a knack for precooking and
freezing family-size dinners en masse. She had seen the mythical event before:
three different kinds of meatloaf in the oven with a full roasting pan of
chicken, chili simmering on the stovetop along with taco meat and the
beginnings of goulash, and in the slow cooker, a pile of chops slathered in
barbeque. Drew was a machine. And Catherine’s strong suit was reheating. A
win-win. But her mother would definitely smell a rat—a perfectly cooked and
seasoned rat.

“Hey, Pop-Pop, guess what?” Cara asked.

“What, noodlebug?”

“I play a mean game of Chutes and Ladders. I beat Cat
all the time. And my stuffed animals, too.”

“Whoa, those’re some serious stats,” he said, wiping
his brow dramatically.

“Why don’t you show Pop-Pop what you’ve got while I go
pick up the pizza,” Fynn offered.

“I’ll get the pizza,” Catherine countered, trying to
keep the edge out of her voice, though judging from the way Fynn reared back a
little in response, her words hit like a shockwave.

The standoff lasted all of two seconds, when her
mother said, “So long as you two have that settled, I will just whip up a salad
to round out the meal.”

It was classic Elizabeth Hemmings, passive-aggressively
making a statement that vegetables should always be served with a proper
dinner. Catherine waffled for just a moment before conceding to Fynn’s
pronouncement. “Oh, right, I
was
planning to make a salad,” she said,
hating that her mother had beat her to the punch. She’d bought the fixings and
everything, and now it sounded like she was only doing it because her mother
had pointed out the shortcoming.

“Would you like some help with that?” her mother
offered.

“There isn’t really that much to do, Mom. I can handle
it.”

“She hardly ever cuts herself anymore,” Fynn quipped.

Catherine shot him a look that could kill as he came
over and kissed her on the forehead. That kind of joking was fine between them,
but in front of her mother?

“So long as she doesn’t bleed on the food,” her father
chimed in from the other room.

“Cool!” Cara exclaimed. About the game they were
playing or the bloody vegetables—there was no telling.

“Anything else I can do?” Elizabeth asked as Fynn
slipped out the door.

“Really, I have it under control. Why don’t you play
with Cara and Dad?”

“If that is what you prefer.” In a tone that said it was
a shame to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Cara would love it if you would play,” Catherine
pointed out, making it less about her and more about the little girl who was
thrilled to have Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop here.

Catherine had never eaten and started clearing plates
so fast. Usually she liked to languish a little, let the digestion process
start before hopping up and turning to. But that was out the window with
Elizabeth Hemmings at the table. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to
get up first. Because that was what her mother did. At some arbitrary point she
would simply stand up, possibly in the middle of a conversation or maybe while
the rest of the table was still mid-bite. The woman took pride in determining
the end of a meal; the only warning to others, the time it took her to clear
her own plate to the kitchen sink. Growing up, Catherine had spent many of
those seconds shoveling the last forkfuls into her mouth on top of each other with
one hand and grabbing one last dinner roll in the clutches of her other, where
it was safe from clearing. And that, my friends, was why she had a vacuum-like
ability to suck down a meal to this day. It was about survival in the Hemmings
household.

But tonight she won. First up and first to start to clean
up, edging her mother out in a race to the sink that was definitely awkward, bumping
her out of the way in a play that she pawned off as clumsy, what with her
sizeable girth and lifelong predisposition—a strong case. Catherine filled the dishwasher
quickly and efficiently, a show of just how well she knew her way around that
chore, then went to work washing the bulkier pieces by hand.

“Let me help,” her mother said, hovering nearby,
grabbing a dishtowel for the second time in just a few short hours of arriving.

“Mom, it’s only a few things.”
Just like earlier
,
she wanted to add. “No need to—”

“Idle hands, Catherine Marie,” Elizabeth Hemmings said
with a tsk-tsk, not bothering to finish her diatribe about idle minds as she snatched
up the salad bowl her daughter had just released to the drying rack. She whipped
the dishtowel expertly around the bowl and reached for the nearest cabinet door,
pulling it open to see if it went there.

Catherine’s breath caught as her mother zeroed in on
the plastics cabinet, thankful that she hadn’t let Fynn get in her head where her
mother still had a strong hold. This moment justified everything she’d done in
preparing for her parents’ arrival.

“Where do you keep your serving bowls?” Elizabeth
Hemmings asked simply—no hitch, no sigh, no sharp intake of shock at what she
had just seen.

Tupperware test: passed.

Catherine let out the breath she’d been holding and
had to consciously stop herself from doing a fist pump in the air or a victory
lap around the island, which of course would have been met with bewildered
innocence on her mother’s part, like she had never lived a judgmental day in
her life and why on earth would she care about the state of her daughter’s plastic
containers.

The phone rang and Catherine wiped her wet soapy hands
on her belly without thinking, not that it wasn’t already wet from being
pressed up against the counter while she washed. She caught her mother’s glance
of disapproval that a dishtowel had not been employed for the purpose.
If
you weren’t using the dishtowel at this very moment, I would have had something
proper to dry my hands on.
Okay, so there was another towel still on its
matching hook, plus there was a drawer full of them at arm’s length. But that
was beside the point.

Catherine ignored the look and went for the phone on
the wall, the cord keeping her tethered too far from the sink. An impatient, “Hello?”

“Hello, Mrs. Trager?”

Ugh.
She should have used the other phone. At
least then she could have checked the caller ID. This was not a good time. Trying
to sound happy-go-lucky, “Mrs. Karnes! How nice to hear from you.” The proper
words and tone from Elizabeth Hemmings’ school of phone etiquette, while the
founder herself was right there in the room hearing every word.

“Mrs. Trager, of course you know that the Snow Party
is coming up next week, and that is the biggest event of the year for the
class.” Right down to business, no niceties to dispense, Catherine noted.

“I do, yes,” she agreed studiously, the gravity of the
situation not lost on her. She knew the score: one hundred points for Sophie
Watts and about one and a half for Catherine Trager.

“We had a wonderful success with the Christmas tree
decorating. Did you see the class tree over at Werner’s?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Didn’t Sophie do a wonderful job with the kids? The
ornaments were all so—”

“Elementary.” The word just came out, blurted like an
ugly little yawn-burp. Nothing she could do about it once her mouth popped
open. But it was true (a commandment, she’d like to add). The tree came in fifth.
Out of six grades. The fifth graders came in first, the fourth in second, and
so forth down the line. Just like Sophie Watts intended. Each class did their
time in all the places. William Hemmings would be disgusted. A rigged,
feel-good competition. Charmin-soft kids.

A well-I-never throat-clearing on Mrs. Karnes’s end of
the line right before she went in for the kill. “We are going to have Sophie
Watts head up the Snow Party since she is knee-deep into the season already—”

Head up?
The woman said it like it was the Midwest
division of a major corporation with a corner office in a skyscraper and key to
the executive washroom, not a one-story elementary school party.

“—there is so much to do and we know she can juggle it
all considering she has done countless parties for us over the years.”

Catherine was not deaf to the pronouns “we” and “us”
that she used and the fact that it relegated her to being one of “them”. And
Catherine also wasn’t dumb to the fact that Mrs. Karnes wasn’t pussyfooting
around this time. She used definitives. No wiggle room. No thinking, or hoping,
or considering. We are. We know. We think you suck at life.

“That sounds perfect. For everyone.” The epitome of
graciousness. In response, Catherine could hear Mrs. Karnes’s jaw drop, or at
least her dropping something on her end. The woman had been so certain that she
would be unreasonable; maybe beg to keep the position that no one—at least not
we
and
us—
wanted her to have. But she had her pride, and her mother
listening in. Elizabeth Hemmings had taken the opportunity to wash the dishes
now that the sink was free, keeping her hands and ears busy.

Mrs. Karnes collected herself. “Well, then, we do hope
that you will join us for the event. Come and take part with Cara.” A bone
tossed out as if it meant anything when in truth all parents were welcome at
every event.

“I will. Certainly,” Catherine choked out. Only for
Cara, of course. Because if not for Cara, she would be miles away from Sophie
Watts’s perfect Snow Party.
Gag me.

As she hung up the phone, her mother turned from the
sink. “So, do you want to keep washing or start drying?” she asked, like they
hadn’t skipped a beat.