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

Missing her point, Lacey added, “They were just so
darling!”

Nothing like giving yourself a pat on the back in
the process
.
Catherine turned toward her mother. “I guess I just
didn’t make the cut then.”

“You made it quite clear at Thanksgiving and Christmas
just where your priorities were, so I was giving you space for the holidays. My
gift to you. That was what you wanted, right?” she offered, putting her
daughter in her place.

“My
gift
?” she asked incredulously. Her mother
was a prizefighter. She knew this and yet she continued to be caught off-guard by
a sneaky punch she never saw coming.

“I couldn’t wrap it, but certainly you noticed,”
Elizabeth led her. “I didn’t even ask you if you went to mass, let alone
complain that you wouldn’t be coming to exchange gifts or have dinner with us.
I left you to your long-distance
thing
.” The whole time she landed
verbal jabs she continued to dry and stack dishes with alarming speed.

“Where is Fynn anyway?” Connor piped up, opening a
whole new can of worms. Catherine looked at him, wondering if he knew
that
something was up and was stirring the pot. But his face was wholly devoid of
mischief.

“Snowed in…. Or maybe I’m snowed in….” She hadn’t paid
attention to that petty detail in the middle of the breakup mess—it was snowing
here, there, and everywhere right now, what was the difference? “The flight was
canceled,” she mumbled evasively, hoping to leave it at that.

“Classic!” Connor guffawed. “Anything that could go
wrong will happen to you, sis.”

“Thanks,” she groused.

“Life is real, not ideal,” Elizabeth said sadly,
making Catherine wonder if the sad part of that was pity for her plight or if
her mother was speaking of her own misfortune of having an unexpected and
uninvited guest for the night—a useless daughter who couldn’t just settle down
and have a family already.

With that welcome, she couldn’t help but realize that
it would have been easier if her parents had never given up their log cabin dream
of moving to Wyoming.
Then she wouldn’t have had a home to run home to now
that her life was in the shits. But as far as Elizabeth Hemmings was concerned,
in no uncertain terms, a grandchild was too precious a resource to waste from
half a country away—
Damn you, Connor, and your procreating self!

“Catherine Marie, where are your shoes?” her mother
exclaimed, in the same tone she had often used over the years when she caught
her daughter
wearing
shoes in the house—muddy shoes… on the carpet.
Elizabeth Hemmings was known to invoke Catherine Marie whenever she thought
Catherine was being insouciant about the rules of the house or life in general.
It seemed that was the whole purpose of having a middle name, using that
Christian name to shame children into submission. Catherine Marie always fell
in line; she always did whatever her mother said.

Catherine Marie was a ninny.

All she’d wanted was to come back home and gorge
herself on a home-cooked meal, like the good old days when she’d also had no
life and no prospects but at least had a whole heart. Instead she was
surrounded by all of Chesterton, dressed in their casual holiday finest, while
she was trapped in the wrong generational dimension, dressed in her mother’s
casual holiday finest. But there’d been no fighting Elizabeth Hemmings’ supreme
forces of order and event etiquette when she threw her dishtowel over her
shoulder and whisked Catherine upstairs to the master closet before guests
arrived and saw her unkempt daughter. Fifteen minutes later she had been
transformed from head to toe, clomping downstairs in her mother’s clunky
old-lady heels to find the house practically standing room, like guests had
materialized out of thin air—everyone wondering why one of the Hemmings kids
was such a loser without a spouse or a family or even her own clothes to wear.

Her mother was still slender and stylish for a woman
in her sixties and for all intents and purposes her sophisticated-senior look
was an upgrade—slightly short burgundy slacks and a silver-threaded twinset
designed to bring out the gray highlights that, if they actually existed, would
certainly make Catherine suicidal. But she felt like she was playing dress-up
against her will when all she really wanted was to run back upstairs and throw
herself across her childhood bed in a full-bodied tantrum of self-absorbed
grief. That was what she’d come dressed for in the first place—yoga pants and a
sweatshirt that would have afforded her the most flexibility for kicking and
screaming. Fitting fashion for a woman who had just yanked the reins on her
relationship and brought it stumbling and sputtering to a stop in that place
where she’d said, “Maybe the cancelation is for the best. Maybe it’s just what
we need to wake up to the reality of this whole situation. We’re different
people. Worlds apart.”
So dramatic
! “Maybe we should take some time and see
other people and figure out what we really want.”

Idiot!

All because of a stupid freak snow storm that
proved
to her that she and Fynn shouldn’t be together. That they had to stop fooling
themselves and wake up to the reality that their weekends-only relationship was
just too crazy to keep up with. Besides, it was obvious that Fynn was hardly broken
up about not seeing her on New Year’s Eve—he’d been completely level and calm
and ridiculously even-keeled when he told her all flights were grounded because
of the weather. He even made platitudes that they’d seen each other for an extra-long
weekend at Christmas, like that would somehow make up for missing out on seeing
each other entirely this weekend—it was something like that; she’d blacked out
with frustration somewhere along the way. Whatever it was that he’d said it was
obvious he wouldn’t be pining away for her, threatening to hop a snowplow and
drive all the way from Minnesota to New York just to be with her. He sounded
more like we’ll-try-again-next-weekend guy than he did like snowplow man. So she
did the only thing she could do: she dumped him.

Why can’t I have it all? Georgia found the love of
her life in New York, in the next apartment building. And now they have a house
in the Jersey suburbs and a kid and a dog. The whole nine. Why was my guy in
Nekoyah, Minnesota? Why did it have to be so complicated—all those miles, all
that vacation time? My relationship was on credit! I had to stop buying shoes
just to keep seeing him! It was economically infeasible. Any business
professional would have said to steer clear of our stock from the beginning. A
shaky foundation—

“Mom, where do you want these?”

Catherine whirled in place in the living room, facing
Connor, who stood before her with a platter in each hand.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.

“Did you just call me
Mom
?” she seethed.

“It was just—I mean the clothes… and the hair,” he stammered,
confused.

Catherine touched the twisted updo self-consciously.
She’d let her mother have carte blanche on her whole façade, going into some
alternate state of being uncharacteristically agreeable just so she didn’t have
to admit why she was really here looking like hell. She certainly hadn’t wanted
to admit that this was just the first of what would be many Fynn-less holidays
in her daughter’s future.

“How did I know that you aged thirty years in the last
twenty minutes?” he chortled. “Remind me not to have what you’re having.” He
nodded toward her wine glass—her chalice of security in the midst of the party
masses.

“Yeah, well you’re going bald,” she retorted.

He touched his ever-thinning hair. “Well, at least I
was invited.”

“At least I’m not a total ass-hat.”

“Catherine!” her mother gasped.

Out of her periphery she could see her mother’s dishtowel
drop to the carpet. “But he was the one—” she pleaded.

“You know better than that.” 

“But—”

Catherine watched her mother as she picked up the
dishtowel and walked out of the room, folding it as she went. Folding was
calming to Elizabeth Hemmings. She folded anything and everything. Once she
folded Catherine’s homework because it was sitting nearby during a tense phone
conversation. Catherine didn’t even fold her laundry.

“Now look what you did. You upset our dear mother,”
Connor taunted, putting the platters down on the coffee table. As he
straightened he took several mushroom caps with him and popped them into his
mouth, asking around them, “So, you married yet?” His joker grin made even more
so by inflated mushroom cheeks.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, hoping the
truth of her relationship status was undetectable under the color of her
growing anger.

“After the whole proposal incident last spring… dinner
at Trivor’s with Mom and Dad,
I figured
you and Fynn
had
to have gotten hitched by now,” he said, hardly
finishing what was in his mouth before adding a few more.

“That wasn’t a proposal; it was an introduction,” she
growled lowly, wanting to keep the conversation out of party circulation. If
they weren’t among company she would have already pounced on him, slapping and
biting.

“Mom, Dad… this is my fiancé,” he guffawed. “I’d say
that’s a passive aggressive proposal if I ever heard one.”

“Like you’ve ever heard one,” she barked. Hardly a
pithy comeback.

“Like I just said, though, I did hear one,” he jabbed
again. “By the way, how long were you dating before you popped the—”

“It wasn’t a proposal!” she screeched, stopping
everything in the room for a moment and turning all eyes on her. “I wasn’t a proponent
of that
proposal
,” she corrected loudly, trying to throw everyone off
her scent.

When all eyes had finally turned away and the hum of
background conversations began again, she shot him a look to kill. “I said
Fynn-ancé
,”
she admitted through gritted teeth, setting the record straight. “An honest
mistake.”

“Priceless,” he said, a satisfied smile on his lips.

She should have known it would only be a matter of
time before he would bring the whole humiliating thing up again. But what did
it matter anyhow? She’d done that less than forty-eight hours into their
relationship and Fynn was still with her… or had been with her right up until a
few hours ago—

“If meeting the parents under those circumstances
didn’t scare him off, I guess he’s around for the long haul, God bless him.”

She gulped; her stomach a roiling pit of regret.

“What’s your problem? You sick or something?” he
asked, reaching down with both hands, one on each tray, double-fisting hors
d’oeuvres.

“Those aren’t your own personal plates you know.” She
gestured at the serving platters he’d demolished, her only defense to act like
he disgusted her completely.

“What are you going to do about it?” he challenged.

“Tell Mom,” she threatened, battling back with all the
grace of a five-year-old.

“Well, I see you two are up to your old tricks.”

“Dad!” Catherine exclaimed, snuggling into his strong,
warm, and welcoming embrace—the smell of Polo engulfing her like a force field
of protection.

“You know how perfect your mother likes things to be. Can’t
you guys behave for just a few hours?” he asked, pulling out of the hug and
leveling a “humor her” warning upon each of them.

Catherine felt properly put in her place.

“So what do I owe the honor of a visit from my dear
daughter?” William Hemmings asked. “Nobody even told me you were here!”

“That’s ‘cuz you were in the basement, Pop. Hiding,”
Connor said knowingly.

They all knew that William Hemmings was entirely antisocial.
A singular homebody to the core, his home was his sanctuary. On occasions when
his wife’s socializing energies overwhelmed the home, William went to the
basement or some other far corner of the house to putz. The scope of tonight’s
events was far beyond anything her mother had hosted in years.
If he can
handle this for a night, I can handle this.

“Is everything okay?” her father asked, ignoring his
son in favor of his daughter.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said quickly.

“No problems getting here? You know I hate you driving
in the snow.”

“No problems at all.”

Lacey came into the room with her porcelain skin and
silky brown hair that was just on this side of black, bringing Niki and that
same stunning but cold exterior she always had. She nodded toward Catherine. “I
could run home to get you something to wear, you know. I wouldn’t mind at all,”
she offered.

“I’m fine,” Catherine said. It seemed fine was about
the best she could do for her emotional vocabulary this evening.

“It wouldn’t be any trouble,” she assured her.

Catherine didn’t really know what to make of the
offer. Lacey was stuffy and stiff and she found her to be absolutely grating.
Is
she really trying to be nice or is she just saying that I look like a total
douche?

“I think you look beautiful, sweetheart,” her father
said, kissing her French twist.

But of course he’d said the same thing when she wore
the culottes that Aunt Judy made for her… to a birthday party… where everyone
else was in designer jeans. And the same words when she got that awful mullet
when she was twelve. And so many times, without the slightest hitch, even
though her face was one blaring case of acne in her teens. He was completely
biased.

“She needs to be changed,” Lacey announced, handing
Niki off to Connor.

“Aw, come on.”

“I fed her. You change her.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Grow some boobs and I’ll gladly start changing her,”
Lacey laughed.

“
I’ll
do it,” William piped up, making them all
stop in their tracks and stare at him. Catherine wasn’t sure he had ever changed
a single diaper in his life. But he ignored their shock and awe and grabbed his
granddaughter lovingly. I’ll be in the basement,” he said, winking and taking
the diaper bag off Lacey’s shoulder. He marched out of the room with a mission
he seemed all too happy to accept.

“But it’s too cold down—”

Connor touched his wife’s arm and shook his head. “He
isn’t actually taking her to the basement. He just means that he’s taking a
breather from the party for a while. Niki could probably use one too.”

Catherine watched her brother gather his wife into a
hug and suddenly it was like she no longer existed anymore.
Get a room
,
she thought snarkily.