2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (13 page)

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” She
gave Fynn her best puppy-dog impression and one last chance to be her savior.

He had his hands in his pockets, his flannel shirt
billowing in the cold air, looking every bit the hot piece he was, but then his
mouth opened and ruined it. “Can’t. I have to give a quote on that cabinet
refacing job.”

A likely excuse.

“Refacing?” William Hemmings’ face contorted in
distaste.

“Yeah, well, I’d rather build new cabinets from scratch,
but this is a cheaper way for people to upgrade their kitchens. And since it’s
just doors and other superficial upgrades, it means shorter-term jobs and more
of them. It’s all about building a broader client base.”

“You do what you need to do, Fynn, I’m sure that our
daughter is perfectly capable of showing us around town,” Elizabeth Hemmings
asserted.

“And if not, it’s not a big place. I’m guessing we can
find our way back on our own,” her father added, all in good fun.

“Well, you guys have a nice time. I’ll probably be
back before you are.” Fynn opened the car door for his bride who was wrapped up
tightly against the cold in a scarf and coat that limited her movements. Then
he shut her into her private hell and waved them all down the driveway.

Catherine wound along the streets of town, by Cara’s
school, through Drew’s neighborhood, pointing out the old and new parts, then heading
toward the lake Nekoyah surrounded, one of ten thousand in the state, as Minnesotans
were so proud to share that it was emblazoned on their license plates. “And
this is where I stayed when I first came out here,” she said, pulling into the
packed-snow parking lot of Rustic Haven Cabins, noting that not a single car
was in residence now, much like when she’d first arrived in mid-spring. “Through
the trees there’s a lake.” But there was no lake to see with the snow on top of
it, just empty white space.  

“Well, it certainly is… quaint,” her mother pointed
out in a grim monotone.

This from the woman who had been planning to move to
Wyoming and build a log cabin with her husband. Catherine had never been
comfortable with that story of their retirement. She’d come to think it was all
just a threat intended to induce her children into providing her with the
grandchildren she deserved—a theory that seemed to be backed up by the fact
that once their daughter-in-law got pregnant last year the plans were dropped
completely.

“It’s perfect,” her father said from the backseat.
“Next time we visit, we can make it a real vacation and stay in a cabin.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Catherine agreed,
much too excitedly. Her mother could have her very own kitchen to run and place
to clean and laundry to do rather than getting in the way at her place. Like
this morning, after she made the breakfast and cleaned up after the breakfast,
she commenced not just sweeping the floor, but instead Catherine found her on
her hands and knees, spot mopping with a dishrag—at least that was what Elizabeth
Hemmings called it. Catherine called it not leaving well enough alone.

“William, we are here to visit Catherine and her
family, not vacation.”

“But it’s really wonderful here in the summer, and
Fynn did all the renovations on the cabins. And you would enjoy the space and
freedom to come and go,” Catherine noted, trying to sell it. “You know, to
visit when you want and have time without all the madness of a house full of—”

“We always have that,” her mother reminded her. “Our
life at home is a vacation. No rushing. No noise. Nothing hectic about it. It is
kind of nice to be caught up in the middle of things.”

Catherine noticed the wistfulness in her mother’s words
and was floored. Elizabeth Hemmings had always been so busy cleaning and
straightening and
shushing!
around the house behind her family. Now she
missed it?

“Is there good fishing here?” her dad asked, saving
them from what was dangerously close to a “moment”.

“Fynn says so. He hasn’t gotten me out fishing.” She
shook her head with force.

“You wouldn’t go with me either. ‘
Eeew, Dad, that’s
gross
’.”

She vaguely remembered him trying to prod both her and
Connor to go. A long way back. Then he just stopped trying, like he’d hung up
his fishing pole and tackle for good.

“You know, it’s actually only just through the woods
to Fynn’s place from here.” She said it without even thinking.
Home. MY
home. Our place.
“He brought Cara out here over the summer. Said she had no
problem putting the worms on hooks or cutting the fish off of them. Then they
gutted what they caught and cooked it,” she sneered. “On a campfire. Just the
two of them.” Catherine held her hands up, clean of any of that nastiness. Her
fish threshold was sticks and tuna salad sandwiches.

“I never cleaned anything your father caught either,”
her mother said.

“She wouldn’t touch my fish,” William added sadly. “And
speaking of fish, I say we grab some lunch.”

“We still need to grocery shop,” she reminded him.

“We can do that after. You shouldn’t grocery shop on
an empty stomach,” he admonished, sounding so much like his wife that Catherine
snorted a laugh. “Say, why don’t we go to that diner I saw on Main Street?”

Her blood suddenly ran cold and she gripped the
steering wheel tighter. “The what?” she asked dumbly.

“The one with the ‘Diner’ sign out front,” her father
added helpfully.

“Oh, but there’s a nice Chinese place on the other
side of town. A real sit-down with some great lunch specials.” Catherine tried
to be helpful.

“Now why would I come to Minnesota for Chinese food?”
he asked.

“Why would you come to Minnesota for a diner?” her
mother challenged. “Pennsylvania is full of them, and you have probably gone to
most of them.” 

“Can’t blame a guy for knowing what he likes.”

“I can when you threaten to drive the country stopping
in at every greasy spoon along the way,” Elizabeth sighed. “That is what his bucket
list is.” She turned to Catherine for corroboration that the man they shared as
wife and daughter was completely off his rocker. “The whole list. A countrywide
road trip to every diner across the land. I have a bone to pick with that Guy
Fieri and that show of his.”

“I’ll have you know that I had a fixation with diners
long before he was even born. My one vice.”

Elizabeth Hemmings relented. “Take your father to the
diner, Catherine. Might as well get it out of his system.” She gave a quick
nod, trying to hide the blush that came over her at the thought of her mother
finding out just how much this particular diner was caught in
her
system.

They were there in no time, heading for the door,
Catherine feeling more like she was being led to her execution. The last thing
she wanted was to have her parents meet Mel and vice versa.

“Do you come here often?” her mother asked as they sat
down.

“Enough,” Catherine said tightly, unwilling to go
further.

Elizabeth Hemmings searched through her purse for a
spare napkin, a stash she kept in there to wipe down questionable places. She
also had a stash of tissues, but never the twain shall meet, because a napkin
was for napkin jobs and a tissue was for tissue purposes. She wiped at the
tabletop as if she was being paid for the task.

“I wonder if their meatloaf is as good as Mom’s,” her
father said in a charmingly blasphemous way. Because everyone knew that
Elizabeth Hemmings was known for her meatloaf. And William Hemmings was a connoisseur
of meatloaf. Which was probably why their marriage had withstood the test of
time—a match made over meatloaf.

Catherine shrugged. Not her call or her calling.

“Well, that’s what I’m going to have,” he said.

“What? No fish?” his wife jabbed.

“Nope. Meatloaf, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans.
Good old-fashioned diner food.”

“Have what you want,” Elizabeth said demurely.

Catherine saw Mel approaching the table and wished she
could crawl under it—not that there was a tablecloth under which to hide. This
was
so
not what she needed right now.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” The voice,
the tone, seemed almost cheerful, or at least smugly satisfied. “Miss NYC, a
little early today, are we?”

“What is she talking about?” Elizabeth asked under her
breath, touching Catherine’s arm like she feared they were being accosted by a
crazy person.

“Good afternoon,” Catherine said to Mel, trying to
sound like she was speaking to any random waitress she might come across. “We’d
love some sodas around.” The hope, that Mel would be off doing that long enough
for them to drop a few bucks on the table and hightail it out of there before
things went south. At least now she had an excuse for leaving—the waitress was
nuts.

“Actually, I would prefer an iced tea with lemon,”
Elizabeth Hemmings said, naïve to the plan.

Mel nodded, divvying out menus, even one to Catherine,
allowing her to maintain a bit of dignity.

“Are you going to need some time with those?” Mel
asked, sounding almost understanding. Human even.

“I know what I want,” William Hemmings announced,
pointing toward the spot in the menu. “One meatloaf platter.”

Another nod from Mel.

“Oh, and can I get that with extra gravy?”

Catherine cringed, waiting for it….

“Certainly,” Mel said.

Certainly? But there were no extras. No
substitutions. No changes. Ever.

Catherine stared up at the woman with wide and
disbelieving eyes.

“What?” Mel demanded.

“But you—” She stopped herself. Going there meant
going all the way there and she would be on the losing end.

Elizabeth Hemmings spoke up, “I think I will order… a…
Reuben.”

Catherine choked on her own spit as her Pavlovian
response kicked in.

“Really?” Mel drew out the word pointedly, making it
seem to last forever, turning to Catherine. “And you?”

“I, uh… the same.” Like mother, like daughter.

“How original,” she noted, dotting forcefully at her
pad when they both knew damn well there was no need to write it down. “Anything
else”

“Nope. That’s it,” Catherine said curtly. Just the
facts. Like Mel wanted.
So just leave… for the love of God!

“That’s refreshing,” Mel sighed, walking off toward
the kitchen and allowing Catherine the space to breathe again.

“What was that about?” Elizabeth asked.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

“I’m sure they expect better of their waitresses than
snippiness.”

She shrugged.

“No wonder you don’t come here often.”

Catherine kept her eyes trained away from her mother,
gazing out the front window at the pretty view of town. “Yeah, the food’s okay
but the service is—”

“Here are your drinks.”

“—so fast,” she corrected her course quickly, hoping
her Reuben didn’t get poisoned for the near slip.

Mel was in and out without a word, back behind the
counter—a safe distance, or so Catherine thought.

“Hey, New York, I saw one of those little clown cars
out and about the other day and I was sure you were up to something again,” Mel
bellowed.

“Is she talking to us?” Elizabeth Hemmings hissed,
clutching her purse tightly to her body like she feared she was in danger of a
mugging.

Catherine turned several shades of pink. “Nobody
knows. She’s the town nutcase. We can go somewhere else,” she whispered back.
Please.
The last thing she needed was for Mel to out her to her father, solving the
puzzle of the Hemmings who’d been made “green VIP” by the rental company. Her
house of cards was wavering.

“Does she really work here? Or does she just think she
does?” her mother whispered in kind.

“It’s her place,” Catherine admitted.

“But you said she was crazy.”

“She’s a high-functioning nut job.”

She turned onto the road toward home, loaded down with
her parents and the groceries her mother had insisted on buying. Breakfasts and
lunches for at least a week, and some “just in case” dinner fixings, leaving
them options beyond the ones her daughter may have already made. Basically, her
mother had gone hog-wild in the supermarket. Give the woman a cart and she will
fill it. And then there was her father, who wandered off out of sight every few
minutes eventually coming back with some oddity he wanted to try—a gourmet
soup, a sale on crab legs, beer from a local microbrewery, olive loaf from the
deli like his mom used to buy, T.O.E. jam. They were like a couple of unruly
kids and Catherine didn’t have the strength to stop them, which didn’t bode
well for the coming months and years that she could very well have actual
unruly kids to deal with at the grocery store.

Catherine stopped at the head of the driveway.

“Did we forget something?” her mother asked
charitably, because Elizabeth Hemmings didn’t forget things; that was her
daughter’s way.

“I hear Cara’s bus. We might as well wait and drive
her down to the house.”

“Noodlebug is home already?” her father asked from the
backseat. Like the hours hadn’t stretched into days on their journey.

“Right on time.”

When the bus came into view, Catherine heaved herself
out of the car to wave at the driver so she wouldn’t think a stranger was
lurking to pick Cara up. The doors opened and Cara burst out.

“Gramma Lizzy! Pop-Pop! I’m home! Miss me?” She
bounced over to the car and hopped in the back.

What am I, chopped liver?
Catherine prickled.
That was what her grandmother would have said. She got back into the car and
turned to find the passenger side empty. Her mother had moved to the backseat
too, Cara now sandwiched between her grandparents.
And I’m just the
chauffeur.

Cara was already chattering up a storm, telling Gramma
Lizzy and Pop-Pop all about gymnastics that she wanted to sign up for
so, so
badly
because
all
her friends did gymnastics and they all got to tumble
and flip, unlike stupid ballet that she’d wanted to sign up for
so, so badly
a few months ago but turned out was just a bunch of spinning.
Would you
jump off a bridge if all your friends were doing that?
Catherine snickered
to herself, thinking about her mother’s reaction to anything she’d wanted to do
purely because her friends were.

“That sounds like a wonderful thing to try,” Elizabeth
Hemmings gushed. “Doesn’t it, William?”

“What? Oh, yes.” Though Catherine was pretty certain
he hadn’t a clue what he was agreeing to, just as certain as she was that her
mother was an imposter. Nothing like the mother she’d grown up with who would
have hammered home that gymnastics costs money and time and she better darn well
want to actually learn how to tumble and flip if they were going to make the
commitment.
You have to want to learn for yourself, not just to be with your
friends.
None of that stuff mattered to this stranger in the backseat with
her mother’s voice.

“And I don’t have to wear a bun like in ballet. I hate
buns. Except for cinnamon buns.
Those
are great. Sometimes my mommy
would make them for breakfast. But they’re soooo sticky….” Cara went on and on
and Catherine glimpsed her mother in the rearview mirror, noting an unnervingly
ghostly pallor on her face that she’d seen for a moment last night too. Maybe
something was wrong with her. Maybe the whole reason they’d insisted on coming
out to visit was because she has cancer—stage four, inoperable. Maybe this was
goodbye. What if—

“Does Fynn shovel this whole thing by hand? Or does he
have a snow blower?” her father asked.

Catherine shook the morbid thoughts free and shifted
out of park, heading down the driveway. “If it’s only a few inches he just
flattens out some wide grooves with his truck. If it’s a big snow he pulls out
the snow blower.”

“I guess he’d be out here all day otherwise.”

“Pretty much.”

The house came into view and with it a box truck sitting
out front.

Catherine groaned. Not Tara again.  

As they drew closer, though, she could see it wasn’t a
U-Haul. And she could also see men, a couple of them, struggling with a massive
box the truck seemed to be birthing at this very moment, which made her stomach
twitch as she thought about her own impending delivery.

Fynn appeared, gesturing and talking to the men. Maybe
this was some kind of Christmas surprise for her or Cara that they weren’t
supposed to see. As she braked to a stop in front of the porch steps and got
out, Fynn came toward her. At the same time they said, “What the—” They stopped
and stared at each other in disbelief.

“You don’t know what this is about either?” he asked.

She shook her head.

William Hemmings was walking around what turned out to
be several large boxes, whistling his awe at the bounty as if looking over a
brand new Cadillac. “How much did these babies set you back?” he asked, as the
delivery men disrobed the boxes one by one. He stroked the handle of a commercial-grade
stainless steel refrigerator with sub-zero freezer. “Must have been a pretty
penny.”

“Oooh, neat!” Cara squealed, hopping out of the car
and racing toward a shiny stainless steel gas range, or more accurately toward
the box that had just come off of it. “Can I have that?” she asked the man
who’d removed it.

“Sure you can.” He set it on the snow. “You might want
to get it inside before it gets wet though.”

“Can I? Can I bring it inside for a fort?” she asked
Fynn.

“I don’t see why not.”

“I’m going to need one of you to sign this,” another
man said, holding out a clipboard.

“These are pretty… modern,” Elizabeth Hemmings noted, stepping
around the full kitchen’s worth of appliances.

“Where did they come from, Fynn?” Catherine asked
pointedly.

“KTL United.”

She gave him a look that said he was being unhelpful.

“That’s what it says here on the invoice.” He jabbed
with the pen.

“Mr. Trager, where would you like us to put them?”

“Back on the truck,” Catherine said with certainty.
“We didn’t order them. We aren’t paying—”

“There’s no charge, ma’am.”

That word would have sent her into a tailspin a year
ago. When she was single and childless it was a personal affront masquerading
as politeness. Now, it held no power anymore. “But how is that possible?” she
asked.

“They’ve already been paid for.”

“By whom?” Elizabeth Hemmings spoke up.

The man shrugged. “All I know is I have to deliver
them. So just point the way—”

“You can leave them in my shop,” Fynn said.

“We were contracted to deliver, set up, and take away.”

“You’re stealing our appliances?” Catherine was
completely bewildered.

“Replacing. We have directions to donate them.”

“Directions from who?” Catherine blurted.

“Walter Cutter,” Fynn said, looking up from the invoice.
“Who’s that?”

“How should I know?” she exclaimed.

“It says here, ‘I had a wonderful time. It was a
beautiful wedding. You two deserve the best.’… Seems like this Walter guy thinks
he knows us.”

Catherine was struck dumb.

“A bit late for a wedding gift, certainly,” Elizabeth
piped up smartly, the self-appointed voice of etiquette.

“Is this the kind that can text you and tell you what
you’re out of while you’re at the store?” her father questioned of the
refrigerator. “Because I’ve seen those on TV. Crazy if you ask me. And a
complete racket. The more they can make an appliance do, the more parts that
can fail, the more money they can make on warranties and repairs. Same thing
with cars. Give me a basic fridge/freezer any day, one that doesn’t know
anything but to keep stuff cold. Simple as that. No TVs in the door panel or
robotic arms to reach out and hand me what I’m looking for.”

“I’m with you,” Fynn admitted.

“But still, that’s one helluva a gift,” William
Hemmings whistled. “Maybe that guy should adopt you. Hell, maybe he’d adopt
me,” he joked. “You couldn’t pay me to buy them, but I wouldn’t turn them away.
At least so long as they aren’t telling the government what I like to eat.
That’s no one’s business.”

“Not everything is a government conspiracy, William,”
Elizabeth chided.

“It’s happened before. You think it’s harmless
information gathering and then—”

“Mr. Trager?” The head delivery man prodded.

“Oh… yes… well, I guess it’s into the kitchen with
them,” Fynn said.

“We’re keeping them?” Catherine hissed.

“They were a gift,” he shrugged.

“What if this Walter guy is buttering us up and then
going to show up and demand our firstborn to sell into the illegal sex trade in
some third world country?”

“That’s where you go with this?”

“These appliances are
expensive
, Fynn, you
never know what someone might expect. I mean, he might want to sleep with your
wife. How do you like them apples?”

“I figured you must have already slept with him,” he joked.
“And for free appliances… I think I’m all right with that.”

“Nice,” she said tightly.

“Seriously, if they’re bought and paid for—what is
it?” he asked of the sudden shock on her face.

“The guy.
That
guy. The one I used to nod at on
the way to work, remember?”

Fynn looked lost.

“I dropped the invitations all over the sidewalk and he
picked one up and thought he was invited and just kind of showed up.” She used
a yada-yada tone to make it seem less insane than it was.

“Oh, right!”

“This must be him. Walter Cutter!” She never had
gotten his name.

“See, being polite paid off,” Fynn said. “Turns out he
was just a nice lonely eccentric who really appreciated having something to do
last March. Maybe he has no family to speak of and we made him feel welcome—”

She gasped. “Oh my God, what if he wants to come to
Christmas too? What if
that’s
what this bribe is about!”

Fynn chuckled like she was the loon when obviously Walter
Cutter held that crown.

“Make sure you thank him,” her mother added her two
cents. “His timing might be atrocious and the gift might be grossly overdone,
but he still deserves a proper thank you.”

Undoubtedly a jab at her improper thank yous to all
the intended guests at the wedding. The cards went out late. She’d written too
little. Was too impersonal. And the grammar? … She could imagine all of the
infractions her mother had counted up.