2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (27 page)

As he got to work at the end of the table, Catherine
cringed against another human being becoming intimately involved with her
private space, then wanted to disappear completely when Tara blurted, “Bet
you’ve seen a lot of those over the years.”

“Don’t mind her.” Catherine wished now that she had
chosen more wisely when she voted Fynn off the island.

“No bother. It’s part of the job,” the doctor said.

Catherine tightened against the pain in her abdomen.

“Still feeling uncomfortable?”

She nodded against the table.

“You know, Tums really does work wonders.”

“Better than an epidural?” Catherine joked back.

“Ma’am, we don’t tend to give epidurals for your
situation.”  

My situation? What kind of doctor are you? Is this
one of those New Age holistic hospitals?

“You’ll be just fine taking Tums. A standard dose.
More after several hours if you still feel some pain.”

“What?” Snappish.

“You have a bad case of indigestion… Mrs. Trager.” Glancing
at her chart to get her name.

Tara let out a hyena cackle. “That’s just perfect! A
burrito baby!”

“That would do it,” the doctor said.

“But I—” She’d been so sure. It was so intense. So
uncomfortable. So labor-pain-like. Not that she knew what labor pains felt
like, but she’d assumed it had to be. And she’d told everyone, and they’d told
people, and now she was going to have to go home like
this. Can’t you
induce? So I don’t look like an idiot?

“You are still at zero percent. No dilating or
effacing. You have some time yet before you welcome that baby into your world,”
he assured her.

Great.

Fynn popped in, carrying a cup full of the fabled ice
chips. “Did I miss anything?”

“Only the birth of major indigestion,” Tara guffawed.

Catherine eyed her darkly—her friend who had decided
on eating burritos for lunch in the first place when they both knew that Eve
preferred Reubens in the afternoon.

Friday, December 15
^th

“Oh, Catherine, you’re here. We weren’t expecting you,”
Sophie Watts announced overly sweetly from across the classroom as she tried to
slip through the doorway unnoticed and blend into the crowd of parents milling
about.

She squelched the
why the hell not?
that
threatened. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“It’s just that we heard you were in the hospital
yesterday.” The woman made a beeline for her with a poor-baby look on her face
and her head tilted at a patronizing angle that told Catherine quite clearly
that Sophie Watts had heard plenty and had loved every detail. The culprit
might be the little girl with brown hair and lopsided pigtails giggling in a
huddle of friends over near the coatrack wall. Or maybe the small-town gossip disease
had been her undoing—nurses with children in the school or friends of cousins
twice removed or whatever.

“I’m fine. Just fine.” She shifted uncomfortably, wishing
she could melt into the floor.

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sophie said charitably,
throwing Catherine off her scent just long enough to wind up with another jab.
“You could always call me if you’re concerned. I’ve had four kids and never
once had a false alarm. Some people go back and forth to the hospital with
Braxton Hicks several times over, but I always knew exactly when I was in
labor.”

It wasn’t Braxton Hicks, it was a burrito, bitch!
Not
that such an outburst would help her case. It was even worse, actually. But
thankfully Sophie Watts was on to other things by now, sidetracked by another
mother who she felt was not divvying up the crafts properly to each of the desk
clusters, so Catherine gladly took the reprieve to slip to the back of the
classroom where most of the other parents were congregated.

“This is worse than the dentist,” she heard over her
shoulder, low and bored.

Inside, she nodded her head in agreement.

“Wait, weren’t you the room mother?” Same voice, this
time with a gentle touch on her arm to get her attention.

“
Was
being the operative word,” she said out of
the side of her face.

“You quit?”

She glanced back at her questioner this time. “It was
a cabal,” she said in no uncertain terms. “Between our new room mother and the
teacher, and probably most of the students who prefer edible cookies to burned
rocks.”

The guy chuckled.

The distinct sound of throat clearing followed, and
Catherine whipped her head around to find Sophie Watts’s searing gaze staring a
hole right through her to her fellow man. Hot man. Exceptionally hot man. All
white teeth and wavy brown hair and actor good looks. He didn’t belong in an
elementary school in Nekoyah, Minnesota. He belonged in a movie opposite
Scarlett Johansson.

Once Sophie Watts was content that her point was made,
she turned her attention back to Mrs. Karnes, discussing the logistics of fun
and food and festivities as if this was a sensitive operation for the land of
the free and the home of the brave.

“So how did you get stuck in this nightmare of Sophie
Watts proportions?” Catherine hissed over her shoulder.

“I married it.”

She choked on the foot in her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t
mean—”

“S’okay. I know. We’re divorced now. She’s remarried.
I’m just the father of the kids.”

Ouch.

“My name is Catherine Trager, by the way. I’m Cara’s
mo—guar—I’m here with Cara.”

“Oh, the
speaking
carrot,” he said, putting two
and two together.

“The one and only,” she added with chagrin.

“That really got Sophie spun out.”

“Good to hear.” At least she had that much.

“Oh, I do hope we’re not late!” The voice that cut
through the commotion was all too familiar. Terrifyingly familiar. Catherine darted
a glance toward the front of the class and the figure coming through the
doorway loaded up with Tupperware.

“Excuse me, but this is a class party for students and
family members only,” Sophie Watts said quickly, rushing to the door and blocking
the way in.

“I’m Cara’s aunt. Or is that not family enough for
you?” Tara challenged.

Cara readily backed her up, coming forward, nodding
with force. And then her little eyes widened even more, “Gramma Lizzy!” she
squealed. “You came!”

Tara crashing an elementary school party was about par
for the course, but Elizabeth Hemmings? Catherine was shocked. She hadn’t asked
her mother to come along or show up or anything. In fact, she’d sloughed it off
as a kids-only thing. She certainly hadn’t admitted that this was where
she
was
headed this morning. Now she was embarrassed at being caught in her lie or
omission, as it was, and all because she didn’t want her mother to see her
great shame at being sidelined by Sophie Watts. Yet here she was, seeing it
anyway, and soon enough she would be eating out of Sophie Watts’s hand—or at
least off her plates, with her forks, and wiping her mouth on the woman’s
napkins (because Catherine had indeed
not
brought any, on principle).
Someone like Elizabeth Hemmings would certainly be impressed by Sophie Watts’s
party-hosting skills, and Catherine could imagine them becoming fast friends.
And then her mother would be demanding she be nice and polite to the woman who
had been nothing but underhanded and manipulative and downright ugly to her.

Sophie Watts looked to Catherine like classroom events
didn’t allow plus-twos. But she knew there were kids here with four parents,
and other mothers had brought younger brothers and sisters along too. It was
all perfectly within the rules, it seemed.

“I’m so sorry I’m late but I wanted to whip up a
little something to share for the holidays,” Elizabeth Hemmings asserted
brightly.

Catherine felt the sting of tears in her nose and eyes
as her mother opened a large Tupperware container—again, something she must
have brought all the way from Pennsylvania, just in case there was a
baking-and-taking emergency. It was filled with the candy cane cookies she’d
baked with Cara while Catherine was in the hospital thinking burrito gas was
Eve. The same cookies her mother used to bake when Catherine was growing up,
peppermint-laced red and white sugar cookie dough twisted together and formed
into dozens of hooks. So pretty and perfect, and each one dressed up with a
holly leaf and berries decoration out of frosting.

“I thought those were for home,” Catherine said
softly, coming up next to her mother.

“Tara told me what was going on, so I figured they
were needed more here.” She linked her arm in her daughter’s, pulling them both
off to the side. “I wish you would have told me, though.”

“I should have… I just—I was embarrassed about how bad
I was at this whole…” She didn’t finish, just shook her head

“Grab and growl,” Tara announced to the room at large,
opening two more Tupperware containers: one filled with stained glass cookies,
also an old family favorite that used melted hard candies poured into the
cutout center of sugar cookie shapes and hardened; the other filled with butterscotch
chip gingersnaps.

Soon enough there was a free-for-all, throwing the
room into madness and destroying Sophie Watts’s orderly plans to withhold the
food until later. Tara stepped away before she lost a hand to a bunch of hungry
first graders, while Sophie Watts protested the surge, futilely trying to
regain control.

Tara made her way through the crowd to Catherine and
her mother. “So, what do you think?”

“I think that I have to thank you,” Catherine said,
heartfelt.

“No biggie.”

“It’s a biggie,” she countered. “The look on Sophie’s
face is priceless. Do you see how everyone is gravitating toward my mom’s good
old-fashioned home-cooked treats and leaving all of Sophie’s good-for-you
allergen and irritant and taste-free options behind. Absolutely priceless.”

“Just so long as you know that we have a lot of baking
to do all over again,” Elizabeth Hemmings warned with a smile. “You missed out
yesterday, but no excuse on this next batch.”

“If I have to,” she said, acting like it was pulling
her teeth. But actually, if she could learn to bake like that and get a
reaction like this from a crowd, she was game.

“Now
I’m
going to spend some time with my
granddaughter,” Elizabeth said, wading through the clusters of desks to get to
Cara.

“Oh my God, Cat, do you see that guy?” Tara asked. “I’d
let him all up in my naughty bits.”

“Sssh. This is an elementary school, remember?”

“He isn’t elementary at all.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means he has all the bells and whistles and pricey
extras—”

“And he’s Sophie Watts’s ex,” Catherine warned.

Tara shuddered, then shrugged. “So he has bad taste; you
can’t have it all.” She gazed around the rest of the room. “So then what about
that one?”

Catherine looked to the scruffy guy wearing jeans.

“Do you think he’s even a dad? Maybe he’s an older
brother?”

“I don’t know, Tara,” she sighed heavily.

“I bet you he’s got a Prince Albert under those jeans.”

“A what?”

A pierced penis
, she mouthed, shielding her
lips from the view of the class.

“Eew.”

“It’s supposed to enhance pleasure.”

Catherine shook her head. “Haven’t you gotten this out
of your system? After the other night I thought you’d be cured.” Alluding to
the end of her sex drought.

“It’s never out of my system,” Tara admitted.

“Maybe I’ll just try to mingle a bit,” Catherine said,
sidestepping away, hoping to avoid any further discussion of an inappropriate
nature. She orbited a small group of women, trying to penetrate the crowd and
be part of normal motherly conversation, only to hear they were talking about
making Gingermelons like it was a snap, all of them nodding and agreeing in one
Stepford Wives
motion, discussing safety eyes and needle sizes and mohair
naps. She could discuss naps with the best of them—length, location, time of
day—but was pretty sure their naps had nothing to do with resting.

She didn’t fit in anywhere.

Saturday, December 16
^th

“Are you excited for Christmas?” Gramma Lizzy asked, a
softball question to a six-year-old.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Cara exclaimed. “But I’ll be sad when
Christmas is here too because you will be going back home.”

“Remember what I said, we’ll be back again soon
enough,” she assured her as they walked abreast up the driveway toward the
mailbox, one of Cara’s mittened hands in hers and the other in Catherine’s,
while Magnus led the way with his nose to the snowy ground. 

“Can you come every season? That way we can do all the
fun things in the spring and in the summer and in the fall and in the winter
again.”

“We’ll have to see.” Elizabeth Hemmings avoided her
daughter’s eyes, not wanting to know what she thought about such a plan right
now when things were going so well between them. No need to ruin a nice visit
with the shadow of future standoffs about visits to come. Though if she had
looked to Catherine at that moment, her mother would have seen her nodding the
slightest affirmative. Yes, she was ready to open that door. A shocker. Her
parents’ visit had turned out to be just what she never knew she’d needed to
get through the last couple weeks of her pregnancy. And what sealed it for her
was her mother’s reaction to her false labor alarm:
Better safe than sorry.

Thank you, Elizabeth Hemmings.

“It always seems like it takes forever for Santa to
get here,” Cara noted.

Gramma Lizzy nodded. “A watched pot never boils.”

“What’s a watched pot?”

“It means that if you keep focusing on something it
will never happen,” she explained.

“Is that like Pop-Pop and the Flyers?”

“What?” Catherine cut in.

“He says that anytime he watches the Flyers they lose,
so he tries not to watch because then they’ll win.”

Catherine chuckled. “Well, it’s just a saying, but it
sure feels that way.”

“So if we keep our minds off of Santa, then he will be
here in no time,” Gramma Lizzy assured her.

“And how do we do that?” Cara asked, ready and
willing.

“Well… you tell me, what do you want to do?”

“Can we go ice skating?” she asked excitedly.

“I said we would take you after Christmas,” Catherine jumped
in, trying to squelch the idea before it could take root. “After I have the
baby I can teach you how, but I can’t skate right now. There is a lot of winter
left for skating after—”

“But I know it would help get my mind off of Santa and
presents and Christmas,” Cara reasoned.

“If she wants to ice skate, I don’t see why we can’t
take her skating,” her mother offered. “You have a rink in town?”

That was the problem. There was no rink. Only ponds. And
lakes. And bad memories. Cara was unknowingly opening up wounds. “Don’t worry
about it, Mom. Fynn and I plan to take her after the holidays. There’s plenty
of time. And plenty of other things to do, like going to see that new Christmas
movie at the theater, and caroling on Main Street, and—”

“Really, Catherine, it is no trouble. I always loved
to skate. It is a shame that it has been so long.”

But the last time her family had gone ice skating was
before Josey died. When her mother and father’s hearts were whole. And when
they were much younger. And when winter days were just beautiful white snowy
days and not moments and scenery that resonated with everything they’d lost.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea—”

“We aren’t
that
old Catherine Marie.” Elizabeth
Hemmings’ voice was tight, and her face that should have been red with the cold
outside was rivaling the snow on the ground.

“No, you and Pop-Pop are very spry for your age,” Cara
announced.

“And where did you hear something like that?”
Catherine asked in surprise.

“That’s what Pop-Pop says.”

“And he’s absolutely right. For once,” Gramma Lizzy
joked.

Seeing her mother and Cara together was poignant. A vision
of a mother who grieved her daughter and a daughter who grieved her mother,
separated by a full generation and yet indelibly linked.

“And another thing, I started collecting snow boulders
from where Daddy plowed the driveway. We can build a snow castle out of them.”

“That’s sounds wonderful!” Catherine said, hoping the
snow castle would surpass skating.

“And when it’s done, can we have a snow tea party
inside?” Cara begged.

“What else would we do inside a snow castle?” she
reasoned.

“Then when I get inside I’m going to draw pictures of
what it should look like.” With that, Cara slipped out of their hands and ran
the rest of the way to the mailbox, with Magnus hopping around like an
excitable bunny at her side.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Elizabeth Hemmings said
softly.

“She’s only six. She has time to learn how to skate,”
Catherine insisted.

“But there isn’t endless time.”

Catherine fought back the tears she could feel on
their way. “No. There isn’t. But I can’t ask you to do that.” Pointed.

“You didn’t. She did.”

“And I never would have let her—”

“She’s a little girl. She doesn’t know any better.”

“I should have realized.”

“Realized what? Every possibly reminder of Josephine?” 

Catherine froze. Her mother was blunt and
straightforward about everything… except Josey. She seldom talked about her,
trading that honesty of emotion for an overarching rationality about life in
general, accepting mortality and bad luck with robotic ease as if she would not
let herself feel—like a part of her was broken and unfixable.

“Because you can’t do that,” Elizabeth continued.
“She’s everywhere. I can’t see a splash of purple without thinking of her. I
can’t see a tricycle or a box of crayons without thinking of her. I can’t see
an empty kitchen chair without thinking of what is missing in all of our lives.”
She spoke evenly but tears pooled in her eyes. “Avoiding a lake here that has
nothing to do with what happened to Josephine in Pennsylvania over twenty years
ago is… ridiculous.” And there was the crack, a faltering weakness in her
voice. “Avoiding won’t get us anywhere. If I could stay there… keep living in
that town and in that house after… everything… then I can handle a goddamned lake
in Nekoyah, Minnesota if it makes my granddaughter happy.”

“You’re right, Mom,” Catherine whispered back weakly.
“I—”

“You are trying to protect me. And I thank you for
that.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand just as Cara came
trotting back with Magnus.

“Here.” She planted the mail in Catherine’s arms and continued
toward the house on a mission.

They walked halfway to the house in silence, not
awkward or difficult silence, but peace, until Cara came running at them pell-mell
all over again. “Guess what I found!” she sang with glee.

“What?” Gramma Lizzy asked, readily taking the bait.

“A hedgehog skin,” Cara said definitively. “I told Pop-Pop
they’re all around here.”

“A hedgehog skin?”

“Yup,” Cara nodded, holding out the carcass of a
run-over pine cone.

“Oh, I see,” she smirked.

“I don’t know where she gets it,” Catherine said,
smiling and shaking her head.

“Over there.” Cara pointed toward the part of the driveway
that wrapped in front of the house. “I think I am going to store it with my
turkey claws.”

“Turkey claws?” Gramma Lizzy blurted.

“Yup. We have tons. Cat ordered them from the internet
and had them shipped here special for Thanksgiving. She gave some to my class
at school, but we got to keep the rest.”

Catherine considered circling her finger next to her
head to say that Cara was batty, especially considering Magnus had recaptured
Cara’s attention and the two were off racing toward the house now. But that
would just delay the inevitable, as the turkey claws were likely to come out
eventually.

“They aren’t really turkey claws,” she said, trying on
a chuckle for size to see if she could laugh it off. Her mother was a complete
blank though. “Actually, they’re tiny cornucopias. Woven out of straw or rattan
or something…” Still no response. “I got them for the Thanksgiving party Cara’s
class was having at school.” But there was no
oh!
or
I see
or
how
cute
or even a
really?
Nothing to show that Elizabeth Hemmings was
accepting the story or humored by it or anything.
The rope to hang yourself.
That was what it felt like her mother was giving her. “I didn’t really intend
for them to be
that
small. Actually I was going to use them to hold the
goodies for the kids. A cornucopia goody bag.” Her words were coming faster
now, trying to outpace her mother’s assessment of her by making her case that
she was indeed not a total fuckup. “I guess I didn’t read the fine print, but
they were still a hit, as you heard. Cara loves them….” Out of breath. Out of
ideas. Out of explanations.

“Sounds like it,” her mother said finally.

“Sounds like what?” she challenged back.

“Like Cara loves them…. She certainly is an
interesting one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Protective.

“She’s special.”

Special,
special? she wondered, bristling.

“That little girl is extremely resilient. Very much
her own person. Very strong.” Elizabeth Hemmings stopped, sniffed once. “You know,
it’s
really
cold out here,” she shivered, stating the obvious and
quickening her pace toward the house.