2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Read online

“Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. He cried but he’ll live,” she shrugged.

  Cara was entirely unsqueamish about things that most girls found totally eew—girls like Catherine Marie. Maybe she would be a doctor someday. Dealing in blood and guts. Saving lives. A single doctor, most likely, since she was going to scare all the boys away by then. Two down already. And Fynn wouldn’t mind that in the least.

  Suddenly she stopped in place. “Oh, and I got picked to play a turnip in the fall play!”

  “A turnip?” Catherine said in surprise. Cara had gone off to school saying she wanted to be the farmer in the play and now she was a turnip? And happy about it? Frustration bubbled up inside, certainty that a travesty had occurred. Probably some kind of nepotism or sexism or fascism or some other –ism that had relegated Cara to vegetable status—or is it a root? are roots also vegetables? carrots are definitely vegetables…I think… or maybe a turnip is a tuber? Catherine shook her head clear because none of that mattered. Whatever a turnip was, it certainly wasn’t a farmer. And even worse, it was likely just some made-up last-minute part since nobody ate or even thought about turnips anymore. Not in at least fifty years. Sophie Watts probably had something to do with it, standing in the way of Cara’s wishes because Catherine was standing in the way of her wishes.

  The woman had been on her last nerve since the first day of school. It seemed Sophie Watts had four children and had been room mother for each and every one of them, every single year, until little old Catherine Marie had bested her. An outsider, a guardian, not a real mother at all, had broken Sophie Watts’s perfect record of room mothering. And on this, her last child’s school journey. She’d probably have to have another kid just to cope. Not that Catherine had even been competing for the position. She’d signed up as room mom accidentally, thinking it was a class email list—the sheet next to it that she hadn’t signed—and fallen bass-ackward into the path of Sophie Watts’s ire.

  “So, can you?” Cara asked. She was on her knees, hugging Magnus with the exuberance of unabashed adoration.

  Obviously Catherine had missed the main piece of the conversation and had learned in recent months not to answer when she was caught unawares. She had said yes to a mouse that way, whose cage she had to help Cara clean out every week. And a sleepover that included nine additional six-year-olds on Cara’s birthday. Two things she had not been ready for and, had she been listening, would have pushed off at the very least. The mouse, probably forever. But Jimmy was part of the family now—named after jimmies because he pooped a lot and his business looked just like the chocolate sprinkles Catherine could no longer bring herself to eat on her ice cream.

  “I told Mrs. Karnes you’d be able to do it,” Cara said, like it was a given, standing up, oblivious to the dirt that was now on her knees.

  “Do what?” Fearful of what she might have been volunteered to do (although the word of a six-year-old should hardly count as a hard-and-fast commitment).

  “Make me into a turnip.” Her tone making the “silly” part unnecessary.

  “If you want to be a turnip, I’ll make you a turnip. The queen of the turnips,” she asserted, like she was being asked to pop a straw into a Capri Sun—which she had proven herself more than capable of doing most of the time. Of course, she had no idea what a turnip looked like, and she was pretty certain it wasn’t a costume you could just buy at the store. Which meant sewing. Which she didn’t know how to do because she had scoffed at her mother’s attempts to educate her in the lost art that had kept people clothed and sheltered for generations before her own ignorant one. She could always search no-sew turnip costumes online; someone must have made a video tutorial on the process by now.

  “Oh no, I’m the only one,” Cara assured her.

  In class? In the country? On the planet?

  “My teacher said that it’s a very unique vegetable.”

  So it is a vegetable.

  “I was going to wait and raise my hand for the farmer, but I didn’t want to be just any old farmer,” Cara admitted, skipping ahead. “Watch me, I’m turnipping around!” she exclaimed, whirling and skipping with awkward abandon. “This is what the veggies are supposed to do while the farmer harvests us.”

  “So you asked to be a turnip?” Catherine clarified.

  “Uh-huh. Unique, just like my teacher said.”

  -5-

  “How’d your appointment go today?” Fynn asked, brushing off sawdust as he came in from the garage.

  Catherine glanced up from the dish she’d just taken out of the oven. “Could you do that before you come inside?”

  Hands up in surrender, he backed out, giving himself a vigorous wet-dog style shake.

  They had been working on things like this for months. Ever since she moved in. Not that she was a perfectionist, but cleaning up after what he tracked in would be an endless task if she didn’t stop it at the door.

  “So?” he prodded, stepping back in with a dustpan and whisk broom.

  “Huh?” She was biting her nails, staring at the casserole dish, wondering where she’d gone wrong.

  “Your appointment at the OB?”

  “Oh, fine,” she waved him off, just like she had when he offered to go with her. There was nothing thrilling about these checkups. Mostly just a weigh-in and she didn’t need him there to see that nightmare.

  “Just fine?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Distracted.

  “Anything I should know about?” he nudged, putting away the broom and dustpan.

  “Nope,” she sighed, resigned that there was nothing that could be done but to serve up what she’d made and hope for the best. Maybe it tasted better than it looked.

  “You sure?”

  She finally looked up at him. “God, I don’t know, already. I didn’t ask. They didn’t tell. I’m still just as much in the dark as you,” she blurted with force.

  It wasn’t getting any easier to lie to him. Not that it was her fault that she’d accidentally seen something. It was the nurse who’d left her file open wide on the counter. Baiting her. Begging her to look. And since it was important to Fynn that he not know, it was only right to allow him the surprise that had been so casually ruined for her. This was her duty. So they both waited anxiously—him to find out and her for Eve to arrive. Because that was what Catherine had taken to calling her. Eve. The perfect name.

  Fynn stared hard at her, trying to gauge her honesty.

  She gave him the hairy eyeball.

  “I’m impressed,” he relented. “But that isn’t what I was asking.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the family room.

  “Fynn, honey, as much as I would love to have a quickie right now I don’t have time—”

  He stopped in front of the table where the answering machine sat and pressed the button.

  “Yo, Cat, stop avoiding me. You know I’m not going to let him come between us. Just because he’s your husband now doesn’t mean our relationship has to suffer. He doesn’t even have to know. Girl-on-girl action isn’t cheating. Remember, no penetration means no adulteration. Call me.”

  Catherine’s face flushed bright red. It was just like Tara to do something so gauche. The woman didn’t understand boundaries or proper decorum or any of the stuff that normal people were concerned about.

  “What’s adulteration?” Cara’s small voice asked, enunciating the word slowly and carefully.

  “Nothing.” Catherine shuttled her away even though the machine was silent now, guiding her to the kitchen and dinner that would hopefully keep her from asking anything further.

  “I’ve seen girl-on-girl action before,” Cara said.

  “What?” Fynn exclaimed from behind them.

  “Sara and Lisa were fighting and Sara was on top of her. That’s girl-on—”

  “It’s time for dinner,” Catherine cut in.

  “Does Tara want to fight you, Cat?” Cara asked, worried.

  “No, she doesn’t want to fight me.” Although she probably did. Fo
r ignoring her. That message was her pulling out the big guns and forcing the issue after countless voicemails on her cell and so many texts had gone unanswered. It was an act of war, breaching her home like that.

  “If she does want to fight, maybe you should wait until after the baby is born. You’re kind of slow now.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Catherine said through gritted teeth. “Now why don’t you go wash up and set the table so we can eat?”

  “Okay.” Cara skipped away.

  Catherine got out the plates and started dishing them up, grumbling under her breath. She wondered if Tara would ever grow up. Friendships waxed and waned over time and she had been waning on her end, too busy for Tara’s childishness. Heck, even she and Georgia, who had been friends since college, had grown apart somewhat since hundreds of miles and marriage and now parenthood had gotten in the way. And she and Tara had been work friends, who no longer worked together. They had little in common, and much less now that she was no longer single and Tara was committed to remaining single. If not for being forced to share a cubicle in the first place, they probably never would have been friends at all (come to think of it, exactly like the way her friendship started with Georgia, paired as dorm roommates by a computer of all things).

  Fynn came up behind her, whispered, “You make sure to tell Tara that I don’t subscribe to her theory on adultery. And in the future, if she could avoid questionable topics in the range of young ears—”

  “I’ve got it. I know. She’s out of control.”

  “She just misses you,” he reasoned. “But that being said, she’s got to watch the language.”

  “That was her watching her language. Not a single swear word, didn’t you notice?”

  “Just highly inappropriate content.”

  Pretty much,” Catherine sighed.

  “So, am I ever going to find out if I’m going to be a big brother or a big sister?” Cara asked, coming back in.

  “You’re going to be a big sister either way,” Fynn pointed out, chuckling, pouring the milk.

  “Really?” Like he had to be kidding.

  “Yup. And you’re going to be a great big sister,” Catherine noted, carrying her plate and Cara’s to the table, leaving Fynn to fend for himself. Women and children first in an emergency and in a meal.

  “Well, I think that if it’s a boy you should name him Branch,” Cara said, getting silverware out.

  Catherine looked to Fynn, but he seemed too amused to be helpful. “That’s not really a people name,” Catherine said carefully. It wasn’t a name at all, actually, but she was trying to be diplomatic.

  “Is so. I have a Branch on my bus,” Cara assured them as they sat down.

  Catherine choked on a sip of milk. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Branch Hornton.”

  “Does he have a brother named Twig?” Fynn chuckled.

  Cara shrugged. “All I know is that I like that name too.”

  Thank God we aren’t having a boy—Twig Trager, she shuddered.

  “I have lots of girl names too,” Cara offered. “Like—”

  “Whoa, let’s not share them all at once. We have plenty of time to pick a name—” —and avoid the topic of girls’ names completely if possible. She had read somewhere that it helped older siblings transition to a new baby better if they were included in preparing for the baby, but there were other options beyond helping to pick the name, like picking the paint color for the nursery, from a handful of already approved paint chips. Limits were good for kids—she’d read that too.

  “What is this?” Cara poked at the mound of brown stuff on her plate like it was icky, unlike the blood coming out of Kenny’s nose that afternoon.

  “Stuffing,” Catherine said, looking up from her own plate just in time to catch the look between Fynn and Cara that told her she was on her own in that assessment. It looked more like the charred remains of something than an actual something.

  “With hotdogs?” Cara asked, bewildered.

  “We needed a side. And it’s better for you than potato chips,” Catherine asserted.

  “But it isn’t as good as potato chips,” Cara pointed out.

  “It isn’t as good as stuffing,” Fynn chipped in.

  Catherine darted a warning glance in his direction. “You know I’m trying out stuffing recipes for Thanksgiving. That’s what I’m bringing to your sister’s for dinner and I want it to be perfect. This might not be the best recipe, but I’d rather find out now than try to serve it to everyone.”

  “So we’re your guinea pigs. Soon to be stuffed guinea pigs. Get it?” Fynn winked at Cara.

  “My friend has a guinea pig named Cork,” Cara offered. “We’re definitely not guinea pigs. We don’t look anything like him.”

  Catherine stifled a smile, never ceasing to be amazed at all of the common expressions that went right over her head. “You want to take this one?” she asked Fynn.

  He raised his eyebrows at the challenge and she watched him tap the table three times before showing a flat hand to her just-landing fist. Catherine sighed. A loser yet again. Rock-paper- scissors was their standard means for solving any impasse. She imagined many more shootouts in their future when the baby arrived, what with endless diaper changing on the horizon.

  “A guinea pig can be a rodent, like Cork, but it’s also something people say when they talk about trying something out on someone,” she explained. “You guys are the first to taste my stuffing, so you are the ‘guinea pigs’ who will decide if you like it.”

  “But why guinea pigs?”

  Catherine didn’t want to get into a discussion on the origins of animal testing and what was ethical or not. Or how ethical it was to serve inedible food to her own family for that matter. She looked helplessly to Fynn, begging him to step in, but he shrugged back like it was above his pay grade.

  “Why not parrots or zebras or alligators?”

  “Because alligators might eat you and the stuffing, and then what good would that do? How would you know if it was bad? And who would be left to fix it?” Fynn asked, causing Cara to fall into a fit of giggles and making Catherine swoon with relief.

  Cara went back to poking at the mound, excavating pieces out of it and examining what she unearthed. “What are the green things?”

  “Herbs.” Catherine said.

  “And what’s this thing?” Cara held up her fork to display a shrunken red mass.

  “A cranberry.”

  Her lip curled distastefully.

  Catherine looked over and found Fynn was similarly unimpressed. “If you’re gonna be that way about it, you don’t have to eat it,” she said gruffly.

  “No. I will. And I think it’s great that you’re contributing to Thanksgiving dinner… I’ve just never really cared for stuffing much.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t even know—”

  “It isn’t something that comes up often. A few times a year. No big deal.”

  “I would have offered to do something different,” Catherine huffed.

  “I’ll eat it. I just don’t prefer it.”

  And there it was: prefer. A nasty little word and the thing about this man that grated on her nerves more than anything else. She could handle the toilet seat being left up and the whiskers in the sink and the socks on the floor and even him forgetting to lock the doors or turn off all the lights at night before bed. But this? It truly drove her up the wall. The love of her life was just so damn painfully meh about stuff… like, it turned out, stuffing. She couldn’t be that way about anything. Love or hate, strong feelings either way. There was passion in fiery opinions and feelings and tastes. In hating cabbage and in loving pie. In loving cozy nights by the fire and dreading the dentist. In adoring Aerosmith and cringing at the sound of The Rolling Stones. But Fynn was just so Fynn-ish about everything.

  “I don’t need your charity.” She shoved a heaping spoonful of stuffing into her mouth and almost gagged on the tiny dry breadcrumbs, while a
t the same time the tartness of fresh cranberries assaulted her taste buds and the charred flavor battled with the herbs and won. She wanted it out of her mouth. Right. Now. But she fought against the impulse, not wanting to give Fynn the satisfaction of seeing her squirm. She forced herself to chew and swallow, shooting a hand out to push Cara’s poised forkful back down onto her plate, saving her life.

  “Needs some tweaking,” she choked out, wishing she had more than a glass of milk to wash out the taste in her mouth.

  “You know, you can always just make Stove Top. You don’t have to go crazy with it,” Fynn reasoned.

  “I’m not bringing a boxed mix to your sister’s dinner. Not when everything else is homemade.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Helping would be telling me you don’t like stuffing… before I have to make it.”

  “Mommy used to make Stove Top back at home. Why can’t we have that instead of stuffing?”

  “That is stuffing,” Fynn pointed out.

  “Really?” Cara turned wide eyes on Catherine like she’d been holding out on her the whole time. “I prefer that to this for sure.”

  Great. Now she had two of them on her hands. “Well, far be it from me to deny you two the good stuff,” she muttered. No need to show off. She’d been to Drew’s for the holidays last year and already proven that she wasn’t side dish material. The only reason she’d tried to take this on was to start a tradition for Cara and make it seem special. But if Cara’s tradition was Stove Top, then so be it. Maybe a taste of home that could be found in any grocery store across this New World, was just what was called for.

  Looking on the bright side, “I guess it frees up my time to plan for your class party,” she said to Cara.

  “But Mrs. Karnes says you don’t have to do the party,” Cara said, taking a bite of her hotdog.

  -6-

  “What a total load of crap,” Catherine growled, scrubbing at the scorched leftovers in the casserole dish. The rest had already been disposed of. In the trash. Even a forkful dangled in front of Magnus’s nose had lived to survive the experience. So much for its 5-star rating.