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

  Catherine chose to ignore her question even though it smelled more than a bit off. A little too Fynn-ish to be helpful right now. “I just can’t believe someone would be so crazed about a stupid volunteer post like room mom.”

  “You sound a little crazed,” Georgia noted.

  “Am not,” she blurted childishly. “I just don’t like being undermined. That’s what I’m crazed about if I’m crazed at all.” Which you can’t prove. “Someone needs to take this bitch down a peg.”

  Silence greeted her and then words that made the silence preferable. “… Are you sure you shouldn’t be talking to Tara about this?”

  “Maybe I should,” Catherine smarted. Because obviously you’ve forgotten how to be a friend.

  “Seriously, Cat, you need to take it easy. You’re pregnant. Hormonal. Irr—”

  “Irrational?” she cut her off icily. “Nice, Georgia. Really nice.”

  “I was going to say irritable, but then again, irrational sounds like it works.” Chilly right back.

  Catherine was silent—blazingly silent—on her end.

  “Seriously? You called me and now you aren’t going to talk?” Incredulous, like this was a total waste of her time—the call and their friendship.

  “If I wanted to hear things like ‘calm down’ and ‘chill out’ I could talk to my husband. You’re supposed to be a friend.”

  “I am. Friends tell friends when they are being nutty. And you, my friend, are a big nutty nutball right now. You want to be room mom just to spite this chick.”

  “I want to be room mom because I signed up for it.”

  “By accident!”

  “Regardless, I got it fair and square. Unless I step down or do something wholly inappropriate like punch a kid or something, I’m it.”

  Georgia sighed heavily all the way from New Jersey. “Maybe you could learn something from this Sophie Whatshername—”

  “You did not just say that,” she growled.

  “I just mean that she’s been a mom and a room mom several times over, right? Maybe if you went to her rather than fighting against her, the whole class would benefit. Co-room-moms or something.”

  Catherine mouthed nasty words on her end through the whole awful, disgusting speech. Then waited through several seconds of silence, hoping for a punch line that would take it all back.

  “Cat?” Georgia prodded.

  “So you don’t believe I can do this?” she challenged.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah, basically, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said that rather than stumbling through it, everyone would benefit—”

  “Stumbling through? Clumsy Catherine? I’m getting it loud and clear. You sound like my mother. You might as well say, ‘Room mother? Really, Catherine Marie, organization has never been your strong suit.’ Come right out with it. If there is one thing Elizabeth Hemmings would never do, it’s mince words.”

  “Your mother’s right.”

  A gasp of indignation was all she could muster. She’d been trying to shame Georgia into submission, and to think her best friend in the whole world would take her mother’s side? Or the imaginings of what her mother’s side would be… which was somehow even worse.

  “Don’t forget, you’re the one who told me what a nightmare the Halloween party was.”

  “It was my first try. Who does anything perfect on the first shot? These people are way too judgy. Nobody died.”

  “I can tell you I would have been pretty pissed if my kid chipped a tooth on one of those cookies,” Georgia asserted.

  “So you’re one of them then.”

  “I’m me. And that’s how I feel.”

  “You’ve been a mother for five minutes longer than me, Georgia. So don’t give me this holier-than-thou shit. If I wanted that I would call my mother who has been at it a lot longer than you.”

  Georgia hadn’t made a sound, but that didn’t stop Catherine. “Call me when your daughter is in school and let me know how you feel about the other mothers and all the politics of perfection… Oh, but you’ll probably be top dog, Mrs. Love. President of the PTO and queen of all room mothers, since you aren’t a total screwup like me.” She took a deep breath, dizzy with anger and hurt that she hadn’t found a kind and accommodating ear to cry to. The silence was deafening on the other end. She stared at the phone, embarrassed and shaking with adrenaline, uncertain what to say or do now. But she didn’t have to say anything because Georgia had already hung up on her.

  Why does she have to be such a Sophie Watts?

  Her best friend was turning into one of those women. One of those mothers she couldn’t stand. They had always been different. Never into the same kinds of guys. Georgia was steady and straight and true, while Catherine was a nightmare of contradictions. They weren’t the same people at all. But siding with Sophie Watts? Hell, if Georgia lived here in Nekoyah, she’d probably be best friends with Sophie already. And I would be the mother they scorned.

  Catherine would show them all a thing about parties, though. I’m Elizabeth Hemmings’ daughter, for Christ’s sake. The perfect hostess gene had to be in her somewhere. It only made sense. Latent maybe, not missing. She’d gotten her first period late too, but it had come eventually. And she was almost always late for everything, but she got where she was going. She could do this. Three days was plenty of time if she put her mind to it.

  Friday, November 17th

  -8-

  Quiet Riot blared from her purse, jolting the relative peace of the cold morning.

  “That’s Tara,” Cara announced, having heard that ringtone enough.

  “So it is,” Catherine said, trudging out the door in her heavy boots and long winter coat, the cold biting at her uncovered hands. She was juggling too much to chance a pair of mittens or gloves compromising her grip.

  One arm was cradled around the boxes of cupcakes she had picked up the night before from the best bakery around. Two perfect lavender boxes stacked and tied together like a gift of baked goods. She’d paid a premium price for premium flavors, a selection that would dazzle kids and parents alike—all gluten and peanut free, exceeding even Sophie Watts’s expectations. Her other arm held the box FedEx had dropped off the night before, the last of the party supplies, cornucopias she’d had shipped overnight to use as goody bags filled with stickers and pencils and other approved goodies that were currently stuffed in the bags hanging from her wrists. A spark of genius that just might put all her naysayers to shame for good. Ideally she would have already filled the goody bags by this point, but last night exhaustion had overtaken her and Fynn had left her sleeping in his infinite husbandly wisdom. She wouldn’t let that snag dampen her spirits though. She. Had. Rocked. This. And she could easily stuff the cornucopias in the car before bringing everything in to set up for the party. Plenty of time. Or she could throw old Sophie Watts a bone and have her help make the goody bags just to hammer home the pure awesomeness of her idea.

  “Aren’t you gonna answer?” Cara asked.

  “We have to get to school. I’ll call her back.”

  “Promise?” Like it really mattered. Like maybe Tara had gotten to her, working another angle altogether to force Catherine’s hand.

  “Yes,” she sighed, trying to balance everything while she finagled the key ring she’d hooked on her finger like a gaudy piece of jewelry.

  “I can do that,” Cara offered, reaching for it and sliding the house key into the deadbolt to lock it.

  “Thank you, sweetie.”

  The music stopped suddenly and Catherine sighed in relief, turning toward the car to find that Fynn had defrosted it completely before he left to meet with a client. Without even being asked. Simply taking care of her when she needed taking care of. So sweet.

  “Stanley said that the Indians weren’t celebrating with us on Thanksgiving,” Cara jabbered, hopping down the front steps one at a time, her pompom on her hat hopping up and down with her. “He said they were feeding us al
l that food to fatten us up so they could eat us over the winter and not starve.”

  “Stanley sounds like a douche,” Catherine said without thinking.

  “Mrs. Karnes gave him a book about the first Thanksgiving to take home so he could learn more about it, but I think that he doesn’t really care what happened.”

  “What’s important is you know what happened, and that you care about it.” She made her way gingerly down the steps, sideways, thankful the snow they’d forecast hadn’t come through.

  “I do. I think Thanksgiving is wonderful.” She twirled toward the car.

  “Well, let’s get to school and celebrate it then.”

  Cara opened the back door and climbed in.

  Quiet Riot started blaring anew and Catherine tried to ignore it, but she knew that Tara would likely just keep calling. She set down the boxes on the roof and reached for her phone.

  “Listen, Tara, I don’t have time right now. I’m trying to take Cara to school and we’re running late.” The truth. She tossed the bags and box of cornucopias on the passenger seat.

  “Don’t be a pain. Just take me with you; you’re on your cell.”

  “I can’t even think straight let alone talk and drive at the same time.” Another truth.

  “Fine,” Tara relented. “But you better call me back. I know where you live and you’ve ignored me long enough.”

  “Speaking of which, do not leave messages on my answering machine at home anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you called me.”

  “I’m serious, Tara. Not cool.”

  “I’m serious too. It isn’t cool.”

  “Fine,” Catherine relented, squeezing behind the steering wheel.

  “It’s a truce then.”

  “Whatever,” she groused.

  “Have fun, bitch. And call me back.” A firm warning before hanging up.

  She should be happy that at least Tara still wanted to talk to her after blowing her off as much as she had been. That was more than she could say for Georgia, who hadn’t called to apologize since showing her holier-than-thou side with Sophie Watts tendencies.

  Catherine peered in the rearview mirror at Cara, buckled safely in the backseat, reminding herself what mattered most. “Ready to hit the road?”

  “Yup. I think this is going to be the best party ever!”

  No pressure there.

  -9-

  “So… how’re my girls?” Fynn asked, meeting them in the driveway as they got out of the car.

  “Great! Look what I got!” Cara crowed, holding up her hand proudly.

  “What are—”

  “Turkey claws! Aren’t they cool? Cat has a whole box of them in the car!”

  Fynn turned to Catherine, who gave him a blank stare of disbelief, like Cara was completely crazy and there was no such thing in her car, which there wouldn’t have been if she had been smart enough to ditch it in the woods on the side of the road.

  She felt like she’d been through the wringer and back again, beaten into submission by a bunch of first graders and their helicopter moms. A long day she would like to forget. And it was only a half day at that. Plenty of day left and all she wanted to do was go upstairs and crawl into bed. They could wake her up next Thursday. For Thanksgiving.

  “And I didn’t forget any of my lines either. Which I was afraid I might do just like Cat forgot the cupcakes on the roof. But she says it wasn’t littering because they’re biograble.”

  “Biodegradable?” Fynn offered.

  “Yup. But the animals probably ate them anyway. I hope it was the chipmunks because I like chipmunks the best. Better even than squirrels. Anyway, that’s what I told Mrs. Karnes. I said we were feeding the animals and that’s why we were late to school.” She stopped then to flutter her eyelashes at Catherine in a sweet but misguided attempt to wink. “It was a good excuse. She never suspected a thing.”

  “Were you mainlining sugar today?” he chuckled.

  Cara’s face screwed up in confusion.

  “Eat lots of good treats?” he clarified.

  “Yeah! Cat got donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. I had a half dozen. That’s what six is, right?” Cara asked, tugging on Catherine’s coat with her clawed hand.

  “Six?” Fynn looked to his wife who’d had a fit when he allowed Cara to eat as much candy as she wanted on Halloween night because it was a special occasion. One that ended with Catherine up all night tending to Cara’s bellyache.

  “They weren’t that big,” she asserted quickly.

  “But they weren’t just the holes because those were little nutballs, right Cat?” Cara giggled. “And Johnny is alleged.”

  “Allergic?” Fynn asked.

  Cara nodded.

  Catherine caught Fynn’s eye, wanting to circle her finger next to her head like it was all just crazy talk.

  “I think donuts were even better than the cupcakes would have been. Nobody brings donuts to school. It’s always cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes.” Cara rolled her eyes. “Or cookies sometimes—ooh, next time we should bring pie!”

  “Wow, now there’s an idea,” Fynn smirked.

  “It was a perfect day!” Cara sang. “Too bad Stanley didn’t remember anything right, though. That darn rabbit.”

  Fynn looked to Catherine questioningly, as if that had something to do with her too—maybe it was her illegitimate rabbit, since he seemed to sound an awful lot like her.

  “Stanley Wright. The rabbit. In the play,” she yawned, partly out of pure tiredness and partly to dramatize that tiredness so maybe he wouldn’t delve much deeper and unearth every last humiliation. Catherine didn’t want to talk about it. At. All.

  “He never said anything, just chased the carrots around, trying to eat them like a douche,” Cara said plainly.

  Catherine cringed. She’d hoped that little word had gone unnoticed this morning. But of course it was right there, filed away for later. Used properly, at least, she noted. That aside, she really needed to learn to keep her adult opinions to herself.

  “Sounds like a rabid bunny,” Fynn said wryly.

  “That wasn’t part of the play,” Cara assured him. “Just like having two carrots wasn’t part of the play. But then Magnus got hungry, so what can you do?”

  “What can you do?” he asked, turning to Catherine for the answer.

  Good grief. That pretty much said it all. She felt a lot like Charlie Brown when he messed up everything by buying a twig instead of a Christmas tree for the nativity play. Just Catherine Marie and Chuck. Classic losers.

  Suddenly Cara decided she was done, taking off up the front steps and into the house where Magnus met her at the door, and she warned him in no uncertain terms that she was not food.

  “Douche?” Fynn challenged.

  “I know. I know. Not what you want a six-year-old girl calling people.”

  “Did she learn that from Tara?”

  Catherine almost agreed, selling her friend down the river since it was just the type of thing Tara would do and she wasn’t here to defend herself. An easy out. She bit guiltily at her lip. “Little ears hear everything,” she eked out.

  “Please promise me that the first word out of that one’s mouth isn’t going to be douche or something worse.”

  She pffted. “You know I’ve been really careful ever since Cara got here. It was just a little slip. It was a… day,” she sighed, refusing to describe that which was indescribably awful. She made for the porch steps and the front door and the comfort of a warm home inside.

  “So, are you going to fess up or do I have to wait for the evening news to find out what went down?” he asked from behind.

  She stopped midstep, turned back to him. “Are you ever going to let that go?” Yes, she’d made the news before as one of three unidentified females who’d crashed the annual jigsaw convention a few towns over. Big deal. Nothing ever came of it. And Georgia and Tara were just as guilty—actually, Tara was guiltiest.

  Fynn picked something up o
ff the ground. One of the claws Cara had been wearing on her finger that must have fallen off in her haste to move on to her next adventure. He looked it over. “What is this… some kind of—”

  “It’s a cornucopia. A teeny, tiny horn of plenty,” Catherine grumbled, head down in defeat.

  “What is it for?”

  “The ‘gift bags’.” Using angry air quotes.

  “Oh yeah, no treats allowed,” he smirked about the rule.

  “No. Those are the gift bags. I was going to stuff them with all the party favors, prove I was room mother material and clear my good name…. They were supposed to be bigger. At least they looked bigger online.”

  A smile played at the corners of Fynn’s mouth.

  “It isn’t funny. It was humiliating. I opened it right in front of Sophie Watts! A gross of them!”

  “Why did you wait until you got to school?”

  “They just came last night. And I was tired. And you let me sleep.”

  “This is my fault now?”

  “I’m just saying that the kids ended up with ghetto bags, the brown lunch bags I brought for them to make puppets during the party.” She felt the tears even before she knew she was crying. “And all those parents think that I actually planned for the goody bags to be like that. Another show of Catherine Marie’s half-assery.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “It was bad. Since I used the bags, we couldn’t make puppets so Sophie Watts stepped in and ‘saved the day’ with her extra craft supplies that she carries with her everywhere in a rolling suitcase. Just in case someone screws up. Namely me. It was unbelievable…. And do you know that she had lemonade in her trunk too?”

  “In her craft case?”

  “In her trunk, Fynn. Her car. Jugs of the stuff. Ready to serve. She offered it up to me like a thousand sharp daggers dipped in saccharine. I would have rather they all went thirsty than drink her crummy in-case-Cat-fucks-up lemonade.”

  “What?”

  She stopped, realizing what she’d said. “I forgot to get drinks,” she mumbled. “And cups.”