2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) Read online

  Once she was alone again, Catherine squirmed around on the bed, trying to find a hiding place from all the damn light spilling into the room—the sun at full force upon the fresh snow outside was blinding. She squinched her eyes closed as tightly as possible, trying to find absolute darkness.

  “Catherine Marie!” her mother snapped, startling her. Elizabeth was lording over the bed again, arms full of clean clothes now. “You know that no one sleeps past nine in this house unless they’re sick. Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” she said, giving in before the thermometer came out and clear broth appeared at her bedside.

  “Good, because I made breakfast. French toast. Your favorite,” her mother cajoled. “And here.” She laid the stack of clothes heavily on the end of the bed. “You’re going to need something else to wear while your things are in the wash. I brought you some pants and sweaters to try, and later I thought we could go shopping together and pick something out for you to wear to Niki’s christening.

  Is this hell? “I have plenty of church-appropriate clothes,” she said defensively, sitting up slowly and with great difficulty.

  “I mean a dress, Catherine.”

  “I have dresses, Mother.”

  “I haven’t seen you in a dress since Connor’s wedding, and you looked so beautiful that day.”

  “It was a peach bridesmaid dress that was held together with safety pins. I looked ridiculous,” she countered, holding her head with her hand to help with the weight. She hated being reminded of that moment. She’d been perfectly content going to the wedding as a guest—preferred it to faking a close relationship with her future sister-in-law that didn’t exist—so when Lacey’s cousin’s water broke at the rehearsal dinner, Catherine had literally taken a dive under the table to hide from view when they tried to pinpoint a replacement, almost yelling, What about that fat chick over there? to send everyone’s attention toward what happened to be a waitress with a similar shape to the already-altered dress. Unfortunately, at some point she’d had to “find her napkin” and come up for air and a bite to eat before she died of asphyxiation or starvation, and she was immediately pressed into service.

  “You never could see yourself, Catherine Marie,” her mother said, turning to go.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You sell yourself and everybody else short.”

  “I’m a realist, Mother…. You know, life is real, not ideal.”

  “Don’t use my words against me.”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “I’m just saying that you are your own worst enemy. It is like you want to be sad, pitiful Catherine who never gets what she deserves.”

  “And what exactly do I deserve, Mom?”

  “Love. A family. Happiness,” Elizabeth said plainly.

  “That stuff doesn’t grow on trees.”

  “Of course not. It’s rare. Even more so because you sabotage yourself at every turn. Just when you have a good thing going you shut it down.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Fynn.”

  She was flustered, confused, wondering if scotch lips sink ships. Had she told her mother? Did Connor say something? “Fynn’s fine,” she said softly—could be the truth.

  “I’m not an idiot, Catherine,” her mother scolded, sitting on the end of the bed. “I saw the look on your face last night when you got here. You were hurt.”

  “I was hurt because you had a party and didn’t invite me!” she exclaimed, wincing at the pain reverberating in her head in response.

  Elizabeth waved off the accusation. “I know that we don’t talk about boys. I’ve always left you to your own love life.”

  Except for those five years during which you told me every move Daniel Bell made after I dumped him. “I am hardly dealing with boy trouble anymore, Mom.”

  “I just want you to know that we really like Fynn.”

  It was so strange hearing her mother freely use his nickname. Elizabeth called everyone by their given name. But for Uncle Dick. And now Fynn. Catherine wondered if she’d ever even told her mother that his real name was actually Joel, or if that had been lost somewhere along the way because Fynn would never be Joel to her. The name just didn’t fit.

  “Catherine?” her mother prodded firmly.

  “Sure you like Fynn. It’s me you have a problem with,” she groused, wallowing in self-pity.

  “Oh please, give me a break.”

  “You thought I was nuts when I showed up with him last spring, for the whole way we met—flying out there, chasing a lost toy—for everything.”

  “Sure I thought you were nuts—you’re my daughter, I know you’re nuts.”

  “Thanks,” she said lowly.

  “Did I ever tell you how I met your father?”

  “He was the quarterback of the high school football team and your eyes locked with his in the middle of a play, all the way from where you sat in the bleachers,” Catherine recited, sounding bored by the old story she’d heard countless times.

  “Actually, he was the quarterback of the other team. Our biggest rivals. He lived three towns away.”

  “So?”

  “We didn’t go to the same school. We didn’t have the same friends. We were sworn enemies. And yet we made it work.”

  “Nice try, Mom, but I hardly think a few towns and a football rivalry equate to what I’m going through.”

  “I was fifteen. I didn’t drive yet. He didn’t have a car. I used to take the bus to see him when I could because it was safer than him coming to see me. In a lot of ways it was probably harder than what you’re going through. But this isn’t about me…” she said pointedly. “I just hope that whatever is going on with you two, you don’t let a few miles get in the way.”

  “A few miles?” Catherine scoffed. And then the dam broke. “Hundreds of miles, Mom. I don’t know up from down half the time.”

  “Maybe that’s a sign that you need to make a change. You have been dating like this for months.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Good,” her mother said, like the conversation was suitably concluded. She’d said her evasive piece and Catherine had responded in kind and everyone was roughly on the same page as far as Elizabeth Hemmings was concerned. She got up to go, walked across the room, and as she was reaching for the doorknob Catherine shattered their common ground.

  “So we broke up,” she said, her voice even, like she was stating a simple, unemotional fact.

  She watched her mother’s shoulders slump in defeat for exactly one heartbeat, and then Elizabeth composed herself and turned to face the bed. “Well, then I guess another year has passed, hasn’t it?” There she went, passive aggressively counting the time down to her daughter’s old-maid status. Suddenly she was all business again. “Why don’t you get dressed, come downstairs, have some of my famous French toast, and then we’ll take that trip to the store that I was talking about.”

  -8-

  “There’s Little Miss Sunshine!” William Hemmings announced from the table, eyes twinkling, bald head polished and shining in the daylight that was streaming through the windows behind him. He’d taken to calling her that ironically when she was in high school and obviously her dour mood had brought it back into play.

  “Whatever,” Catherine said begrudgingly, her usual response to the greeting.

  “Just like having a teenager around the house all over again. Ah, those were the days,” he swooned facetiously.

  Her father had gotten the worst of her teen years, but in her defense, he was blind, deaf, and dumb to her growing pains. She was awkward and gawky and slow to bloom, except for her face that bloomed mounds of puss like a mutant garden. She was a complete mess in her teen years. But for some reason he never noticed, so when his generally agreeable daughter turned into a shrieking nightmare or slipped into absolute contrariness unexpectedly over what seemed to be mundane things, he didn’t get it… at all…. Like the time he tried to take her f
or an ice cream and she balked, refusing to go in the parlor. They fought the whole way back—sundae-less—over her rudeness and orneriness. She knew she could take the heat from his anger, though, and she could live without the hot fudge—even never have another sundae again while she was under his roof, like he asserted. What she couldn’t live with was stepping foot inside that shop… a local hangout… on a Saturday night… dateless (no surprise)… with her father… wearing no makeup… with zits lighting up her face like a Christmas tree (considering the holidays were three months past at that point, it wasn’t a festive statement—it was just plain gross). To this day she still held firm that no matter how much of a bitch she’d been to be around, being her was at least a thousand times worse.

  “Well, I hope you didn’t have your heart set on French toast because I couldn’t just sit here and stare at your plate any longer, so I ate your breakfast too,” he chuckled.

  “Oh, William!” her mother exclaimed, coming out of the laundry room and grabbing a new dishtowel from the drawer to whip at him lightly.

  “You should know better by now than to leave French toast unattended in this house,” he said sadly. “I am but a man.”

  “That you are. A growing man,” Elizabeth cautioned, eyeing his burgeoning belly. Something new of late, Catherine noted.

  “Oh this…. I call this a sign of how good you are to me,” he said.

  “Don’t patronize me, William.” She busied herself cracking a couple more eggs and starting up a new batch.

  “Don’t go to any trouble, Mom, I’m not really that hungry anyway.”

  “No trouble. You need to eat something, dear. What with that awful hangover you’ve got, you should really get some food and drink in you.”

  Catherine gulped. She hadn’t realized that her mother recognized what was going on. But then her mother always seemed to know everything. Maybe she was psychic. Maybe I should have her read my palm or tell my fortune. Maybe she’s known all the answers all along… in which case I really should have spent more time listening to her all these years. In fact, maybe that was why she’d gotten Minks for her thirteenth birthday. Perhaps he was a clue to my future… or the nest egg on which to build my old-maid cat colony of which I will one day become queen. Unfortunately Minks died several years back, a faithful friend—she could use one right about now.

  “So,” her father said, jiggling his newspaper as he folded it sloppily and set it down. “When are you leaving?”

  “Can’t stand the sight of me?” Catherine joked, poking out her boo-boo lip that had earned her many things from her daddy over the years.

  “You said your flight was canceled last night. When will you be able to fly out?”

  “I—”

  But her mother cut in quickly, her face pale, “She’s not going to be flying out, William.” She had finished dipping the bread and loading the griddle, and now stood at the sink drying her hands on her fresh dishtowel. “Catherine and Fynn broke up,” she said evenly, coming over to the table to refold the newspaper properly.

  “What?” her father asked, total shock passing over his face.

  Her parents had never shown any real interest in her relationships, at least not since her high school squeeze, Daniel, who they feared she might go too far with (entirely warranted seeing as how they had gone as far as possible on the family room couch right underneath the master bedroom while her parents slept). Over the past sixteen years of dating and notably less often sleeping with men, they’d shown no familial concern for her extramarital relationships at all. And they hardly knew Fynn. Sure they met him that time in New York when they’d first started dating; when she brought him to dinner as a human shield to protect her from the big family announcement. And of course he had charmed them completely with stories of their daughter’s zany adventures in Nekoyah, Minnesota. He was captivating. But since then he had come to see her only a handful of times, and only two of those times had they seen her family. Three meetings and her father looked like he’d lost a son rather than a practical stranger… or at best an acquaintance.

  “Did something happen?” he asked Catherine. “Did you say—”

  Elizabeth cut her husband off and answered for her daughter. “Sometimes things just run their course.”

  It was her relationship or lack thereof that they were talking about and yet she felt oddly detached from the conversation.

  “We’re planning to go out,” her mother announced suddenly, manning the griddle again. Catherine felt the smells of the kitchen begin to ply at her appetite greedily.

  “On New Year’s Day? Isn’t everything closed?” William asked.

  “You live in the past, old man,” Elizabeth said. “It’s the beginning of a whole new round of sales. Some of the best of the year are right now.”

  He smirked, knowing that his wife lived for a deal. “Well, I for one will be right here where I’m meant to be, watching the Mummers Parade and then Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl, with a little nap thrown in for good measure.”

  Catherine almost drooled with delight at the thought of that kind of day.

  “So long as you’re entertained,” Elizabeth said, serving the French toast up on a plate, sprinkling confectioners’ sugar on top, and setting it in front of Catherine. “My daughter and I choose to begin the year more productively.”

  Catherine stifled the groan that attempted to skate past her lips.

  *****

  “I think it is perfect. You can wear it to the christening, to work, out at night. Dress it up. Dress it down,” Elizabeth said, giving it her essential wardrobe seal of approval as she started up the car. Her mother was always about versatility. For Catherine’s whole existence in her mother’s care she had been denied anything that might be deemed as one-time use—i.e. the stuff she wanted most. All that super trendy stuff that other girls were wearing—that was in all the cutesy shops—that likely wouldn’t last through one wash cycle let alone survive the fickleness of the fashion industry—was considered out of bounds. And when it came to accessorizing, Elizabeth Hemmings liked strong fundamentals—roughly translated this meant brown leather shoes and brown leather purses and brown leather belts that wore like iron. No satin or sequins or colorful pleather for Catherine Marie.

  That was probably the reason she was such a clothes-hound now, gorging herself and bucking the tight-ass budget of her youth ever since, buying what she wanted, not just what was needed and economical and versatile. Catherine was magnetically drawn to high-fashion, high-quality, classic styles that she couldn’t afford. Price was no object and her credit card statements had been known to prove it. Only Fynn had been able to put a chink in that line of thinking, not directly, but by putting something else in the way of her fashion happiness. Himself.

  “You didn’t have to buy it for me, Mom,” she said, relieved that she could finally breathe easy again. Kohl’s had come through just like her mother had insisted it would, but it also brought on a bad case of heartsickness. It was like trying to shop with a cinderblock on her chest. This Kohl’s was identical to the one in Nekoyah that had come through for her last spring, saving her from looking like a vagabond when she got trapped there with one change of clothes and an awesome case of bad luck—bad luck that made me the luckiest girl in the world…. God, I miss him.

  “I wanted to. We don’t get to spend time like this anymore.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said carefully, trying not to read into her mother’s words any deeper to see if she was being blamed for that fact or if her mother was just stating a fact. See, I am already making strides in the New Year.

  The dress in the trunk really was absolutely perfect. Midnight purple. Simple, yet figure-hugging enough to draw the eye. Three-quarter sleeves that would span seasons. A wide neck that left that special spot exposed for kisses—not that she would have a kisser around to take advantage of that—

  Stop it!

  Of course the dress hadn’t looked nearly as good on the hanger—dowdy wa
s the word she’d used—and Catherine had recoiled at the prospect of even trying it on. The whole exchange was kind of heartwarmingly nostalgic, though, taking her back to her adolescence when her mother would pick out the most unsuspecting things and she would stick her finger down her throat dramatically in response. Then Elizabeth Hemmings would put her foot down and Catherine Marie would relent. And as usual her mother proved to have been right all along. It was their shopping shtick. Somehow her mother had better fashion sense than she did, and when left to her own devices Catherine tended to stick to the stuff modeled on mannequins rather than deflated on hangers because she seemed to lack the vision to see things for what they were.

  “Now what?” her mother asked, sounding all too chipper considering Catherine knew she’d stayed up well past when the last guests left in order to tidy up from the party… because Elizabeth Hemmings couldn’t lie still in a dirty house—probably even cleaned the bathrooms before catching a single wink.

  Now… everything just hurts, she thought to herself.

  “Catherine?”

  “I think it’s naptime,” she noted.

  “Maybe that will teach you to stay away from the drink,” her mother chided.

  “The drink? What year is this?” Catherine laughed, deflecting her mother’s judgment.

  “You put on quite a show last night.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She wondered if she’d sung or danced or done something truly deplorable under the influence of scotch. It was her first time! How was she supposed to know that it caused hallucinations or visions of grandeur or—

  “Your Aunt Judy couldn’t tell people about you fast enough.”

  “She is the one who needs to stay away from the drink.” There she went, deflecting again.

  Catherine watched her mother’s expression tighten, eyes glued to the road, knowing she had touched a chord inside. Elizabeth wasn’t a teetotaler, but she was about as close as one could get. A toast here or there was all she ever drank. Of course she knew, like everyone else in the family, that her sister was a total lush. In fact, that was probably why Uncle Al smoked two packs a day and why he held onto her coattails wherever she went, just so he could pick up the pieces.