2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1) Read online

“And that one will lead to another and another.”

  “Are you listening to this?” Catherine asked Georgia and the ignorant bar patrons passing by.

  “Yeah, I’m listening. You both sound nuts to me,” Georgia said plainly.

  “I’m just trying to be her sponsor,” Tara objected.

  Georgia ignored her and turned to Catherine. “What is the deal about this dollhouse thing?”

  “It’s just important to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because,” she said with finality.

  Back in the day, she had wanted the whole collection of sundae houses—Chocolottie, Strawberry Mary, and Caramellie. But she’d only ever gotten the one. And she’d cherished it. And now that her memories of that little toy had surfaced, and the toy itself had been found, she just couldn’t let it go. In her adult life she’d cut the ties with her young self… and with Josephine too. She had outgrown her sister and outlived her sister, and somewhere along the way Josey had grown fainter and fainter to her. This toy tied them together just like the ring she now wore around her neck. It seemed like fate that she’d happened to be looking for Caramellie right now and that she’d found her again.

  “I see a look in your eyes that I don’t like,” Tara said, breaking her out of her reverie.

  “What?” Catherine forced her blush of guilt back down the best she could. “I just need another drink. A little more courage. I think I’m going to go over and introduce myself to that fine specimen over there.” She pointed toward the bar where a decidedly too greased and primped man stood waiting like bait for his next one-night stand. It was a thinly disguised effort to distract them both from her eyes that were likely a window into what was really going on in her head—something much more G-rated but infinitely crazier.

  Best Laid Plans…

  Monday

  -11-

  “Hey, Georgia,” Catherine said into the phone shyly. After the other night she was definitely speaking from the doghouse again, and it was up to her friend how long she was going to be there.

  “Isn’t it a little early for this?” But Georgia’s voice was clear, exposing that she was already running on all cylinders.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” Catherine looked at her watch, yawning. It was only seven-thirty. Mondays didn’t usually start this early for work, let alone vacation. She had rolled out of bed and grabbed a shower, her bag, and a cab; yet she still wasn’t completely awake.

  “Oh, are you done being sad about your sad life?” Georgia needled, layering her voice with disinterest, obviously wanting to make Catherine feel every bit of what she should feel.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that. But I am calling to say that I’m so happy for you, and I can’t wait to be a godmother.”

  Georgia’s tone softened. “You’re lucky you got me today; I was just about to start going down the list to find new godparents—a couple,” she said pointedly.

  Catherine sucked in like she had just taken a knife to the chest. “Ooh, I deserved that.”

  “So, did your parents move yet?”

  “No. But soon, it seems. They aren’t in a rush to sell the house, thankfully. I don’t know if maybe they’re leaving themselves the option to move back in case they hate Wyoming.”

  “Who could hate Wyoming?” Georgia asked facetiously, her citified roots showing.

  “I was actually calling for another reason too.”

  “You mean this isn’t just an apology tour?”

  “No. I wanted to get together…. Tuesday night?” Catherine asked, searching.

  “Tomorrow?” she hemmed. “You’re already booked. Even though you’ve been a total ass, I wouldn’t forget.”

  Catherine felt tears playing at the edges of her eyes and her vision blurring. She had been a crappy friend recently, and Georgia was most definitely not…. She hitched a moment, thinking about the wild-goose chase ahead of her and feeling even crappier.

  “When do you want to get together?” Georgia asked.

  “I’ll have to get back to you,” she said hesitantly. Then, finally grasping onto an explanation, the rest came out in a tumbled rush. “I have a deadline and I might have to work kinda late.”

  “A deadline? Since when do you have deadlines?”

  “I have deadlines. My job is important!” she said almost stridently, her lie making her edgy.

  “Chill already. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

  Catherine settled herself and calmed her nerves. She wasn’t good at lying. But after everyone’s reaction to Caramellie so far, she didn’t have any interest in any more judgments about how crazy she was. What the hell did their opinions matter anyway?

  “Well, I have to get going,” Catherine said quickly, anxious to get on with her plans. “Tell Thomas congratulations on being a daddy.”

  “I will…. Oh, and by the way Cat, don’t do anything crazy,” she warned.

  Catherine winced, glad for the phone in between them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. No tattoos. No piercings. And no marrying the first guy you meet in Vegas. Got it?”

  She laughed in spite of herself. Georgia might not know exactly what she was up to, but obviously there was no hiding that something was going on beyond work. “Yeah, I got it. Not unless that guy is totally hot and hung like a stallion. I promise.”

  “Honey, I got the only one of those in this world.”

  “You wish.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Georgia.”

  “I love you, Cat. You know that.”

  When she hung up the phone she felt guilt rather than relief. She looked around at the teeming crowds of people in the airport. She was taking off in forty-five minutes. A woman with a change of clothes in her bag and the will to succeed. From here her plan seemed even more insane than it had on the ride over. Definitely more insane than it had seemed when she packed her measly possessions. And absolutely, terrifyingly more insane than it had seemed last night when she was scouring the internet for reservations.

  She’d hatched the idea less than twenty-four hours ago, over several glasses of wine and an encore presentation of Sweet Home Alabama—a dangerous Sunday afternoon alone. It had seemed so simple to her tipsy mind. So exceedingly brilliant. For all intents and purposes Reese Witherspoon had already done it. She’d made it all look so cute and fun, although with her adorable charms everything probably was more fun. Of course the script led her through crazy missteps, but it was a movie meant to entertain, not real life that was more straight and to the point. And it wasn’t like Catherine was attempting to do the same thing anyway. First of all, she wasn’t swooping into her hometown; she had never even been to Minnesota before. And she wasn’t trying to dissolve a marriage; she just wanted to conduct a simple business transaction with a simple storeowner. Heck, she should have it even easier than Reese did. All she wanted was to buy her childhood toy from the person who had outbid her. She would even offer to keep searching for a replacement for tROVESoFsTUFF, in addition to paying whatever the asking price was for Caramellie. How hard could it be to procure an old toy? It wasn’t like she was trying to change a person’s will. Two simple days and Caramellie would be hers—it could even be just hours from now if she played her cards right and didn’t get lost or anything absurd like that. Besides, it wasn’t like there was any turning back now. She’d already wiped out a chunk of her vacation for the year and all her flyer miles and made a hotel reservation and—

  Dammit! I forgot the car rental! She would just have to handle that on the other end.

  And regarding her multiple personalities and that Catherine Marie who was considering having her committed over this—well she could just suck it. What she was doing right now was not nuts. She wasn’t just flying off the handle into some alternate universe on a whim. She had hunted and scoured and searched for Caramellie from New York. She had tried to get the buyer to sell to
her. She had even talked to someone at the Troves of Stuff store on the phone, but they played dumb to her questions—of course she knew Caramellie was either there or en route. She had tried everything else before coming to this point. This trip was totally logical and practical, and completely within reason—two simple days: fly in, fly out, and be back in time for dinner with Georgia on Tuesday night.

  -12-

  Catherine got off the plane feeling only slightly less foolish now that she was actually back on the ground. She’d had a few moments up in the air when she considered rushing the cockpit and demanding the pilot turn the whole operation around to save her from her cockamamie plan, but airlines and the U.S. Government didn’t take kindly to rabble-rousers on airplanes—the surest route to a full-body cavity search, a detention facility, and a headline story on the world news. Plus, she probably would have gotten tasered and filmed on any number of cell phones, flopping around like a fish out of water in the aisle. An image like that, plastered on YouTube with a date and time stamp, would out her completely, not to mention how that kind of fame would totally screw her in boyfriend-dom. Those thoughts kept her buckled in her seat, a model passenger. If she was going to allow herself to completely lose her nerve, she could do it after landing; go straight to her hotel and sleep off her insanity until her return flight. If anything the sleep would do her well—a couple days in Minnesota to recharge and regroup.

  The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport was sizeable, with volumes of arrivals and departures from all reaches of the country, international flights, packed luggage carousels, gridlock at ticket desks—all signs of civilization she had just left behind. The bustle and speed soothed her. She had imagined something wholly different on this end. The past decade in New York had inevitably roosted some predisposition to elitism, the belief that nothing could match the size of everything about the Big Apple. The Mall of America be damned, she had been certain there was no way the Twin Cities could be the center of anything—especially since Bloomington was the actual home of said mall. But the mall was not destination zero anyway; that was a prize, a victory lap that would be the perfect reward for completing her quest.

  She found a stretch of car rental agencies along a main corridor and headed for the one with the shortest line, though it still took forever to reach the counter.

  “Welcome to Minnesota. Are you here for business or pleasure?” Deanne prompted, from behind the TruAuto counter. The decidedly peppy customer service representative was probably a reject from the school for customs agents—passing starched formal dress but failing monotone class.

  “Business,” Catherine answered definitively.

  “Your name?” Deanne asked, poised to enter it into the computer before her.

  “Catherine Hemmings.” She watched Deanne’s perfectly manicure fingers pecking at the keys.

  “Ooh, I’m sorry; I don’t have a reservation under that name. Is it under your company name?” she offered kindly.

  “I don’t actually have a reservation yet,” she admitted. “I was hoping to rent something on the fly.” Actually, I forgot to plan ahead on this one thing—sue me.

  Deanne gave her a dubious look that failed to comfort, along with the wonderful news that TruAuto had a seriously depleted stock of available cars what with all the events going on in the area—conventions, tourism, and the 100 Mile Garage Sale that people would start arriving for as early as tomorrow—I’d love to see those guys fit their bargains in the overhead compartment. It seemed silly that people would fly in and rent cars for such an occasion, but Deanne insisted it was a popular event with bargains galore, and people from all over would shop and then ship stuff home through UPS. Wow, and I thought I was crazy…. Although to think of the pure number of Midwest attics that would be unceremoniously emptied, contents draped across lawns and tagged with little round price stickers—a hundred miles of chances to find that replacement she was considering offering to the current owner of Caramellie…. But she would already be gone when all the fun started.

  “Ma’am, I would love to get you into one of our cars today, but without a reservation….”

  Ma’am? Do I look like a ma’am? she almost challenged, but seeing as how she was at Deanne’s mercy she decided it best to let it slide. Especially since the other rental services looked even more mobbed, and she’d already seen several dejected people turning back from those counters without keys in hand.

  “I only need a car for one day. It’s just me and my carry-on. I don’t even have to go very far,” she said sweetly, almost adding “little old” to “me” just to make herself seem that much more innocent and helpless.

  “Well….” Deanne tapped her pen against the countertop, watching the screen in front of her that was wholly out of Catherine’s view. “I do have an e-drive two-seater—our newest rental option,” she said sunnily, like it was the answer to all of her customer’s wishes and prayers.

  “Perfect!” Catherine gushed, hardly listening beyond the have part of the conversation. She quickly dug through her purse, fishing for her wallet to seal the deal before the woman could change her mind.

  “You’re going to have to charge it if it goes over eighty. On second thought, you better do it anyway since you’re going overnight.”

  “Oh, of course. I intended to,” Catherine assured her, wondering what kind of rental policy this was—is my cash no good here? But her cash was meant for purchasing Caramellie anyway... and food (a girl’s gotta eat). The rest of the cost of this trip needed to be pushed off as long as possible.

  “So you’re familiar with—”

  “Here you go.” She slapped her Visa on the counter and cut off Deanne in one fell swoop, stopping the agent before she morphed into a tour guide. Catherine didn’t really care what the area offered. First stop, Troves of Stuff. Second, Mall of America. Third, the Holiday Inn. Then back here all over again.

  Paid and signed on the dotted line, she took the shuttle to the rental lot. Now she was stranded alone in a concrete desert full of cars, the only other passenger on her shuttle having already found his rental and taken off. When she came upon space Z20, she dropped her bag and her jaw and they both hit the pavement at the same time. She’d been had. Now all she needed to find was a magic lamp or fairy godmother to take it all back, rewind and restart—go through Avis or Enterprise or Hertz, heck even Bobby’s Jalopies. Anything but this.

  She couldn’t have said what she’d been expecting—a Miata, a Corvette, her brother’s old broken-down and rusted-out Fiat—anything but this. The weensy teensy red automobile looked more circus-ready than anything. She approached it carefully, even hung back after popping the remote locks just in case fourteen painted clowns with floppy shoes jumped out of their little prison whooping and hollering—God she hated clowns.

  Once the coast was clear she opened the hatchback, noting the “Smart” name front and center and wishing Deanne had said as much. She looked over the slot that was called trunk space and crammed her carry-on inside. Then she went around to get in the driver’s seat, dropping her purse on the seat next to her. “So you’re a Smart car?” she asked the steering wheel dubiously, reminding herself that this was going to be the fastest trip to Minnesota ever known to man, and that her father would never even find out about it.

  She looked over her go-sheet listing the addresses for the hotel, mall, airport, and Troves of Stuff. Anyone who thought she had a screw loose obviously hadn’t seen the table that she had created and printed in color. It was the epitome of organization and planning: distances and times and a complete schedule—enough to bring her mother to tears if she only knew. Soon enough Catherine would be poised to reclaim her rightful property.

  It still stung to think that those people who had raised her could have just sent Caramellie away like she was trash. She remembered how in those weeks and months after Josephine died, she used to sneak into her sister’s room and sit on the window seat and hold tiny Caramellie in her hands, imagining life the way it use
d to be. Catherine knew that she was the only one who ever went in there, but she hoped it would stay Josey’s space forever. When everything that was Josephine suddenly disappeared, she was heartbroken all over again, and then she was the only one who never went into that room again.

  Catherine shook herself out of her reverie and plugged her first destination address into the waiting GPS—a standard amenity TruAuto was most proud of, as it was emblazoned across a large poster on the wall behind their counter. The GPS found its location after several electronic hiccups and snoozes, and she pulled out of the lot, following the purple line and the oddly soothing digitized voice that had a funny way of saying certain words that brought a smile to her lips. She drove the unfamiliar highway and side streets, drumming nervously on the steering wheel and listening for Glenda—because that was what her disembodied companion sounded like—to tell her what to do.

  The hometown of Troves of Stuff was a main thoroughfare surrounded on both sides by strip malls—mostly newer varieties. Each one had a different style but all were done in brick, like maybe there was a building code that mandated it. There were some with archways and some with awnings and one that had been done in a façade that made each store look entirely different, like a bunch of small stores had been built separately and then glued together. The storefront she wanted was smack in the middle of a strip boasting whitewashed bricks, deep red awnings, and a surprisingly fresh and new sign that practically blared its name at her in red and white—Troves of Stuff. Antiques and Gifts had been added as subtext underneath in what seemed an afterthought. It was sandwiched between a Batteries Plus store (plus what? maybe the intrigue brought in customers) and an insurance agency.

  Catherine got out of the car and took a deep breath of the Midwest. Clean. Clear. The air was entirely breathable and could sustain human life. Inside the store, no one was at the register, so she wandered the aisles. The antique shops she had been in before had been divided and subdivided again into separate booths, several sellers selling through the same storefront. This one, on the other hand, was organized as if it was all one seller’s goods, a sizeable stock.