A well-I-never throat-clearing on Mrs. Karnes’s end of the line right before she went in for the kill. “We are going to have Sophie Watts head up the Snow Party since she is knee-deep into the season already—”
Head up? The woman said it like it was the Midwest division of a major corporation with a corner office in a skyscraper and key to the executive washroom, not a one-story elementary school party.
“—there is so much to do and we know she can juggle it all considering she has done countless parties for us over the years.”
Catherine was not deaf to the pronouns “we” and “us” that she used and the fact that it relegated her to being one of “them”. And Catherine also wasn’t dumb to the fact that Mrs. Karnes wasn’t pussyfooting around this time. She used definitives. No wiggle room. No thinking, or hoping, or considering. We are. We know. We think you suck at life.
“That sounds perfect. For everyone.” The epitome of graciousness. In response, Catherine could hear Mrs. Karnes’s jaw drop, or at least her dropping something on her end. The woman had been so certain that she would be unreasonable; maybe beg to keep the position that no one—at least not we and us—wanted her to have. But she had her pride, and her mother listening in. Elizabeth Hemmings had taken the opportunity to wash the dishes now that the sink was free, keeping her hands and ears busy.
Mrs. Karnes collected herself. “Well, then, we do hope that you will join us for the event. Come and take part with Cara.” A bone tossed out as if it meant anything when in truth all parents were welcome at every event.
“I will. Certainly,” Catherine choked out. Only for Cara, of course. Because if not for Cara, she would be miles away from Sophie Watts’s perfect Snow Party. Gag me.
As she hung up the phone, her mother turned from the sink. “So, do you want to keep washing or start drying?” she asked, like they hadn’t skipped a beat.
-20-
“Now that’s a fireplace,” William Hemmings said appreciatively, sitting back on the couch while Fynn tended the fire within. “None of that flick-of-the-switch, gas-insert crap. A genuine masonry fireplace.” Like it was a gold mine with unlimited value.
“Don’t mind him,” her mother brushed him off. “Your father has taken to watching HGTV like it’s the Sunday Ticket, rooting against the DIYers and designers and hopeless home buyers.”
“Elizabeth, they are breaking out brick hearths. Brick!” A bark of disbelief, like the word alone explained the travesty. “All to put in sleek and shiny glass tiles. Or dry-walling over all of it and painting it with an ‘accent color’. They’re removing all the character. Sterilizing everything.”
“Brick is a classic,” Fynn concurred.
“Exactly. It’s rough-and-tumble. It’s got texture and strength. Material for a man’s man. But instead they’re selling everyone on what’s prissy and clean and smooth. They’re manscaping our fireplaces now”
Catherine choked on her hot chocolate. She would have bet her life that word would never cross her father’s lips. Ever.
“What’s manscaping?” Cara asked, seeming only half-interested as she played with Caramellie, the tiny doll that started this family, bringing Catherine to Minnesota to meet Fynn. And now she was a wife and a mother and there were even more tiny dolls around, Caramellie’s friends who lived in their own sundaes or sandwich cookie houses, all tracked down on eBay for Cara’s birthday without any drama, furthering the theory that Catherine’s quest for Caramellie had been kismet.
“Emasculating men,” Pop-Pop offered unhelpfully.
“Isn’t that like Jesus?” Cara asked.
Catherine looked to Fynn for help.
“An emasculating concession,” Cara insisted. “Garrett told me. And he’s Joseph in the nativity play at their church so I think he knows.”
“Jesus is an immaculate conception,” Gramma Lizzy corrected. “God’s gift to the world, through Joseph’s wife Mary.”
Catherine gulped, realizing that now the church thing was on the table, and they simply hadn’t decided where to go with that yet. Would they or wouldn’t they? What would Renée have wanted them to do to guide Cara spiritually? She could feel the weight of her own mother’s eyes upon her.
“I’m just tired of everyone wanting everything to be modern and sleek and easy. Life isn’t supposed to be easy; it breeds weakness,” William Hemmings said, picking up where he’d left off and saving his daughter from the weight of a spiritual breakdown as well as an inappropriate discussion about male body hair or the lack thereof. “That’s what’s wrong with people today; they don’t want to have to lift more than a finger. Don’t want to have to get up off their asses for anything. It all went to pot when they made remote controllers for the TV. That whole industry has singlehandedly enabled a whole generation of couch potatoes.”
“I know what that is!” Cara crowed. “Cat calls me that on Saturdays when I’m watching my shows.”
“And she’s right,” Fynn said, getting up from his crouch at the fire and tickling her on the way by.
She giggled.
“Mr. Hemmings, should I remind you why you started watching HGTV in the first place?” Elizabeth prodded. “I believe you couldn’t find the remote for the TV and weren’t going to get up and look for it.”
“You’re the one who put the remote away. Who does that?” He turned to Fynn for support, but Catherine noticed her husband kept his focus elsewhere, not wanting anything to do with coming between his in-laws.
“Smart man,” William said appreciatively, even though he was being left to hang alone. “He knows not to get on your bad side, Elizabeth. He’ll do just fine in this family.”
Catherine smiled at the compliment, loving that Fynn was being received so well into the fold. So well, in fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that if her parents had to choose between him and her as being part of their family, they would choose him.
“All I’m saying is that this generation is soft and each one is getting softer. Pretty soon people will want to be able to go through life without getting out of bed at all in the morning.”
“That’s a little drastic, William.”
“No, Elizabeth, that day is coming. Mark my words.”
“Oh, I’ll mark them alright,” she chuckled.
“And tell me, I know all you kids are into that zombie apocalypse mumbo jumbo, but if that ever actually happened, you people do realize that a gas fireplace would be useless, right? Someone has to be there to provide the power. You can’t tap your own gas, but you can harvest wood with some will and an ax.” He gestured toward the glowing fire, “This here will still keep your family warm at night when the infrastructure collapses, while all those people who want convenient “pretty” fires are going to be screwed when the zombies take over.”
“Zombies are going to take over?” Cara asked, eyes wide, crawling up on the couch and snuggling in between Catherine and Gramma Lizzy. “Like on TV?”
“What do you know about zombies?” Catherine asked.
“Garrett watches them on TV all the time.”
The joys of having an older “worldly” cousin around. She made a mental note to chat with Drew about what he shared with Cara.
“Oh, William, there are no such things as zombies.” Gramma Lizzy wrapped a reassuring arm around Cara, kindling a jolt of jealousy that shot through Catherine at not being first to comfort her, like it was a mothering competition—point goes to Elizabeth Hemmings.
“I’m just saying that it’s something to think about. And I for one am happy to know that my daughter has a sensible fireplace in her house.”
“I think it’s about time you went to bed,” Fynn said to Cara.
“Aw, do I have to?”
“It’s a school night, remember?” Catherine prodded.
“Well, I guess some things always stay the same—kids and bedtime,” Elizabeth said wistfully.
“But what are Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop going to do all day without me?” Cara asked in all serio
usness.
“I think I will spend the day crying my eyes out,” William joked.
“Don’t worry, Pop-Pop, Magnus can keep you company.”
“That big galoot dog of yours?”
“Galoot. That’s a neat name,” Cara giggled.
“It’s not really a name,” Catherine said.
“It can be. Anything can be. I told you there’s a boy named Branch Hornton on my bus.”
“Somebody named their kid Branch?” William Hemmings asked in disbelief.
“Seems so.” Fynn shook his head at the sad state of affairs.
“Why? Does he look like a Branch?” Pop-Pop offered.
Cara burst out in guffaws.
“What is the world coming to? Gone are the days when names were names and things were things,” he said sadly.
“Like your Aunt Rose?” Elizabeth challenged.
“You know what I mean, Elizabeth. The way parents are going now, there will be entire classrooms filled with kids named Waffle and Celery and Carpet and Nail. Going to hell in a handbasket, we are.”
“The thing I don’t like is all the boys’ names that people are coopting for girls. Like there aren’t enough girls’ names out there already,” Fynn pointed out.
William gave a crisp nod. Men sticking together for male rights to keep masculine names. “Although they probably want us to start naming boys Rhonda and Christy. Shared names. Just like they want boys and girls to share bathrooms in public.”
“Your father has more time on his hands than he used to. More time to fester,” Elizabeth explained away her husband.
“I’m not festering.”
Catherine had never heard her father have so many opinions about anything before. He’d always been a man of few words. And her mother was mostly sighs and pointed looks and clichés. Quiet folk, she’d thought.
“So, what are you two thinking about for names?” her mother prompted, segueing away from her husband’s views of the world at large.
“We haven’t come to terms,” Fynn said diplomatically.
In fact, they had argued a good bit about names. Catherine nixed almost everything that had come down the pike, claiming bad connotations with people she’d known; Fynn asserted that she was just trying to be difficult and that no one could possibly know that many people; she claimed it was perfectly possible to know that many people if you didn’t live under a rock; he said that this way they were going to end up with a Blank Trager until the baby was eighteen and could pick his or her own name; she said Blank wasn’t actually a bad name; he countered, ‘Blank’ as in an empty space, not a name… and so went their vicious little cycle. So, no, they hadn’t come to terms.
She was trying her best to show no bias either way, shooting down names on both ends of the gender spectrum, even though the boys’ side was a futile endeavor. She acted like she cared, trying to keep the charade afloat, all the while coveting the name Eve as if they were opposing counsel in naming court, each with a limited number of refusals at their disposal. If Fynn shot Eve down after all the time she had spent imagining their future with her, it would be devastating.
“Just so long as it truly is a name,” William said.
“Not Blank,” Fynn pointed out meaningfully.
“Unless he looks like a Blank,” Cara quipped with a giggle, floating on the edges of the conversation.
“Do you know what you’re having?” Elizabeth Hemmings’ gaze was a laser-guided lie detector.
“We’re waiting, remember?” she said, as if she and Fynn were two oblivious peas in a pod.
“Only so many wonders left in the world,” he agreed.
“Oh, I forgot, I made something for Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop.” Cara hopped off the couch and ran to the hall closet where her backpack was hanging on a hook inside.
They could hear zippers unzipping and papers rustling, and when she reappeared her hair was standing up in a staticky mess from rubbing up under the coats in the closet. “It’s a present. For Christmas.” She marched toward them, holding out a bundle of newspaper. “Since you won’t be here.”
“But we were going to exchange presents and have a mini-Christmas before they leave,” Catherine reminded her.
“I know, but I want them to have this one now.” She climbed back up next to Gramma Lizzy on the couch and set the bundle in her lap.
Elizabeth cradled it carefully in her hands like it was a living thing so delicate and beautiful that you feared making any sudden movement.
“You heard the girl, Elizabeth, open it,” William prodded.
She peeled back the paper to expose a purple ball ornament with white snowmen painted around its circumference. Elizabeth picked it up by the red ribbon affixed to its top and held it aloft for everyone to see, rubbing at the corner of her eye with the other hand.
“It matches our purple-y tree, and you can hang it up while you’re here and then take it home to your tree.”
“That’s a great idea,” Fynn said, filling the silence that had settled over the room.
“And the snowmen are my fingers,” she added. “We got to put our hands in the paint and everything, and then we pressed them on the ball, like when the police do fingerprints. There is a snowman for each of us: me, Magnus, Fynn, Cat, the baby, Gramma Lizzy, Pop-Pop....” She pointed at each in turn. “And that super tiny one isn’t a mistake like Stanley says. That’s Jimmy. I made him with just the tip of my pinky because mice are tiny. I would have made one of my mommy too, but she isn’t a snowman anymore. She’s a snow angel.”
Gramma Lizzy gathered Cara up in a one-armed hug and kissed her cheek, words seemingly beyond her.
“Are you sure you can’t stay for Christmas?” Cara asked, squinching her eyes and cocking her head.
“They have plans for Christmas with my brother and his wife,” Catherine interjected.
“Another aunt and uncle?” Cara asked hopefully.
“Yes. Uncle Connor and Aunt Lacey,” Gramma Lizzy said as if she had never been struck silent. She got up, hanging the ornament in a prominent spot on the tree.
“Do they have any kids?”
Gramma Lizzy nodded. “A baby daughter named Niki.”
“Would that make her my cousin?”
Fynn nodded. “Just like Garret and Lyle and Jake.”
Why don’t they come here?” Naively believing the more, the merrier.
“Because they have family there,” Catherine explained.
“We’re family,” Cara asserted, seeing no difference.
“But they have more family. Lacey’s family.”
“Oh, the in-laws.” A grim nod that made Pop-Pop guffaw out loud.
“I guess you’ve been talking about us, eh, Fynn?” he said good-naturedly.
“It’s not what you think,” Catherine cut in. “We have been trying to explain how the whole family…uh… works. Who is who and how people are related to each other.”
“And that in-laws are more like outlaws? You’d rather have them out of town rather than causing trouble in it?”
“Dad, it isn’t like that.”
“No, it’s fine. Everyone goes through it. I just thought me and Fynn were getting along great.”
“We are, sir,” Fynn said quickly, reverting to a teenage boy caught making out with the man’s daughter on the man’s couch.
“Oh William, stop playing with him,” Elizabeth chided.
He chuckled.
“And thank you, Cara, for such a lovely gift. So much thought went into that and we will treasure it.”
“Yeah, come over here, you little noodlebug, and give Pop-Pop a big hug.”
Cara happily obliged and then turned to Catherine and Fynn. “Can Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop tuck me in?” She had her hands steepled before her, pleading.
“Well…” Catherine drew out the word. “… I guess.” She put on a smile but she was actually feeling a bit squeezed out. Since the moment Cara had gotten off the bus home from school she had been all over Gramma Lizz
y and Pop-Pop—wanted to sit between them at dinner—wanted Gramma Lizzy to help her pick out her pajamas—wanted Pop-Pop to help her with her homework. The same parents that were giving Catherine conniption fits by being here were becoming Cara’s best friends.
-21-
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Depends on your scale of bad,” Catherine grumbled, climbing into bed.
“Come on, it was a nice evening. And Cara is thrilled to have them here,” Fynn reasoned. “They treat her just like a true granddaughter and I think she needs that.”
Catherine grunted, squirting some lotion into her hands and rubbing—rubbing—rubbing it in. She couldn’t tell him that Cara was too happy. That would be a terrible thing to say, especially about a little girl who had lost too much already. It was hard though, not to have her nose a tiny bit out of joint in the face of Cara’s unabashed adoration for her parents, especially when Elizabeth Hemmings only brought angst to her daughter, while she brought gifts and hugs and fun to Cara. Jealousy. Pure and simple.
“What is it now?”
And there was something else to be upset about. Something legitimate. And worse. “I got another call from Mrs. Karnes tonight,” she said stiffly, working the lotion with even more gusto, squirting some more, traveling up her arms to her elbows where her age was settling distastefully.
“More classroom drama.” Fynn rolled his eyes and leaned back against her dresser like he didn’t have the strength for it.
“She took away my mothership.”
“I knew you had to be an alien. You just dropped out of the sky and right into my lap; it had to be too good to be true.”
“Can you be serious for a change?” she snapped.
“You want serious?”
“Yes.”
“Well, seriously, I say good riddance. The job drives you crazy and you don’t like dealing with the parents, so—”
“Spoken like a true man.”
“Excuse me?”
“No one likes to be dismissed, Fynn. Not even by people they don’t like anyway. This isn’t a relief; it hurts.”
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 12