“Well, I have to go,” Tara practically sang, “but I hope to see you all soon!”
“Not too soon,” Catherine said under her breath, catching her mother’s eye as she said it, shrinking into herself that she’d been caught.
But Tara was already trotting off to her truck that wasn’t even really hers. She probably only paid for a local rental and thought nothing of taking it out of state, like the rules didn’t apply to her.
“What was that all about?” Elizabeth Hemmings asked.
“The usual. Tara’s always like that.” Meaning flaky and unconventional. The anti-Hemmings.
“I’m talking about you,” her mother pressed.
“What about me?”
“You couldn’t have been more rude.”
Her eyes bugged out in disbelief. “You don’t get it, Mom. It’s her. She’s… difficult.” A careful word choice that could mean any number of things.
“She’s your friend. She came a long way to see you and as far as I can tell, you have had nothing to do with her since she got here.”
“I just saw her yesterday while you were out shopping with Dad.”
“Did something happen? Because you are definitely being snippy.”
“It’s not important.” Catherine heaved a sigh. “Sometimes friends are more trouble than they’re worth.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Actually, Mom, I do.” She looked her square in the eye. “Between Georgia and Tara I’m going to lose my mind. Tara is completely batshit crazy. Georgia is becoming a Sophie Watts. And I’m about to explode. Literally.” She pointed at her stomach. “I don’t need any of it right now.”
“What’s a Sophie Watts?” Bewildered.
“You don’t want to know. Although… actually, you would probably love her. She’s organized. She can cook and bake with one hand while she dusts and vacuums with the other. A regular supermom. And she’s pinched and judgy and bitchy to everyone who gets in her way.”
“So I’m guessing you got in her way.”
Catherine rolled her eyes. “Of course. She’s had it out for me since the start of the school year and she finally got her way. She took over as room mother because she didn’t think I was good enough at it.”
“You were room mother?” Elizabeth blurted.
“Yes, I was. You don’t have to be so shocked.”
“I’m not shocked.” Though her face sent the opposite message.
“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t on purpose; just Catherine Marie, falling bass-ackward into something. But then I realized that it could be good for me and Cara. I thought it might help her adjust; let her know that I cared enough to be there for her… that she was that important to me.” She saw a glint in her mother’s eyes, a tear even. “It isn’t that big a deal.” She sloughed it off. “I wasn’t any good at it. I was pretty terrible, actually. But I tried, and I thought that might be enough. At least Cara seemed to like it in spite of everything.”
“That’s what counts.” Definitive.
“But if I can’t be a room mother right, and all I had to do was organize some crafts and supply snacks and referee games, then how am I supposed to do the big stuff? You know, the stuff that really counts. I’m about to have a baby and I don’t know the first thing about mothering—”
“It comes to you. All of it. It just comes to you.” So calm and certain. “Sure, someone can teach you how to swaddle a baby or put on a diaper or even how to nurse, but the rest just comes to you. You bond with your baby and you just know what he or she needs and what to do. It will come to you.”
“But you’re a natural.”
The sound that came out of Elizabeth Hemmings’ mouth startled her. A “Ha!” of gotcha! proportions. “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when you were born. I was never a baby person. I didn’t want to hold other people’s babies or babysit or have anything to do with any of that.”
“You? Then why did you—”
“That’s what you did. You got married and you had a family. You didn’t think about it. It was just the way it was. There was no planning. And I was terrified.”
“You were?”
A nod.
“But you’re so good at it.”
“Does a good mother lose her child?”
Catherine’s breath caught. “That wasn’t your f—”
Her mother was shaking her head though. “I should have told your sister. I should have thought—I should have known to say something about the ice on the pond. It was right there behind our neighborhood and I never said anything—”
“You didn’t know Josey was going to follow those older kids home. Nobody knew.” Catherine couldn’t believe the level of regret and the guilt that her mother carried with her. Sharp, poignant, biting.
“Cara reminds me so much of her,” Elizabeth said through tears she didn’t fight. “It is all so fresh and bittersweet. Being here. Seeing your purple tree. Her favorite color.”
“Mom, I didn’t even realize—”
“It’s okay. This is something I have to deal with every day of my life. Every day. There is always something. I can’t hide from it.” She paused, wiped at her eyes, sniffed. “Well, come, we have some shopping to do,” she said, marching toward the store.
Catherine stood there dumbfounded. The moment had come and gone without warning. In a Kohl’s parking lot. Right out in the middle of a cold winter day, their words exchanged in puffs of warm air that hung for a moment and then dissipated. She wondered if she should have hugged her, held her, said more than she had. Something. They weren’t like that, though. They were like they were.
Saturday, December 9th
-30-
“Cat, you’re here.” Drew pulled her inside as if she feared they were under surveillance. She hadn’t expounded on the situation, just told her with a sort of grim certainty that she needed her to come over, and considering Tara was staying here and probably driving all of them crazy, her darker side wondered if Drew might have killed her and needed help getting rid of the body. But the U-Haul wasn’t outside, so unless Klein was off somewhere trying to drown it and any other evidence in one of Minnesota’s fine lakes then maybe this wasn’t about Tara at all. Maybe she’d left town after their last run-in and this was a more run-of-the-mill panic.
Drew’s voice was low and earnest. “I know you have a lot going on, but I didn’t know what else to do and I—”
Catherine cringed, preparing for something grisly, unsure of what she feared more, blood and guts or the possibility of a sexual mishap—not that she thought Drew and Klein were kinky, but her mind was running all over the place, and since most emergencies were better suited to calling 911 rather than Catherine Marie, who was a ninny and a fainter at anything much beyond a paper cut, finding Klein naked and handcuffed to the bed seemed a real possibility. Maybe they’d lost the key, or one of the kids had swallowed it—
“Come here.” Her sister-in-law led the way deeper into the house.
“What? What is it?” Afraid to move, afraid of what this might do to their relationship, quite certain that she drew the line at searching through someone’s shit for a key, though she would entertain taking a saw to the antique four-poster bed for them as long as Drew covered her husband in a Snuggly first.
Drew turned back, stared at her soberly and put a firm hand on her arm, like maybe she was about to tell her that she’d accidently fried Santa in the chimney last night. “It’s Tara, she’s—”
“Oh no. No way. Not my job.” She shook her head, backing toward the door.
“Seriously, Cat, I’m worried about her. I think she might have OD’d—”
“But she’s pregnant!” she blurted in something bordering on anguish. Not that doing drugs was less bad if she weren’t pregnant, but at least then she was only screwing up her own life. Except Tara didn’t do that kind of stuff… although she had been acting erratically—even more erratically than usual, which was already several ticks above the norm�
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“Tara’s pregnant?” Drew reared back.
Catherine stared back as if she had no idea who could have said that. Yes, she had been dying to tell, but she hadn’t meant to piggyback it on top of an even worse accusation. Pregnant might be stupid, but drugs were dangerous.
“Are you sure?”
A guilty nod.
“Whoa, I did not see that coming.” Drew scratched her head, leading Catherine to the family room.
“So where is she?” Catherine looked around the space, trying to equate what she saw with the image her mind had been expecting of Tara strung-out on the couch. She’d already pictured her and Drew having to haul Tara up into the shower to try to bring her around, and then locking her in a room and waiting out the DTs all weekend. But there was no Tara at all.
“She left.”
“Left?” Accusatory. “Where?” She wondered if Tara was in some back alley or some seedy motel room, or whether Nekoyah even had such things. She wondered how Drew could have let her leave in her condition.
“She packed up and took off. Said something about living out her Christmas fantasies.”
“So she’s delusional,” Catherine figured. “Do you know what she’s on?”
“What she’s on? What do you mean? Drugs?” Shocked. Appalled. An addict in her house with her kids.
Of course drugs! As a pharmacist, she would have thought Drew’d be smarter. “You’re the one who said you thought she OD’d.”
“On Christmas movies,” Drew clarified.
“Movies?” First bewildered and then angry at the farce. “Did Tara put you up to this?”
Drew shook her head. “She’s in a bad way. She’s been watching endless Christmas movies. They’re running some kind of marathon on TV and she almost bit Garrett’s hand off last night when he tried to change the channel. It was bad. And human bites are much worse than animal bites, you know.” Like that was either here or there.
“Where is she?” Catherine sighed, not wanting a rift between her and her sister-in-law but wondering what the hell kind of emergency this was that had yanked her out of her nice warm house before she even checked a mirror and reminded herself she had no makeup on and her hair was more nest than anything.
“I don’t know, but I did find this in the guest room.” Drew handed her a folded piece of paper, the flyer for the Nekoyah Nights of Lights decorating competition, a hastily scribbled list of supplies in the margin—ladder, extension cords, hammer, nails, hooks, etc.
“Shit.”
“What is it?”
“She’s going after Sophie Watts.” Catherine balled the flyer in her fist.
-31-
“Don’t kill her. You can’t have your baby in jail,” she said out loud, jamming her palm against the steering wheel at each red light, wishing she could blink herself home. At this very moment Tara, in her infinite mutinous gall, could be hanging from her porch railing dismantling Fynn’s tasteful display of garland and lights meant for Elizabeth Hemmings’ approval, in favor of something obnoxious and gauche that would likely blow up in one massive surge, taking the house with it. Her family could be homeless by tomorrow if she didn’t take the woman out.
Catherine gripped the wheel tighter, wishing it was Tara’s neck. How was she going to explain this to Fynn? To her parents? To Cara, who would probably want to be right there beside Tara, holding the ladder or the lights or the plug when things went sky-high. And after she’d tried so hard to give the kid a nice safe home.
She turned into the driveway, afraid to find Tara repelling down the chimney on a strand of lights, nullifying their friendship completely. As the house came into view, though, Tara did not. No U-Haul either. In fact, everything looked just the way it had when she’d left a half hour ago.
But of course even Tara couldn’t work that fast.
Catherine pulled to a stop on the circle that looped in front of the porch.
Fynn rounded the garage toward her. “You’re back. Everything okay with Drew?”
“Oh, fine. Just fine.” Cagey.
He gave her a questioning look then moved on. “I didn’t know when you’d be back and your parents wanted to take Cara out with them, so I said yes.” Careful, and with a cockeyed shrug of deference.
“Good.” Relieved. This bought her time.
Fynn looked surprised that it was so easy; that she didn’t mind or ask any further questions. “So, are you—”
But she didn’t let him finish, getting back in the car and starting it up.
“Wait, where are you going now?” he asked through the closed window.
She rolled it down. “I have some… errands.” The best way to put it. She snatched the balled-up flyer from the passenger seat and unraveled it to expose the list Tara had scrawled and left behind like a cry for help, or more likely as bait to goad her into a wild-goose chase that ended with them kicking some Sophie Watts ass together. Tara was sorely mistaken.
“Oh, then I guess I’ll see you later. Are you coming back for lunch?”
“Honestly,” she sighed, “I don’t know.” That much was the truth.
She drove out, sending a shower of snow off the back tires that said she wasn’t just picking up odds and ends; rather she was on a mission. There would be explaining come the end of the day, more than likely, but so long as she didn’t have to explain a massive electric bill, she would still come out ahead.
Her first stop, Werner’s Hardware in town, where Phil was there running the store as he did every day, and always with a smile. Before she could get a word out, he was leading her to a new display, trying to sell her on a portable radiant heater for Christmas. “It’s so quiet. Heats the object not the space, which is totally different from other heaters that blow air around. Honestly, it makes you feel kind of like a fast food burger in its trough, waiting to be bought—” —which was oddly just the thing Fynn needed out in his workshop in the winter months. What do you get for the man who wants nothing? The guy who lives the bare minimum? Sold.
Then, at the checkout, she struck gold on Tara too. Turned out she’d already been there, shopping and sharing just enough of her business, leaving a large breadcrumb behind. Interesting, though, how people’s perceptions differed. Catherine had asked about the weirdo driving a U-Haul around and Phil had told her about the spunky new gal in town. It seemed both of them were staying at the old Kelley place, which he further explained was a few miles down Main Street, hang a left, fourth right, and quick left again. That was the direct route, which it turned out indirectly led her almost back to her own place. Within a mile, more or less.
A misstep or two later, she came upon a house with a U-Haul out front. A basic two-story traditional with a front porch. There was no “Kelley” sign anywhere. Not a bed and breakfast or an inn or even a halfway house. Not an “establishment” of any kind. Just a house. Catherine’s hair bristled with discomfort, pretty certain this was not good. Not good at all. She pulled into the driveway, hoping she was wrong and that this U-Haul wasn’t Tara’s but the truck of some nice family moving in—
Except there she was. Tara. And worse, it was the Tara of her imaginings, climbing a ladder with a reindeer under her arm.
Son of a bitch.
Catherine felt a swift kick in her belly as Eve seemingly responded to her thoughts. At least I didn’t say it. She couldn’t straighten up her act that much. And she certainly couldn’t handle a telepathic kid. Just plain creepy.
She parked and got out with considerable effort, noting that the back of the truck was yawning open and exposing the full gambit of Christmas decorations inside. What the f— But she cut the thought off, instead trying to do the math on how Tara could have amassed such a quantity of Christmas décor so quickly. Unless she hadn’t so much rented a truck as stolen one that was full of the stuff. The Delrio family did have questionable ties.
“Oh, it’s you,” Tara said, loud and clear from her perch on the ladder.
“What are you doing?” Cather
ine demanded, like a mother confronting a child finger-painting on the walls.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” She struggled with the three-dimensional deer whose antlers kept hooking on the rungs of the ladder.
“More importantly, does anyone else know what you’re doing? Like the owner?”
“I’m perfectly within my rights to do whatever I want to this place.”
“And how is that?” Catherine challenged.
Tara sighed a large puff of cold air that seemed to say “I give up,” reversing her movement and fighting the deer back down to the ground while Catherine watched in satisfaction. There was more to do, more conversation to be had, but at least she’d stopped her before things got even worse. The rest of the reindeer were lying on the snow in the front yard, and the snowman and his family were easy enough to move out. The amount of lights around was overwhelming, but Tara hadn’t gotten to actually stringing any of them yet, so they too could be removed before anyone was the wiser.
“Here, I’ll help you clean up,” she offered, reaching for the deer.
“I’m not cleaning up. I only came down so you wouldn’t have a conniption fit and embarrass the hell out of me in front of the neighbors.”
“Me? Embarrass you?” Righteous disbelief.
“I have a lot to do and I don’t have time for a scene,” Tara said in a sane monotone that made Catherine’s skin itch.
“You are not seriously going through with this.” She gestured toward the house and surrounding area.
“Of course. Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she shrugged. “I think I have a good chance.”
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 18