Catherine shook her head. “I can’t believe she wants a deep fryer. I knew she was fascinated by the baskets and fryers at McDonald’s, and she loves fries, but wanting that for Christmas? It isn’t really age appropriate.”
“We won’t load it up with hot oil and leave it in her room to fry whatever she wants whenever she wants… but if that’s what she wants,” he shrugged. “Though I can’t believe she put ‘fries included’.”
“I’m guessing we will be making fries for breakfast Christmas morning,” Catherine giggled.
“But don’t they come frozen? Do we need to wrap a whole cooler under the tree?” Fynn chuckled.
“I guess Santa could leave them in the freezer,” she offered. “Wrapped, of course.”
“We’re pretty lucky, aren’t we?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’re lucky,” Catherine beamed up at him.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” A spark of mischief in his eyes.
“Being and getting are miles apart, Mr. Trager.”
“But we’re alone. In our room. With the door locked,” he added, locking it.
“And my parents are downstairs. I can hear my father breathing and my mother judging. She knows everything, Fynn—before, during, and after it happens. She knows.”
“That is completely creepy,” he shivered.
“Try growing up with it. And besides, sex right now could induce labor,” she argued. A new fear she had acquired as the big day approached.
“What’s so bad about that?”
“I’m not ready.”
“What do you mean you aren’t ready? For months you’ve been saying that you’re ready to see your feet again. If I can make that happen….” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Some things must come first. Like this.” She grabbed the list from him. “Somebody has to get this stuff. And there’s the Snow Party at Cara’s school on Friday.”
“Are you saying we can’t have sex until Friday?”
“Friday night, preferably. By then I should have everything sorted out and settled, and I’ll be ready for whatever comes.”
“There is no guarantee that sex will jumpstart anything, you know,” he protested.
“But if it does and I have Eve now, I’ll be too exhausted to do what needs to be done.”
“Buzzkill. Yeah, I said it. I’m talking to you.” He poked her belly, feeling Eve kick back at him.
The Best Gift
Tuesday, December 12th
-39-
“I can’t wait ‘til Christmas vacation starts.” Cara paced boot prints into some unadulterated snow next to the driveway.
“Neither can I,” Catherine seconded.
“Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop said that we can go out and do Christmas things all day long then.”
“Did they?”
“And just plain winter stuff too. Like sledding and making snowmen and even building a snow castle.”
“Whoa, that’s a lot of stuff.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Cara exclaimed, but then her face fell into a thoughtful pose. “How long will Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop be here?”
“Until after the baby comes.”
“And when is the baby coming?”
“The nineteenth.”
Cara continued to babble on about her plans for her time off and Catherine let her mind wander, shocked when the bus rumbled to a stop and the doors squeaked open, yanking her back to the present.
“Bye, Cat! Have a gr-r-reat day!”
“You have a gr-r-reat day too, sweetheart!” She watched Cara climb the tall steps and head down the aisle, the top of her head bobbing in the windows. Like always, she waved until the bus receded into the distance before turning to head back toward the house, but the sound of a whining motor behind her had her spinning around again just in time to see a car careening into the driveway, almost taking out the mailbox with the side-view mirror.
“So what are you up to today?” Tara asked out her car window, the words hitting the air in a puff of steam. The mannerism was so elementary—so saw-you-outside-and-had-to-pull-in-and-say-hi.
Is this what I have to look forward to? Catherine cringed, not thrilled at the prospect. Just as she wasn’t thrilled about sharing her true plans. The last thing she needed was for Tara to know she had an OB appointment today and then follow her there, or show up in the waiting room, or heaven forbid the exam room while she had her feet in the stirrups and her hoo-ha hanging out. “I don’t know, probably trying to finish my Christmas shopping.”
“Yeah, I wonder, what do you get for the friend who has everything?”
“You want to exchange gifts?” she blurted.
“Are you going to tell me you didn’t get me a gift?”
“But we never exchange gifts.” Bewildered. Maybe Tara assumed her show of kindness in handing over Cara’s letter to Santa deserved something more than a thank-you text, which was as far as Catherine had gone.
“Then what was that one on my doorstep last night?” Tara demanded.
“If you had something on your doorstep it wasn’t from me. And I’d be careful opening any kind of package that just shows up. Even if it is Christmastime,” Catherine cautioned, completely serious.
“Not even if it’s a someone?”
“Excuse me?”
“So you had nothing to do with it?” A challenge.
Catherine returned a blank stare.
“Jason. Jason was on my doorstep. And he wanted to know about the baby. Our baby. His baby. What did you do, Cat?”
Her stomach churned, or maybe it was Eve moving around in empathetic squirming discomfort for her. “I—I didn’t do anything.” She wanted to mime zipping her teeth, buttoning her lips, locking them, and throwing away the key—the full gambit for really big secrets when she was a kid. Because she certainly hadn’t said a word to Jason. Drew, yes. And Fynn too—Fynn! Oh my God!
“Obviously Jason didn’t just come up with the story on his own,” Tara asserted.
“Well…” Catherine turned her head, suddenly distracted by the passing clouds overhead. It wasn’t good to throw your husband under the bus. It wasn’t like you could do that and collect the insurance money afterward.
“Of course it was you.”
“By proxy,” she admitted lowly, not sharing anything more about the actual culprit. “But you’re the one who told me you were having a baby. I only just found out the truth myself. And, on a good note, isn’t he relieved that you aren’t?” Like that solved any problems.
“Relieved to find out that he drove several hundred miles to see his ex-girlfriend only to find that she lied about being pregnant to scare him into talking to her?”
“But that’s not true.”
“But it sure the hell’s the way Jason’s looking at it.”
“Oh.”
“That’s all you have to say? Oh?” Tara unlatched her seatbelt and opened her car door, leaving the engine running, and, judging from the way it started moving, still in gear.
They both watched the car roll forward in slow motion, until the driveway curved and thankfully the hardened curb of snow from Fynn’s last plowing stopped it altogether. Tara turned to her, gesturing at it like that was her fault too.
“You had no right to butt in to my life!” she charged.
“Like you haven’t butted in to mine?” Righteous now.
“I’m trying to live my life.”
“Moving here? Into my town? Showing up at my house? At the mall? Everywhere I go… In case you don’t get it, that’s hyperactive butting in.”
“I wasn’t planning to move here,” Tara growled.
“You were driving a U-Haul packed with your stuff, Tara.”
“I wasn’t coming to you.”
“But you said—”
“I was moving to Illinois.”
Catherine’s mouth could have fit a village inside it.
“Jason asked me to move in with him.” Now it was Tara’s turn to look e
lsewhere, scuffing her boot on a rock poking up out of the snow, frozen in place.
“You? But I thought you weren’t ‘compatible’.”
“I didn’t go, did I?” Point proven. “He wants the house and the wife and the kids and I—”
“Freaked out?”
“I took the first exit I could find and ended up here.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Sort of,” Tara eked out.
“Don’t tell me you broke up with him through a text.”
“I just said I needed space.”
“And that space is a house,” Catherine clarified, saying it slowly for effect.
Tara sighed, head down.
“You bought a house because you were scared that he wanted you guys to get a house together.” Shaking her head at the shame of it.
“I panicked.”
“Most panicked people take up residence on a friend’s couch, or if things are really bad, in a white Ford Bronco on the highway.”
“You wouldn’t let me use your couch,” she mewled.
Catherine rolled her eyes that Tara would blame her for her fling with Coldwell Banker that produced a house baby. And how did she buy one so fast anyway? Houses were supposed to take time. With waiting periods, like gun purchases, just to make sure people were fit.
“I still don’t get it, though, you never told me it had gotten that serious with Jason,” Catherine insisted.
“You were busy.”
“Not too busy for something like that.” And as in that, she meant normal and well-adjusted life living that she supported wholeheartedly.
“Yeah right,” Tara pffted, denying her. “You wouldn’t return a phone call or a text or anything.”
Catherine ignored the charge. “So this space you need, does it have room for other men in it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel. I haven’t had sex in a while and I don’t think straight without regular orgasms.”
“Come on, Tara. Sex is just sex and love is… well, love.”
“And never the twain shall meet?” Tara snorted.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But if the sex is bad then love can’t work.”
“So the sex with Jason is—”
“O-mazing! He has a fucking PhD in ME.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Being with him makes it hard to breathe. I feel all weak and squirrelly in my stomach. Honestly, he makes me sick. Just the sight of him.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” Catherine nodded knowingly, a glimmer of a smirk on her face.
“What?” Tara demanded. “You look so smug I could slap you.”
“You love him,” she said simply, shrugging. “You. Love. Him…. You do.”
Tara shook her head uncertainly. “I can’t be in love. I’ve never been—I mean, it was all just a gag to bother you… the whole hooking up with Fynn’s best man thing. Just a harmless little wedding gag.”
“But you’ve been seeing each other ever since.”
“Yeah, ‘seeing’ each other. And even that, only sparingly. It was a nothing. Like having a vacation house I used occasionally and then back to my life again. It wasn’t supposed to be anything more. I mean, I never expected—”
“I guess life is real, not ideal,” Catherine said, trying on her mother’s famous phrase for whatever bit you in the ass. “So if the truth fits, you might as well wear it.”
“What does that even mean?” Tara asked helplessly.
“Talk to him.”
“I can’t. He thinks I’m crazy—”
Join the club.
“—But he’s the one who pushed too hard, forcing me to choose him or New York,” she accused.
“So you picked Nekoyah. Or was it ‘C’—none of the above,” Catherine jabbed.
Her friend gave her the hairy eyeball.
“Just talk to him,” she urged again.
“I don’t even know where he is. He could be back in Illinois by now. And maybe it’s better that way,” Tara said hopefully. “There are plenty of dicks in the land of opportunity.”
Catherine rolled her eyes again.
“Besides, this—here—isn’t even about Jason.” She gestured at the space between them.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t come here because of Jason. When I turned away from Illinois I could have gone a million places. Better places. More fun places. But I came here, because of us.”
“Us?” Catherine laid her gloved hand on her chest like she was faint of heart.
“I’m not a lesbian, Cat,” Tara groaned. “I just missed—”
“Aw, you missed me.” Catherine bumped out her lower lip.
“When you left, you took everyone with you.”
“I came out here all alone!”
“You were the center though. You were the nucleus of my whole life. Everything was attached to you. You left and so Georgia stopped coming to the city,” Tara explained.
“You and Georgia don’t even like each other half the time.”
“And I lost even that half. And it wasn’t like Lacey was calling to get together like we all did before you got married.”
“You hardly know Lacey.” Bewildered.
“And Fynn has you all to himself all the time, tied up tight as Mrs. Trager. And Cara and I are pals, but I never get to see her anymore either.”
“Tara, I didn’t realize,” Catherine breathed, her eyes tearing up. “I mean, we never even went out that much back in New York. You always had so much other stuff going on with people I didn’t know. You had a whole separate life. I thought I was just some square you sometimes hung around.”
“Seriously, Cat, after all we’ve been through you thought I had more fun hanging with anyone else?” Eyes wide with disbelief. “And as for squares, I love them. My favorite shape.”
“I’m sorry, Tara. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, you’re kind of self-absorbed. But at least I finally got my apology,” she added smugly.
Catherine grimaced and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You know, if you really think about it, you’re the cause of all of this. If you hadn’t abandoned me I wouldn’t have used Jason to dull my pain.”
“Oh please,” Catherine sputtered.
“I’m serious, now he’s like a monkey on my back that I can’t shake.”
“It isn’t a drug addiction, Tara. It’s love.”
-40-
“Where are my parents?” Catherine asked, standing in the doorway to the kitchen in her stocking feet, the rest of her winter attire still on her body, face flushed with the cold, nose sniffling from her trek to the bus and back. She could have asked Tara for a ride down to the house, but she didn’t want her mother inviting Tara in for some French toast. Even though she and Tara had reached a new level of understanding, there still needed to be some boundaries.
“Is something wrong? Is it time?” Fynn asked, hopeful. Every burp or hiccup or sigh had him on high alert now, watching and waiting for his part in the birth, which was merely to drive her to the hospital. Unfair, really, that all he had to do was sit back and wait and drive, something they had both been doing for two decades, while she had to figure out how to force an entire human being out of herself.
“Everything is fine, Fynn, I just want to know where my parents are.”
“They went off to shower and get ready for the day.”
“Together?” she shuddered, not wanting to think of them that way.
“I didn’t bother asking.” Breezy, like the idea was anything but gross.
She focused her laser sights on him as she unbuttoned her coat, the one she’d had to buy several sizes large in order to accommodate her and Eve. The one she would kill herself if she continued to fit next winter. “You called him.”
Fynn looked confused.
“Jason.” A pointed word. “Even though you said you wouldn’t, you called him.”
“I am not
hing if not my wife’s humble servant,” he bowed.
“And now he thinks that she lied to him.”
“Wait a second… you’re mad at me?” Pitched disbelief.
“I told you she wasn’t pregnant, Fynn.”
“You just told me. God, Catherine, it was last night. He was already here.”
Her face was an “O” of shock. “You knew he was here and didn’t tell me? How could you—”
“Because you would have been on the phone warning Tara the moment I stepped out of the room.”
True. But still. “I’m your wife, Fynn. No secrets. Total trust.”
“I trusted that you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“You let her get blindsided.”
“She’s been speaking in riddles and driving you crazy, so what’s the problem? Let them deal with it.”
“She’s my friend, Fynn.”
“You’ve called her a lot of things recently, and I don’t think friend was one of them.”
“I was mad at her, but—”
“It’s still chicks before dicks, right?” he said sourly.
“No. But it turns out that what’s going on is a lot deeper than I thought. She was really getting serious with Jason.”
“I know.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“I talked to him, remember?”
“I thought you didn’t talk about ‘feelings’.”
“We talked about the missing person report he almost filed.” A grim statement.
“Missing person?”
“As in Tara. When she didn’t show up at his place. And didn’t call. And didn’t answer her phone.”
“Oh.” Soundly put in her place.
“He was worried. And then he was pissed. And then he was worried again.”
“And now pissed, I get it. A whole lot of feelings.”
“Just let them figure it out. Seriously, Catherine, don’t get involved.”
“All I did was tell her to talk to him.” Hands up to show she had no weapons, not even a spoon to stir the pot.
“Good.”
“So he’s still in town, then?” she searched.
Fynn’s lips held a firm line.
“Good morning, my daughter,” William Hemmings boomed from beyond the room, a warning alarm in case sensitive information was being discussed. He’d been asleep when she left with Cara, Elizabeth Hemmings allowing her husband that much in his retirement, to let each day wake up first.
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 23