“We aren’t that old Catherine Marie.” Elizabeth Hemmings’ voice was tight, and her face that should have been red with the cold outside was rivaling the snow on the ground.
“No, you and Pop-Pop are very spry for your age,” Cara announced.
“And where did you hear something like that?” Catherine asked in surprise.
“That’s what Pop-Pop says.”
“And he’s absolutely right. For once,” Gramma Lizzy joked.
Seeing her mother and Cara together was poignant. A vision of a mother who grieved her daughter and a daughter who grieved her mother, separated by a full generation and yet indelibly linked.
“And another thing, I started collecting snow boulders from where Daddy plowed the driveway. We can build a snow castle out of them.”
“That’s sounds wonderful!” Catherine said, hoping the snow castle would surpass skating.
“And when it’s done, can we have a snow tea party inside?” Cara begged.
“What else would we do inside a snow castle?” she reasoned.
“Then when I get inside I’m going to draw pictures of what it should look like.” With that, Cara slipped out of their hands and ran the rest of the way to the mailbox, with Magnus hopping around like an excitable bunny at her side.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Elizabeth Hemmings said softly.
“She’s only six. She has time to learn how to skate,” Catherine insisted.
“But there isn’t endless time.”
Catherine fought back the tears she could feel on their way. “No. There isn’t. But I can’t ask you to do that.” Pointed.
“You didn’t. She did.”
“And I never would have let her—”
“She’s a little girl. She doesn’t know any better.”
“I should have realized.”
“Realized what? Every possibly reminder of Josephine?”
Catherine froze. Her mother was blunt and straightforward about everything… except Josey. She seldom talked about her, trading that honesty of emotion for an overarching rationality about life in general, accepting mortality and bad luck with robotic ease as if she would not let herself feel—like a part of her was broken and unfixable.
“Because you can’t do that,” Elizabeth continued. “She’s everywhere. I can’t see a splash of purple without thinking of her. I can’t see a tricycle or a box of crayons without thinking of her. I can’t see an empty kitchen chair without thinking of what is missing in all of our lives.” She spoke evenly but tears pooled in her eyes. “Avoiding a lake here that has nothing to do with what happened to Josephine in Pennsylvania over twenty years ago is… ridiculous.” And there was the crack, a faltering weakness in her voice. “Avoiding won’t get us anywhere. If I could stay there… keep living in that town and in that house after… everything… then I can handle a goddamned lake in Nekoyah, Minnesota if it makes my granddaughter happy.”
“You’re right, Mom,” Catherine whispered back weakly. “I—”
“You are trying to protect me. And I thank you for that.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand just as Cara came trotting back with Magnus.
“Here.” She planted the mail in Catherine’s arms and continued toward the house on a mission.
They walked halfway to the house in silence, not awkward or difficult silence, but peace, until Cara came running at them pell-mell all over again. “Guess what I found!” she sang with glee.
“What?” Gramma Lizzy asked, readily taking the bait.
“A hedgehog skin,” Cara said definitively. “I told Pop-Pop they’re all around here.”
“A hedgehog skin?”
“Yup,” Cara nodded, holding out the carcass of a run-over pine cone.
“Oh, I see,” she smirked.
“I don’t know where she gets it,” Catherine said, smiling and shaking her head.
“Over there.” Cara pointed toward the part of the driveway that wrapped in front of the house. “I think I am going to store it with my turkey claws.”
“Turkey claws?” Gramma Lizzy blurted.
“Yup. We have tons. Cat ordered them from the internet and had them shipped here special for Thanksgiving. She gave some to my class at school, but we got to keep the rest.”
Catherine considered circling her finger next to her head to say that Cara was batty, especially considering Magnus had recaptured Cara’s attention and the two were off racing toward the house now. But that would just delay the inevitable, as the turkey claws were likely to come out eventually.
“They aren’t really turkey claws,” she said, trying on a chuckle for size to see if she could laugh it off. Her mother was a complete blank though. “Actually, they’re tiny cornucopias. Woven out of straw or rattan or something…” Still no response. “I got them for the Thanksgiving party Cara’s class was having at school.” But there was no oh! or I see or how cute or even a really? Nothing to show that Elizabeth Hemmings was accepting the story or humored by it or anything. The rope to hang yourself. That was what it felt like her mother was giving her. “I didn’t really intend for them to be that small. Actually I was going to use them to hold the goodies for the kids. A cornucopia goody bag.” Her words were coming faster now, trying to outpace her mother’s assessment of her by making her case that she was indeed not a total fuckup. “I guess I didn’t read the fine print, but they were still a hit, as you heard. Cara loves them….” Out of breath. Out of ideas. Out of explanations.
“Sounds like it,” her mother said finally.
“Sounds like what?” she challenged back.
“Like Cara loves them…. She certainly is an interesting one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Protective.
“She’s special.”
Special, special? she wondered, bristling.
“That little girl is extremely resilient. Very much her own person. Very strong.” Elizabeth Hemmings stopped, sniffed once. “You know, it’s really cold out here,” she shivered, stating the obvious and quickening her pace toward the house.
Tuesday, December 19th
-51-
“What’s on the schedule for today, ladies?” William Hemmings asked.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I was thinking about birthing a baby.”
“Catherine!” her mother exclaimed.
“Just sharing my plans. That’s what’s on the calendar of events.”
“Hopefully,” Elizabeth Hemmings corrected.
“Oh, it’s happening,” she insisted. I didn’t circle this date and hang onto this date and wait for this date like a child waits for Santa, only to find I’ve been waiting for nothing. That would be cruel and unusual punishment. It had to happen. Today. Now. Well, maybe after breakfast.
She rubbed her belly, trying to play it cool when she was quite honestly freaking out a bit. Every second slipping by on the clock made her feel more like a ticking time bomb. Could her first contraction be minutes away? Would her labor last for hours? Would it start like a gunshot to the gut? Sudden and sharp—at least how she imagined a gunshot would feel. Or would it be slower to develop? A gradual realization that it was happening….
“It is probably a good idea to stay close to home, though,” her mother ceded. “Even though it could be days before we see the newest member of the family.”
“Days?” Catherine choked out.
“With your brother I waited a full week.”
“A week?” Not possible. Not freaking possible. Right?
“He just didn’t seem to want to come out.”
“Oh, this baby wants to come out alright.” As if her mother had any right to start spouting horror stories at a time like this when it was far too late to decide that maybe surrogacy or adoption would have been the better way to go with this whole baby thing.
“Well, I’ll be right out in the shop if and when you need me,” Fynn said, glowing with a low-grade hum of excitement.
“Do you have to work?” Catherine
pleaded, imagining lounging on the couch together, watching Christmas movies next to a roaring fire while they waited for the moment she sat up out of his arms and said the momentous words, it’s happening (albeit words she’d already said to him before and been wrong).
“I have to get this job done before New Year’s, so yes.”
“But I thought you were almost done.”
“And isn’t it better for me to work before the baby comes than be swamped after?” he reasoned.
“Thinking ahead.” William Hemmings nodded his head appreciatively at his son-in-law.
“But these are the last hours of preparenthood.” Catherine wanted to suck the words back up as soon as they reached the air. She looked to Cara who was doodling on some paper with her crayons next to her empty breakfast dishes, seemingly unaware of the conversation. “I didn’t mean—”
“We know what you meant,” her mother rescued her. “A new baby brings a new level of chaos to the house. And you are first-timers at the infant stage, so it is going to turn everything upside down.”
“Exactly.” Suddenly Catherine felt like she’d rushed things, so anxious for her due date when she’d be able to see her feet again and wear pants without elastic waistbands and feel normal, that she had ignored all the other things that came with a change of massive proportions. It wasn’t normal that she was about to be getting but a new normal she would have to acclimate to all over again. She was never going to feel or be just like she was before the pregnancy. Everything was changing. And her after self was not going to be like her before self. Not in size or mind. She was never going to recapture the old Catherine again. She’d said see-you-later, when she should have said a proper goodbye. She’d lied to her—
“It’s castle time!” Cara announced, turning all eyes on her. “I’ve finished the plans. We’ll meet in the yard in ten minutes.” She handed the papers she’d been doodling on to Pop-Pop on her way out of the room.
“What was that?” A bemused look of wonder on Fynn’s face.
“That is called a go-getter,” William Hemmings said, sifting through the papers. “And a brilliant little girl you have there. She made blueprints for the snow castle. There’s even a scale. It isn’t right, but to even think about such a thing….”
“She gets that from Fynn,” Catherine said proudly. “She’s always looking through his plans for cabinets and furniture. And you’re right, she is brilliant.”
“Well, I guess a castle it is,” her father said.
Catherine marveled at the energy her parents had. In their sixties and still willing to be playmates to a six-year-old.
It was sad that their trip was coming to a quick close. They were leaving Thursday, planning to be gone before she brought baby Eve home from the hospital. Out of your hair, her mother had assured her. They wanted to meet their newest granddaughter, be around the house for Cara while the new parents were at the hospital, and once the family was ready to be reunited at home, be gone.
“Time is money, People,” Cara said, marching through the kitchen with a swishing noise from her snow pants.
“Where does she get this stuff?” Fynn chuckled.
“Someone needs to help me with my jacket,” Cara announced, holding up her mittened and therefore basically useless hands.
“You heard her. Someone zip up the foreman,” Pop-Pop commanded.
“I’ll whip up a thermos of hot chocolate,” Gramma Lizzy offered.
“Are you going to build with us, Fynn?” Cara asked, tugging on his sleeve.
“I was—” He stopped when he saw Catherine’s look. “Of course I’ll build with you.”
“I think I’ll hold down this fort and let you know if anything… ahem… develops,” Catherine said with a wink that was more of a nervous eye twitch.
***
Catherine had hardly sat down on the couch, ready to turn on those Christmas movies she’d been imagining spending the day with, when her phone perked up. She couldn’t even get a word out before Georgia was blaring in her ear. No more careful probing at their friendship through texts or constipated conversations that attempted not to rub through the rawness of their falling out. Even the call to Georgia after she got home from the hospital last week, to admit that she’d had indigestion, not a baby, was met with polite sympathy rather than the joking, jabbing, aren’t-you-a-twit type of reaction that had been their norm before everything went to shit.
“Why am I the last to know?” A fiery accusation.
“The last to know? I haven’t gone into labor,” Catherine said defiantly.
“About the girl. Your girl. You’re having a girl! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because I wasn’t talking to you. It was simple as that. And what little they’d talked since it had never come up. But instead she responded with silence, mouth open and no sound coming out. She got up and wandered through the house, making sure she was alone before saying anything incriminating. Everyone was outside. Even her mother was rolling snow boulders in the backyard.
“I don’t care if we were fighting or simmering or whatever the hell we were doing, Cat, I deserve to know that you know what you’re having! Which, by the way, I thought Fynn had put a kibosh on knowing! You said you both agreed not to find out so, stupid me, I took that for gospel. I thought we were all waiting for this day to get the big news and here I find out I’m the only one in the dark.”
You and Uncle Walter, Catherine thought wryly, figuring he was the next closest thing she had to family right now. The godfather, Fynn had taken to calling him.
“Lacey knew!” Georgia charged. “I remember a time when you used to hate it when Lacey was in the know about anything and you told her instead of me!”
“I didn’t tell her.” It certainly would have been a righteous way to stick it to Georgia, telling Lacey first, but she had done no such thing. “And the fact that you think I would do that—”
“I honestly don’t care how she found out, what I care about is how I didn’t find out. Do you hate me that much?”
“I don’t hate you. I couldn’t. I was just hurt.”
“So you wanted me to pay for whatever you saw as what I did to you, right? And I don’t even know what I did to you.”
“That’s the problem, Georgia. That’s always been the problem,” Catherine asserted.
“I thought that we were friends still. Fight or not. But this—”
“We are friends. No matter how mad I have ever gotten. No matter what fights we have ever been in. Deep down, I have never considered you anything but a friend.”
“Deep down where you hid your daughter from me?” she jabbed.
“She isn’t even here yet,” Catherine eked out.
“But you know she’s coming, and I feel like you locked me out of your life.”
“I feel like I never had a key to your life, Georgia. Your perfect life is… in another world from mine.”
“It isn’t perfect,” she said bitterly.
“You have everything just-so in your life,” Catherine refuted, “and I’m on the lunatic fringe.”
“Is that why you’re getting so chummy with Tara?”
Is that jealousy?
But Catherine Marie was the jealous one. The one who felt like she was half a step or more behind Georgia and a floor or two below her—not quite on her level and always ready for her friend to find something or someone better.
“I know you two are living it up out there while I’m stuck in Jersey,” Georgia humphed.
“You love Jersey.”
“Love is a strong word. Prefer it to New York, yes. I thrive in suburbia. But love it?” A wryness to her tone now.
“You want to know the truth? … I might have overreacted,” Catherine admitted, realizing that she’d killed the Wicked Witch of the Midwest—beaten Sophie Watts at her own game with an Elizabeth Hemmings style lashing—and from this new place of pride she could see where she might have been a little too sensitive. “Georgia?” she prodded when she w
as met with silence on the other end.
“Excuse me, I just had to pick myself up off the floor,” Georgia snickered.
“And if you must know, I wasn’t that keen on telling anyone the news anyway… because Fynn didn’t exactly change his mind… I just sort of… tripped over the information.”
“Tripped?”
“I’m clumsy as hell, you know that. And then he only found out because it slipped out.”
“Because you’re clumsy as hell?” she offered.
“Exactly. And then I had to tell my mom because believe it or not we’re really getting along well. But if she told Connor or Lacey I had no control over what—”
“Before you start blaming Lacey for talking out of turn,” Georgia cut in, “she only said something because she thought I already knew, what with you and I being so close.”
Ouch.
-52-
“That’s it; it’s over,” she groused as the clock advanced through midnight, taking her hopes with it. Her due date had come and gone and here she sat still corked up tight.
“Babies can’t tell time, you know,” her mother said, yawning, stretching, getting up.
Of course she knew; yet it failed to humor or settle her. Instead it rankled her, and especially because her mother should want her to be in labor as much or more than she did.
“Well, I guess it’s time for me to go to bed. I told your father I would only be a little while, and look, it’s been two hours since then,” Elizabeth Hemmings noted.
Fynn had gone off to bed a while ago too, but Catherine couldn’t sleep. She wanted to be up to see and suffer through the last of her day. To wallow. “Thanks for waiting up with me,” she said lowly. They’d hardly even spoken, merely sat there together on the couch and watched a sappy Lifetime holiday movie. Just what she’d needed.
“Don’t worry,” her mother assured her, stopping on her way by and placing her hand over her daughter’s where it lay on the arm of the couch. “It will happen when Eve’s ready.”
Catherine looked up, tears in her eyes. “But you might be gone before she even comes. I guess you could come back after the New Year if—”
2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) Page 30