2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3)

by Heather Muzik

“Not here you’re not,” Tara said forcefully. “Not in my living room. No way.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a—” The pain hit before she could finish her show of annoyance at Tara’s lack of sympathy, and Catherine started panting.

  “Bad?” Drew asked, grabbing her by the arm to steady her.”

  She nodded, incapable of words, holding onto her sister-in-law crushingly.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” Tara announced.

  Catherine shook her head.

  “We’ll take her,” Drew said.

  “I’m not taking her in my car,” Tara asserted. “I already have to replace this rug. I think I’ve given enough to the cause.”

  “We’ll take Cat’s car,” Drew said tightly, digging through Catherine’s purse with her free hand.

  “Don’t want to sacrifice your upholstery either, huh?” Tara noted.

  “You’re driving.” Drew shoved the keys into Tara’s hand. “I’ll sit with her in the back. And call Fynn, Tell him to get his ass to the hospital. Now.”

  Saturday, December 23rd

  -56-

  She looked around at the generic space that said Holiday Inn instead of hospital but was soulless nonetheless. At least Fynn was here. And Tara. Both of them gazing down at her pitifulness, propped up in what was so much like a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed that Catherine was having flashbacks to the old commercials that used to air endlessly on TV. “What day is it?” Catherine asked between breaths, feeling like it must have been several since she’d gotten here; it was no wonder Drew had left to take care of her own family.

  “The twenty-second,” Fynn offered, holding her hand over the safety bar. “Actually, it’s after midnight on the twenty-third.”

  “This isn’t supposed to be happening like this,” Catherine moaned. “I can’t have her now.”

  “I don’t think you’re the one making the decisions,” Tara noted from the other side.

  “But now it’s too early,” Catherine whined.

  “Too early? You’ve been begging for this to happen,” Fynn said, making her whiplash over to his side now.

  “I need a few more days,” she insisted. “Can’t they stop it?”

  “What, with a cork?” Tara blurted.

  Catherine rolled her head in her friend’s direction and then purposefully rolled back to Fynn to show she was going to ignore her ridiculousness. “At first Eve was just a little late, but now she’s so late that it’s too late… which makes it too early to have her.”

  “Oh my God, she’s delirious now.” Tara clapped her hand over her mouth like she shouldn’t have said it out loud.

  “I wanted her to come before Christmas. Or after Christmas. If she comes now, we’ll still be in the hospital on Christmas.” She rolled her head this way and that, waiting for her point to sink in, seeing that it wasn’t. “Cara shouldn’t have to spend another Christmas in the hospital.” Her tone certain if not weak as she experienced another contraction slicing through her. “That’s where she spent her last one and the one before that, with her mother—”

  “Just breathe, Catherine. We’re not going to worry about any of that,” Fynn said.

  She steadied herself, focusing on the in and out motion of air, but as the pain subsided she got cocky. “Maybe I can down-think it,” she wheezed out.

  “I think up-think would be more appropriate here,” Tara said.

  “You know damn well what I mean. If I can just stave it off through Santa coming and presents and Christmas dinner.”

  ***

  “Do you want to hold your baby?” a nurse asked, the same nurse who had just been by her side, holding back one knee while Fynn was on the other side manning the other, effectively bending her in half. A complete stranger who had seen her at her most vulnerable, making her wonder if she should invite the woman to all the birthday parties and major holidays to come.

  “Yes,” Catherine said, trying to scooch up in the bed, smoothing at her hair like a newborn infant would care what she looked like.

  “He’s a strapping one, well on his way to eating you out of house and home,” Nurse Tonya said good-naturedly, leaning over the bed to nestle a tightly swaddled bundle into her arms.

  “Excuse me?” Catherine blurted.

  “I wasn’t trying to offend,” she qualified, “that was just what my mother used to say about my brothers. Never could keep food in the cupboard.” She cradled a gentle hand on the pink and blue pin-striped knit cap that covered the tiny head, leaving only a scrunched face exposed.

  Brothers? Boys? He? His? Catherine searched madly through her mind for understanding. Maybe they had swapped babies somehow. A mistake. Or possibly it was some diabolical nurse intent on stealing her baby to sell. Except there was a baby. Right here. Gazing up at her with watery steel-gray eyes.

  “There’s my beautiful wife!” Fynn called from the door, beaming ear to ear. He looked happier even than the man she had married. She remembered him on their wedding day, looking completely in the moment and dazzled by her and the dress and everything. But here, now, it couldn’t be her he was so enamored with. She looked like a drowned rat. Her hair was a nest of knots and around her hairline it was crusted with sweat from all the pushing and worrying that perhaps everyone was wrong and the vagina couldn’t pass a bowling ball through it. But eventually it had happened, and she had fallen back against the bed, exhausted, and her baby had been taken away to be cleaned up and weighed and tested and all those things they do. She must have drifted off while it was going on. And now that she was back in the present, the doctor was gone. And Fynn was back from sharing the news with the waiting room. And they had brought her a baby boy—

  “Isn’t he just perfect? Absolutely, perfectly… perfect. A full head of hair. And those fingers and toes and—”

  “He?” she choked out, looking down that the innocent face that knew nothing of her confusion.

  “It’s a boy. Just like they said. Hung like an elephant, although they say that’s just the swelling from hormones and whatnot—obviously they don’t know what his dad has been lugging around all these years,” Fynn winked.

  “A boy?”

  “Yup, a bouncing baby boy. Your parents are thrilled to have their first grandson and Cara told everyone she was a big brother now. I know we need to fix that, but it is so darn cute that she gets it all mixed up.” Fynn, Mr. Man-of-Few-Words, was talking like a trip-hammer, making her head spin.

  “A boy,” she whispered, trying to make sense of the simple word that had massive implications. She had spent weeks and months dreaming about the little girl she was going to have. Eve. She’d told everyone—

  “A handsome little man,” he said proudly.

  “I just don’t—”

  “I know you thought it was going to be a girl.”

  “I didn’t just think, Fynn. It was.”

  “There must have been a mistake.” He was charitable enough not to say by whom, though they both knew who was most likely responsible.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I saw him come out. Boy as a boy can be.” Again, sounding all too proud of himself.

  “But we didn’t even pick a boy name.” She looked over his beautiful, peaceful features. He deserved a name that was as carefully chosen as Eve. Something that felt right. Something that they’d thought and considered and were certain about—as certain as she had been that she was having a girl. Like her chart had shown.

  “I wanted to pick a boy’s name and you would have none of it,” he reminded her.

  “Are you going to I-told-you-so the woman who just had your child, or are you going to help?”

  “Well, we aren’t going to figure one out this minute, and Cara is begging to come back and meet her brother, so can we put that discussion on hold?”

  Catherine nodded, busy gazing at the little person in her arms who gazed back.

  As Fynn left again, Nurse Tonya came by the side of the bed. “He’s a real thinker, that one. They usually close their eye
s like suddenly being out in the world is too much, but he hasn’t closed his eyes since he came out. Too busy drinking it all in.”

  Catherine smiled, thinking she could drink him in endlessly too.

  “So you don’t have a name yet?”

  “No.” Spacey.

  “My sister didn’t name her babies for two weeks. She had twins. A and B, we called them. Ended up naming one of them Abby, get it? It was kind of cute. The other, though… Beatrice,” she shuddered. “Poor kid got the raw end of the naming deal there.”

  But Catherine wasn’t listening; she was lost in thought, wondering if having a little boy was actually just about the perfect turn of events. Cara would have no one to compete with. No way to compare the two of them.

  “Cat!” Cara called out, exploding into the room. “Where’s my brother?”

  “Sssh, he’s right here,” she said softly.

  Fynn boosted Cara up onto the bed with one arm, the other held behind his back.

  “He looks really red. Does he have a sunburn?” Cara asked.

  “No, that’s just the way babies look when they’re born,” Fynn explained, not going into the why of it.

  “Oh.” She was silent for several seconds and then asked, “Are you happy even though you wanted a girl?”

  “Of course I’m happy. I have a wonderful little girl.” She reached out and tugged on one of Cara’s pigtails. “And now I have a terrific little boy too.”

  “I’m happy too. Maybe someday I want a sister, but for now I like having a brother.”

  “Sounds like a perfect family to me then,” Catherine agreed.

  “So what’s his name?”

  “We’re not sure yet. What do you think?” She cringed as she said it, thinking back to some of the names Cara had come up with before; Disney characters had ranked pretty high, and she distinctly remembered Branch on the ballot for a boy.

  But before Cara could unleash something they would end up having to crush quickly, a parade of visitors arrived. First her mother, then her father, then Tara, and last Drew.

  “Gang’s all here, Tara announced.

  “I’m guessing you heard about—” Catherine stopped, unwilling to admit her part in her baby’s mistaken identity.

  “Of course we heard!” Tara assured her. “How’d you screw that one up?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I saw it right there in my chart.”

  “Are you sure it was your chart?”

  “Yes, it was my chart,” she said bitterly. “My name was right there, front and center, and then ‘female’, clear as day.”

  “Next to your name?” Tara clarified.

  A curt nod of righteousness.

  “So to be fair, you may have just discovered your own gender in that there chart,” she pointed out. “You know, considering…”

  Before Catherine could spiral any further into the depths of embarrassment, her mother exclaimed, “A grandson! We couldn’t be happier, right William?” The surprise, well worth it.

  “I couldn’t be either,” Fynn added.

  “My boys will be thrilled.” Drew threw herself in with the rest of them, making it a nonissue.

  “Suck-ups,” Tara mumbled under her breath.

  “So what are you going to name him?” Drew asked.

  “Well, we never really came up with anything for a boy,” Catherine admitted, averting her eyes from Tara so as not to encourage another outburst.

  “How about Evan?” Elizabeth Hemmings offered.

  “Evan,” Catherine said, trying it out. “That’s not bad…. Actually… it’s really good.”

  “Don’t let me sway you. I’m just throwing something out there.”

  “No, really, I like it. Evan Henry Trager.”

  “That has a nice solid ring to it,” William Hemmings agreed, putting an arm around his wife.

  “Henry was Fynn’s father’s name, so I think it would be a nice—”

  “It’s perfect,” Fynn agreed, pulling a bouquet of flowers out from behind his back like a magician doing a trick. “And these are for my bride, for being the mother of my children and the love of my life.”

  “But shouldn’t my brother be the one getting gifts? It’s his birthday,” Cara pointed out.

  Monday, December 25th

  -57-

  Fynn had gotten little sleep—back to the house to play Santa after midnight, then back to the hospital to sleep in a chair that turned into an uncomfortable bed, then up again before dawn to orchestrate the homecoming process because Catherine insisted they leave the hospital no later than six. Discharged and on the way home with their new little bundle of joy before Cara could even get up and see what Santa had brought.

  But there was no beating Cara to the punch. It turned out she’d been up before five. Up before Elizabeth Hemmings. Chomping at the bit and ready to dive into the gifts and festivities that awaited.

  “Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop took me to church and I got to see Garrett and Lyle in the nativity play and everything,” she chattered, following Catherine like her shadow everywhere she went from the moment she walked through the door.

  “Go. Sit,” Elizabeth Hemmings commanded when she caught Catherine in the kitchen trying to help. “You need to rest and relax and let your body heal.”

  “But I was just—”

  “You were just on your way to the family room to put your feet up,” she finished for her.

  So off she went, deferring to her mother to keep the Christmas peace, and because the couch sounded just about heavenly to her.

  “… And I saw Sally Watts there too and she asked if I got the Gingermelon I asked for because she got a pony for Christmas,” Cara said, right behind her, continuing on like she hadn’t seen her in years.

  “Shows what she knows. They don’t even have Gingermelon ponies,” Catherine said snidely.

  “A pony, Cat,” Cara said. “A real live pony she can ride. Sally says that Bolt—that’s her pony’s name—is a show pony, and she is the only one who’s allowed to ride him.”

  “Well, isn’t that just a perfectly Watts-like thing to say. This is why I don’t like to go to church,” she growled, her mother coming through the room at just the right moment to shoot her a dark look for the blasphemous statement.

  “She said that she’s the only one who can feed him too.”

  Catherine humphed. “She sounds like a little b—”

  “What a wonderful gift your friend got,” Gramma Lizzy led, putting down mugs of coffee and turning to lift Evan out of his infant seat, hugging him to her like he was the key to life itself. “Maybe you can meet Bolt someday.”

  Cara shrugged noncommittally, seeming nonplussed. “Is it time for presents yet?” she begged, tossing herself on the couch dramatically, Sally and her pony already forgotten.

  “I was going to say brat by the way,” Catherine whispered to her mother.

  “I was hedging my bets.”

  “I’ve been as patient as I can be,” Cara announced, so serious that it made them all laugh.

  “Just as soon as Fynn finishes getting more firewood,” Catherine assured her.

  “I expect some coffee cake in hand before the first gift is unwrapped,” William Hemmings grouched settling into the chair next to the fireplace.

  Catherine remembered this pronouncement from him every Christmas morning growing up. As heartwarming as it was eye rolling. She was definitely looking forward to her mother’s traditional Jewish coffee cake as well.

  “I’ll get you your breakfast, old man,” Elizabeth snapped, like it was a punishment. “But right now I’m holding your grandson, so you’ll have to wait.”

  “Pop-Pop,” Cara groaned, “I just want to open something. I’ve already had to wait hours.”

  “Not until I have my coffee cake,” he said with an undisguised chuckle.

  Cara got up and ran over and draped herself across his lap in a swoon of utter degradation at any further delay. “Please!”

  “Oh, alright.
One present,” he acquiesced, just as Fynn burst back in the door bringing the cold and an armload of firewood with him.

  She scrambled onto the floor and crawled to the heap of gifts, taking the shiniest package and pulling it into her lap, hugging it to her before tearing into the precious packaging with glee.

  Catherine closed her eyes, afraid to watch Cara open it—the gift, the thing Cara wanted most—wishing she had picked anything else under that tree. There were plenty of packages with pretty clothes and fun toys and all kinds of wonderful things awaiting her, but this one… the wrapping was much better than what was inside.

  Cara lifted the top off the box, her eyes widening with something akin to horror for sure, and Catherine’s excuse was at her lips, ready to tell her that what she saw nestled in there was Gingermelon’s uglier, inbred cousin—perhaps say that the little elephant was disfigured in a sewing accident (the truth) and it was part of a program to adopt special needs Gingermelons for Christmas. An honor, in fact, to get one.

  But instead, Cara pulled out a perfect little cream mohair elephant with pink polka dot insets on its belly and inside its ears and on the bottoms of its feet that were also edged with delicate pink beading. Cuter even than the picture on the pattern because it was personalized to Cara.

  Catherine looked to Fynn but his eyes were as wide with surprise.

  She looked to her mother who was too busy gazing at Evan to notice anything but him. This was either the devil’s work or Elizabeth Hemmings’, and considering how her mother was with a needle and thread…. Which meant Tara—the snitch—must have opened her gabbing gabfest mouth—

  Thank God!

  And of course she hadn’t known from the outside of the package. That was the one thing she had actually learned to do well and properly. Catherine Marie could wrap a gift. Perfection in measuring, cutting, folding, tucking, taping, ribboning and bowing. She had learned from the master and lived up to the master. Her technique and her mother’s were indistinguishable, so the gift looked exactly as it had when she’d wrapped the ugly little elephant she’d made. How her mother had made a new Gingermelon in the time since Catherine had gone into labor was beyond her comprehension, though. A Christmas miracle. A wonderful Christmas cabal that had made a deserving little girl’s day.