2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series)

by Heather Muzik

  Her mother gave her the hairy eyeball, telling her she was out of line. “At least you put her in the backseat, but really, Catherine, a phone book? She needs a proper booster seat.”

  “I gave her a pillow too.”

  Elizabeth Hemmings didn’t bother with a response as to the merits of her daughter’s ingenuity. “We’ll all go out and pick one up after lunch.”

  “Shouldn’t Cara stay here until she has that booster—”

  But her mother was already leading Cara up the driveway, and Catherine could hear them chattering away to each other like they were catching up on old times. She looked to her father who was standing forgotten on the edge of the driveway. “Seems like Mom found a new friend.”

  “Seems so,” he chuckled, eyes dancing. At least he looked happy to see her.

  “I didn’t realize that calling ahead would prompt service like that.” She gestured toward the front door that was already closing behind her mother and Cara.

  “She has been positively buzzing for two hours. Cleaning. Cooking. She even ran to the store to get ‘foods fit for the young’.” All things Catherine hadn’t given a single thought to doing when she got home last night or even when she got up this morning. As a nurturing sort she was completely inept.

  “And she called all her friends,” her father warned. “So don’t be surprised if a steady stream of old blue-hairs starts showing up.”

  Catherine giggled at the picture her father brought to mind. “Really?” she asked, bewildered. Elizabeth Hemmings was excited about her visit? Not that she had paid a bit of mind to her daughter except to point out where she was being lax, but the warm and inviting and entirely grandmom-ish welcoming of Cara made up for that. She had never really considered how she would introduce Cara into the conversation, let alone the family, and here she was being sucked right into Elizabeth’s waiting and capable arms.

  Her parents had known about Cara from the beginning, when they first met Fynn, and at the time she was sure she’d seen a dubious look on her mother’s face that her daughter would be able to handle a grown-up relationship that involved mothering a child—which was entirely different than becoming a mother from the egg-and-sperm moment it seemed. That was actually part of what lit the fire under Catherine that she could handle a relationship with a man who would already have a child to raise as his own. Maybe she should thank her mother for that someday….

  “Don’t forget to get Cara’s things from the car!” Elizabeth yelled out the front door, closing it again quickly.

  “Like I’m going to make Cara come out later and get her own stuff,” Catherine groused.

  “Some things aren’t worth the battle, my daughter,” her father said, pulling her into one of his glorious hugs and then helping unload the trunk.

  Saturday, January 29th

  -40-

  “You can’t actually wear that dress,” Tara said, gravely serious.

  “What do you mean I can’t wear this?” Catherine twirled toward Georgia for her opinion. There was nothing wrong with the dress. Definitely nothing wrong enough to provoke such grim certainty.

  “I think it has potential,” Georgia said with a curt nod, the same answer she’d given to the last eighteen dresses Catherine had tried on.

  “But is it me?” she asked, waffling under the weight of Tara’s disapproval.

  “I think it’s pretty,” Cara offered, skipping by on her way to another rack of dresses within which to hide. Considering she had said the same of the lavender-hued dress across the way, Catherine was pretty certain that her opinion was of little help.

  “It depends on what you’re going for,” Georgia said, tapping her pen against her mouth and looking her up and down, then walking slowly around her where she stood on her pedestal.

  “I’m going for me,” she stressed—why else would I ask? She remembered the boys back in high school complaining that they asked a girl out because they liked the way she looked, only to have her change everything about her appearance for the date. False advertising.

  “You can always go ‘80s fantabulous,” Tara noted, dragging a doozy out from one of the back racks that looked more Halloween costume than wedding dress—satin, satin, and extra-shiny satin. “This and some powder blue eye shadow from lid to brow and you’ll be stunning.” She kissed her fingers like a high-end chef.

  “Can you just be serious?” Catherine snapped sternly.

  “Who says I’m not being serious? Maybe I want to rock an ‘80s bridesmaid dress—it could be a whole theme. Besides, this would be better than that thing you’re in right now. That’s a regular death trap.”

  It might not be perfect… perhaps too puffy… and the ruffles are kind of large… maybe even a bit overboard…. But a death trap? What are they going to do, come unlatched and strangle me? Catherine focused on Georgia and mouthed, help.

  “Just take the pictures so we can move on to the next dress,” Georgia commanded sternly. They’d given Tara the job of photographing her in each dress, hoping it would keep her from having an opinion, but instead of just quietly shooting the dresses, she’d proven herself capable of shooting off her mouth too.

  “I’m just trying to save you the trouble,” Tara said simply.

  “What trouble?” Catherine asked.

  “Your wedding, let alone your entire marriage, will be an utter nightmare if you wear that.” Tara gestured toward the dress she was wearing with distaste.

  “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “I am talking about the cut and the fit. Doesn’t it remind you of anything?” Tara looked at her expectantly and rolled her eyes when Catherine just stood there dumbfounded. “Princess Diana?” she prodded.

  “Di’s was kind of similar….” Georgia reappraised the dress. “But this one is much more modern and less… stodgy than hers. Less material overall. Although the color is spot-on.” Of course she would know exactly what Princess Diana’s wedding dress had looked like considering she’d been wedding obsessed since she was something like seven years old. But Tara, too? All while Catherine couldn’t remember what she herself had worn last week?

  “Mmm-hmm, it is. Just like hers. And she ended up divorced and then dead. You don’t want that now, do you?” Tara challenged.

  Catherine stood her ground the best she could, seeing as how she was on a tiny raised circle of platform and she was feeling a little woozy all of a sudden. “Maybe if it was her exact dress, or even an exact replica of her dress. But this isn’t even really in the same ballpark.” She thumbed toward Georgia who had just corroborated that information, but who was now too busy to back that up as she was on the phone again, probably checking on Nell.

  “Close enough that I wouldn’t chance it,” Tara shuddered.

  “Then how about that one?” Catherine pointed to the next dress in line for the dressing room.

  “Seriously?” Tara smirked. “The tulle halter? Tiny seed pearls all over the bodice? That is definitely Jennifer Anniston. Another gruesome wedding end awaits the wearer. Five years tops.”

  “Where do you get this stuff from?” Catherine demanded, frustrated that she’d brought the rainman of celebrity weddings along for this excursion.

  “Just a little extra something I keep on file up here.” She pointed proudly at her head.

  Catherine didn’t have time for superstition; the clock was ticking on this wedding. But unfortunately she wasn’t above superstition either, so Tara’s tidbits of wedding doom were seeding themselves in her mind at this very moment.

  “Oh, and that one over there with the circle design…. That is Jackie O. all over again,” Tara spouted, high with power and ready to abuse it.

  “I didn’t even plan on trying that on,” Catherine practically whimpered, wondering if there was a single dress on this planet that didn’t have some kind of bad juju.

  “Good, because I can’t let you wear it. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you’re honeymooning in Texas and—”

  “
What’s wrong with you?” Georgia demanded, hanging up the phone and eyeing Tara sharply.

  “I’m being a good friend who cares.”

  “You’re giving her a complex,” she said, pointing toward Catherine who looked ready to crumble into a fetal position. “All of this from the woman who will eat fries off of a stranger’s plate at a greasy diner—fries left behind for the garbage. What about the doom that comes from that? Like a bad case of food poisoning.”

  Tara sloughed off the charges. “I don’t eat out of the garbage.”

  “Someone else touched them. They might have sneezed on them or licked them or—”

  “I only did it twice. And in my defense, I was really drunk. Besides, you know alcohol is antiseptic; it’ll kill anything. I’m standing here now, aren’t I? … But this—we are talking about a lifetime commitment here, not just a midnight snack. You don’t tempt the fates when it comes to a wedding.”

  Catherine nodded her head the slightest bit, hypnotized by Tara’s diatribe that made all the sense in the world to her right now.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Georgia commanded, looking deep in Catherine’s eyes and speaking slowly and clearly like she was too simple to understand otherwise. “Now, sweetie, take this dress and try it on. I think it’s going to be perfect. Maybe even the one.” She shoved a strapless dress with a full tulle skirt at her. It looked like it belonged on a prima ballerina.

  Tara gasped as the dress exchanged hands.

  “What? What is it?” Catherine dropped the dress right then and there like she was just handed beautifully disguised bad luck.

  “Seventy-two days,” Tara murmured.

  “We don’t even have that much time,” Georgia noted, looking at her calendar. “That’s why you need to shut your—”

  “The marriage. I give it seventy-two days if you wear that.” Tara pointed at the offensive material.

  Catherine and Georgia both stared at her, pinning her in place.

  “Kardashian ring a bell?”

  “You cannot compare Kim Kardashian’s wedding or relationship to Catherine’s with Fynn. That’s ridiculous,” Georgia humphed.

  But Catherine wasn’t so sure. She was kind of short like Kim. And Fynn was a lot taller than she was; maybe not the same height difference as Kim and her man, but still taller. And she did have brown hair and brown eyes like Kim. And she was voluptuous too. Everything was eerily falling in line. “What am I supposed to do?” Catherine practically wailed to Tara, ignoring reason in favor of unabashed superstition.

  “Well, whatever you do, don’t go shopping for a dress at a consignment sale or garage sale or whathaveyou. If you think a design replica is bad, actually wearing a dress someone already got divorced or jilted or dead in is far, far worse.”

  Catherine shivered at the totally gross image of a dead body in a wedding dress.

  “It happens—I think I saw a special on 20/20,” Tara assured her.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Georgia said, the voice of reason sounding slightly less than certain herself. “I can see why you’ve yet to be married.”

  “It’s a risky proposition, most definitely,” Tara agreed.

  “Help me. We don’t have all the time in the world here,” Catherine reminded them, cocking her head toward a rack of veils where they could all make out the ghostly form of a little face and hands under layers of tulle. Cara had been reasonably content all day so far, hopping from one dress shop to another, but too much longer and they were only asking for trouble. “Not every dress in this place is possessed, right?”

  “This one has great vibes. I can almost feel Duran Duran in the fabric—no, wait, that’s Tears for Fears,” Tara said, dancing the ‘80s special over to her, the shiny glare off the material making Catherine’s eyeballs ache.

  “I’m hungry,” Cara said, tugging on her arm.

  “We’ll get a snack in a minute.”

  “You said that five hours ago,” she moaned theatrically, walking over to the couch where Georgia had taken up residence and throwing herself across it. Catherine couldn’t help but crack a slight smile. She remembered being that dramatic—last week when Fynn still hadn’t sent her the addresses for his side of the guest list.

  “Remind me why we brought that one along.” Tara pointed to the sprawled five-year-old. “It’s not like she’s being any help.”

  “Welcome to my world,” Georgia piped up, eyeing Tara.

  “She’s part of the wedding party,” Catherine warned. “She needs a dress to wear too.” Actually, she would have preferred to leave Cara with her mom, but she got the distinct impression that would be unacceptable when her mother said, and what are you girls up to today? Definitely a passive-aggressive statement that Elizabeth Hemmings was not babysitting. She’d been more than willing to entertain Cara yesterday and let Catherine tag along, and they’d spent hours shopping together, but now that Cara had a proper booster seat, she was holding her daughter’s feet to the fire to follow through with her commitments as caregiver.

  “Well, I guess her vote counts then, and I second the call for a snack break,” Tara announced.

  “This shouldn’t be so hard,” Catherine said under her breath to herself.

  Georgia humphed loudly, while Tara let out something more like a raspberry.

  “What’s that about?” she challenged them both.

  “Didn’t you realize who you were shopping with?” Tara asked.

  Georgia cut a look at Tara, incensed.

  “I’m talking about her,” Tara stressed through gritted teeth, thumbing toward Catherine.

  “Me?” Now it was Catherine’s turn to be incensed. “You’re the one adding dead brides into the equation.”

  “I’m just trying to help. If you weren’t so picky—”

  “Picky?”

  “No brilliant white?” Tara reminded her.

  “That was Georgia’s advice,” Catherine countered, selling out her friend.

  “She is over thirty,” Georgia leveled, like there was no fighting the numbers.

  “What the hell should age have to do with anything?” Tara exclaimed. “If you want to wear white, then wear it. You’re driving me nuts with the whole ‘this one is too white and that one is too cream and this ivory is really more of an ecru—’”

  “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  Catherine whirled around on her pedestal to face the newest offender, wishing she didn’t have to hold her dress up at the same time to prevent flashing whoever had the gall to call her ma’am while she was wearing a wedding dress. Ma’am was bad enough any day… but now? Here? She was a blushing bride—in the prime of her life—not a ma’am.

  “Is this yours?” the saleswoman asked, probably another decade older than herself. Her bony and ringless, spinstery pincer grip was clamped firmly around a small child’s arm. Always a bridal dress saleswoman, never a bride, Catherine thought piteously.

  She looked to the couch where she’d last seen Cara, as if this little girl couldn’t possibly be one in the same, then turned back to the woman. “That is my daughter,” she enunciated forcefully, “and you can take your hands off of her right now.”

  “She was playing in the veils,” the saleswoman tattled, releasing Cara’s arm distastefully.

  “Thank you so much,” Catherine said, suddenly syrupy sweet. “I think I’ve made my decision.”

  “Wonderful! And let me say that that dress is truly exquisite on you.” The woman suddenly amped into gushing sales mode.

  “Actually, I meant that we’re done. I would like to think that when my daughter is sent to pick out a veil for her mom so she can be part of the wedding, that a true saleswoman would help her, not drag her around like she was some kind of—”

  “Vermin,” Tara offered quickly, making both Georgia and Catherine look at her confused—since when had Tara become Yosemite Sam?

  “Well I never—”

  “You should probably think about having that removed while you’re at it,” Tar
a said.

  Stricken, the woman touched a large yet benign-looking mole on her face.

  “I’m talking about that stick—the one up your ass.”

  Catherine watched Georgia pull Cara close, her hands moving to cover little ears right before the swearing started. Thank God. She didn’t need to send Cara home with a burgeoning vocabulary.

  *****

  “Next time you might want to think about waiting until I am actually ready to leave before you do that,” Catherine noted once they all met up on the sidewalk outside the shop. As it was she’d been completely handcuffed, still wearing the dress she wasn’t going to purchase, while the rest of her posse disbanded immediately—Georgia taking Cara out of the store and Tara wandering off to godknowswhere.

  “I’ll think about it,” Tara said, her mouth full, handing a cupcake to Cara.

  Catherine’s mouth opened in shock. “Where did you—”

  “I hit the coffee shop next door.”

  “What about the rest of us?”

  “I was hungry and I knew Cara was hungry, but you two voted the other way on snacks. Besides, should you really be eating baked goods at a time like this?” Tara raised her eyebrows at her knowingly.

  “Thanks, Tara,” Cara said, trying to bite the cupcake and sending frosting up onto her nose.

  “Now what?” Catherine moaned, hungry and dress-less.

  “I think we should spin her around a few times and send her back in,” Tara offered, pointing at Cara who was now twenty percent covered in sugar. “A frosting bomb. Get ‘em right in the Vera Wang. One fingerful would have them shaking in their boots….” She put a protective big-sister arm around the now thirty-five percent sugar-coated Cara. “She’ll stop them dead in their stuffy-ass tracks. Priceless paybacks.”

  “I don’t have time for revenge,” Catherine said abruptly, wondering if entertaining Cara and Tara at the same time was the most brilliant of ideas. “And could you watch the language, please?”

  “What did I say?” Oblivious to her native tongue and its tendency to speak freely.