“I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“But you’re already in the middle of this.”
“I’m just here to make sure you don’t try to escape before you do what you came here to do. I’ll stand guard.”
“But what if he comes home and sees you? Then he’ll know something is up.”
“I’ll hide. I’m a master of disguise.”
“You?” Catherine blurted.
“I can blend in,” Tara said, disbelief that anyone would question that.
Catherine looked her up and down—shocking pink fake-fur coat, safety-orange scarf, and fuzzy teal hat and mittens to top off the winter ensemble. She could maybe blend in to a gumball machine.
“Just go. If it gets past an hour and nothing is happening here, I’ll figure he was home and you’re tied up in a good way,” she said devilishly. “I’ll call Drew to pick me up.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Go get your man back.”
-53-
She rolled to a stop at the base of the front steps, within inches of her very first visit here, back when she didn’t know what to expect at all from Joel “Fynn” Trager. She’d come full circle, not knowing what to expect yet again. Last time he had refused to sell her what she wanted. It had taken her days to break him down, less than a week to fall in love with him. This time she wanted him to give her something even more precious….
Catherine stepped out of the car and turned just in time to see flapping lips before the tongue that came with them lapped at her face.
“Magnus!” she squealed, an explosion of happy surprise. At least he was excited to see her, paws on her chest, pinning her to the car—lucky not to be knocking it over what with their combined weight. “I missed you, buddy.” She ruffled his fur, so relieved to have the unconditional love of a dog.
“Magnus, down.” The voice was low and flat, but still smooth as ever as he came around from the garage side of the house. Her heart beat with increasing anxiety and the thrill of just being near him again, as her eyes took in the tousled golden blond hair on his head that looked like someone had been running her fingers through it—a flash of jealousy at the mere thought.
Magnus got down immediately and retreated to his dog life of sniffing at the tires and marking the car his.
Satisfied, Fynn turned to go, speaking over his shoulder. “Saved me a trip to the post office. Your stuff is inside.”
She winced. “Fynn, wait,” she said softly, battling to keep up a brave front. He could crush her so easily right here and now and she would totally deserve it.
He stopped in place but didn’t turn back around, instead he just ran his hands through his hair the way he did when he was frustrated. There was no “she” playing with his hair, thank God.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” she said to his back… or happy or interested or even curious.
“News travels faster than that car of yours.” He turned to face her finally, his eyes slipping to her hand—the ring—a mixture of anger and hurt.
“Oh.” She covered her left hand protectively, blushing as she realized Tara wasn’t joking about what she’d seen on Main Street. Her presence in town was all too obvious. She’d finally given the people of Nekoyah what they’d been ribbing her about for months—little Catherine Hemmings in her tiny little car.
“Where’s your cohort?” He looked past her, squinting in the windows beyond. “I’m guessing you brought your ‘lawyer’ with you. Are you asking for a settlement?”
She ignored the jab and choked out, “Tara’s up at the gate.”
“Is she playing lookout?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, some things don’t change…. Too bad other things do,” he said bitterly.
“Nothing changed.”
“What do you mean nothing changed?” he charged with frustration, hands back in his hair again. “You broke up with me. Called off the wedding. Ended this… out of nowhere.” His voice cracked. He swallowed and spoke lower this time. “You can go in and get your things. You know the way.” And with that he walked away, leaving her alone with Magnus and Glenda, whose muffled voice inside the car was asking where she would like to go next—to hell… no, wait, I’m already there.
She walked up the steps like she was going to her own execution, but what else was she supposed to do? Run and throw herself down in front of him? Not take no for an answer? That’s what you would have done before, Catherine Marie reminded her, which seemed weird since she hadn’t agreed with anything that went down last spring at all. But Catherine Marie loved Fynn. Everyone did: parents and friends and babies and kids of all ages and animals.
Catherine couldn’t even get any love from herself.
I disgust me.
*****
Ideally he would have been less cold and shown a little more willingness to speak to her.
Ideally he would have been so relieved to see her that he dropped everything, gathered her in his arms, and forgave her for every painful word she’d said.
Ideally he would have gotten a minor head injury since she’d last seen him that would have given him selective amnesia, a loss of short-term memory for a span of exactly one week’s time.
But life is real, not ideal.
She opened the front door and stepped inside the house that smelled so much like him and their life together that she felt weak in the knees. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she’d been here. Her mind started churning with pointless imaginings of what it would have looked like if she’d combined her things with his and they’d woven their lives together. She’d never looked at the space that way. With new paint and some of his furniture and some of her own, it could have worked.
The door to the garage squeaked open, the sound so achingly familiar to her that she realized that was what home was about. And then she heard Fynn’s footsteps in the kitchen and she hurried up to the master bedroom to collect her things and hide her tears from him.
If the smell of the house bowled her over, the smell of the bedroom—his cologne pervasive—was completely overwhelming. It was enough for her to make it to the bed before collapsing. Their love nest. She had to fight against the desire to burrow her face into his pillow just to breathe him in. And then she saw her red union suit sprawled in the corner of the room next to the little wastebasket, and she froze in place—hurt. Just a piece of garbage that was too big to fit inside.
“You left a few of your ‘woman’ things in the bathroom,” Fynn said suddenly from the doorway.
“I’m surprised you didn’t have it all packed up already. Or in the trash.” She pointed toward the deflated union suit.
“I was going to wash it before sending it, but Magnus stole it right out of the hamper,” Fynn admitted. “He lays on it, drags it around the house. I don’t know what has gotten into him, but I didn’t have the heart to….” He drifted before finishing.
At least somebody here misses me.
“I was hoping to talk to you,” she blurted.
“You know, the phone is a helluva lot cheaper for talking.”
“You deserve more than that,” she said earnestly.
“I don’t think that I deserve anything more from you,” he said pointedly.
“Fair.” She nodded her head lightly, casting her eyes down toward the floor.
Silence settled between them—uncomfortable, awkward, heavy silence that seemed to last minutes, even hours, instead of the seconds it probably was. When she finally chanced looking back at him, he was leaning against the doorframe, his eyes focused elsewhere—a knot in the wood molding, a fly speck, anything else.
“I guess I’ll leave you to your things. Did you bring something to pack them in?” he asked, his eyes skating over her. “I can give you a bag or something—”
She took a deep breath, found her center, and captured his fleeting gaze head-on. “I don’t need anything,” she said with calm certainty she didn’t actually fee
l. “I didn’t come for my things.”
“Cat, I’m not into games, okay? You know that much about me by now. Let me get you a bag.”
“No.” She stood up from the bed and planted her feet like she was gearing for a fight—hand-to-hand combat. “And please don’t call me Cat.”
“Everyone calls you Cat.”
“My friends call me Cat. Not you.”
“Soon enough I won’t have to call you anything.” His eyes slipped from hers again.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said earnestly, wishing she could step toward him, reach for his face, and pull his gaze back in her direction. But she knew she didn’t have the right to force him to do anything. All she could do was speak and hope he listened. “You call me Catherine. You always call me Catherine. That means something to me.”
“Does it mean something to you when telemarketers call you Catherine? Complete strangers who read your name off a list?”
“You don’t understand,” she said lowly.
“No. I don’t understand. I don’t understand you or any of this,” he said, resigned, turning to walk out of the room, hands going to his hair again, giving him a Christopher Lloyd mad-scientist look.
“If you won’t talk to me now—here—I’ll just follow you until you will.”
“Where are you going to follow me? Downstairs? Outside? Across town?” he challenged.
“Everywhere. I’ll make a general nuisance of myself.”
He turned back, eyes flaming with emotion. “Otherwise, do exactly what you always do.”
“Pretty much.”
He stood looking at her. Eyes steady on hers. No response for what seemed like the longest time as he appraised her.
“That’s what I do when there is something I’m after. Something I want so bad I can taste it. Something I can’t live without,” she said. The words that had seemed so hard to say when she was thinking them through, worrying about seeing him again, poured forth readily and easily—the truth unstoppable.
“Are you telling me that you’re back?” he asked.
“If you’ll have me.”
“I mean you are back. The you that I fell for. A fighter. Instead of that… wackadoodle I was engaged to for the past month or so.”
“Wackadoodle?” she snorted.
“Cara,” he said by way of explanation. “That stuff rubs off. And it does fit.”
“It’s better than raving bitch, I suppose.”
“Or psychotic lunatic…. Or—”
“Okay, already. I get it. I was totally nuts there for a while and I took it all out on you,” she admitted.
“Did you really think that I was just skating into this whole thing without any worries at all?”
She nodded her head the slightest assent.
His hands shot to his hair once more, this time in disbelief. “I am less than a month from being outnumbered. I was just getting used to the idea of having a woman-in-training under my roof, when you came along—full-fledged female—and suddenly I was looking at a future of chick flicks and feminine products and home décor and hormones and feelings. You think that’s going to be easy on me? You might be giving up your home, but mine is under attack.”
“You have Magnus to even the odds,” she joked lightly.
“Yeah, Magnus who will side with anyone who dangles some food in his face.”
“I’m sorry,” she said earnestly. “I didn’t think about your side of things.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I wasn’t into our wedding. I mean, I truly don’t care about all the little pieces. They don’t matter. But not because I don’t care about getting married. The married part is always what mattered to me. And now—”
“Now I stand before you, just plain old Catherine Hemmings… hoping to be Catherine Trager in… what say about twenty-three days? A proud Nekoyan resident. Happily ever after.”
“Can I trust that New York won’t be rearing its ugly head again?”
“Well… I did get a promotion just the other day,” she admitted, coming toward him as he edged away warily. “I turned it down. In fact, I quit this morning. Emailed my notice.”
“Really?” His response was genuine surprise. “But what if this all didn’t work out?”
She reached for him, sliding her arms around his waist whether he wanted her to or not. “Then I’d be jobless and homeless, because I sublet my apartment this morning too. I guess I thought it would make me look pitiful enough to take back.”
“But how… so quickly—”
“Tara is finally ready to live on her own. She’s taking over my past so I can focus on the future.” She covered his mouth with a kiss that she hoped told him everything she was feeling at this moment—relief, love, joy, excitement. And when she started to pull away from him he pulled her close and squeezed her tightly, his ear close to her mouth. “Thank God I don’t have to move back in with my parents,” she whispered breathily.
Tuesday, February 15th
-54-
“Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re back!” Georgia squealed through the phone. “I was beginning to worry that you were never going to leave Minnesota again. Not even to get your stuff. Not even to get married…. You are still getting married, right?”
“I had to stay through Valentine’s Day. It’s for lovers you know, and I am completely, totally in love!”
“But the wedding—”
“Yes! Of course! Everything is wonderful, Georgia. I mean truly spectacular. We stayed in bed for days. We made plans for the house; how to make it not just his place, but ours. We talked about… well, everything. Kids. Finances. Traditions. Life. The universe. Conversations that were long overdue. And I am just so ready to get married already.”
“Then let’s make you a Mrs.,” Georgia said definitively. “What do you need me to do?”
“Well, I’m actually in Philly right now on my way to see Vinnie at SG Weddings. I have to give him the good news and finalize things. This is all going to be so much easier as an unemployed bride! I’ve got so much time on my hands!”
“Not that much time on your hands,” Georgia cautioned.
“You’re right. And I not only have to finish the wedding plans, I have to move too. I want to go from the honeymoon straight to Nekoyah. So… can you meet me this afternoon at my apartment? Help me start packing? Be there for moral support as I try on my dress and see the damage this past week has done to my chances to fit in it? First depressive gluttony and then throw-all-caution-to-the-wind celebratory gluttony—it’s not going to be pretty.”
There was a pause and then Georgia eked out, “Sure… of course. Do you need—”
“You don’t have to come,” Catherine interrupted. “I understand if you have other plans.” This was last minute, although she knew that the hurt in her voice was hard to hide entirely.
“It’s not something I can’t back out of. I’ll just call—”
“No, it’s okay. I can’t ask you to drop everything just because I’m suddenly getting married again.”
“It’s Lacey,” Georgia blurted suddenly, coming clean. “She was coming for a visit today with Niki.”
“Oh….”
“I’m going to cancel,” Georgia said definitively.
“No….” Catherine paused for a second. “Bring her with you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll call Tara too. I need to round up the bridesmaids—minus Drew, who is already as big as a house, by the way. We have plans to finish and you all don’t even have dresses.”
“But Lacey will just feel out of—”
“I want to ask Lacey to be in the wedding,” Catherine said with certainty.
“You don’t have to do that just because of your mother… or me.”
“Do I ever do anything because I have to? I don’t have that obligatory gene,” she assured her. “And Lacey has really—she’s not as bad as I thought she was. She totally threw my mom off my scent this weekend and
no one is the wiser that this was the wedding that almost wasn’t. Plus, she tamed my brother so he is only half the pain in the ass he used to be,” she joked. “And she never told you about Penis Grove either, did she?”
“Penis Grove?” Georgia asked, bewildered.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, satisfied. She had been so certain, ever since Lacey and Connor had gotten one of the original invites, that at some point Georgia would bring up the “Penis” problem, proving that her new friend must have told her all about it. But it had been weeks and not even one word. Seems Lacey might just be good people.
*****
“Cat Hemmings!” Vinnie bellowed warmly. “What a surprise! You’re absolutely glowing now that you’re not heading down the aisle.”
“That’s just it. The wedding is on. Everything is back in place.”
“Oh,” he said, then sucked air back in through his teeth uncomfortably. His size paired with his consternation made him look even more comical behind his too-delicate desk.
“What is it?” she prodded lightly. She could hear a couple of women enter the outer office from the hallway, tittering excitedly, probably a bride and her best friend/maid of honor. She’d been in a similar state not moments ago, but she felt the bottom dropping out from under her hopes and dreams as she watched Vinnie’s pained expression—either he had gas or something really awful was about to happen.
But Vinnie was a professional and he collected himself quickly. “So this is wonderful news! You’s need a wedding in just… what is it—”
“March 4th. My wedding is on March 4th,” she asserted.
“Putting a wedding together in less than three weeks—eighteen days to be exact—is a challenge. But Vinnie Delrio is the king of the wedding challenge.”
“What do you mean putting a wedding together? I have a wedding. On March 4th. Invitations sent. Location booked. Cameraman polishing his lenses. Flowers probably being picked as we speak….” But she was gradually losing steam as Vinnie shook his head lightly, sympathetically, through her speech.
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