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

by Heather Muzik

  Abandoned and alone, Catherine called Fynn to give him the bad news.

  “Hey babe,” he said, answering in half a ring.

  “Hi,” she said softly, regret in her voice.

  “Where are you? I thought you would be here by now.”

  “Had a little copilot snafu…. We’re in Iowa.”

  “Iowa?” His tone was pure disbelief.

  “Yup,” she said simply. She figured it best to leave out the legalese and stick with the most basic story… and the truth—it was all Tara’s fault.

  “I knew I should have flown out and driven back with you,” he said lowly.

  That damn hindsight thing rearing its ugly head again…. “Probably, but we’ll only be a day later—” —oh, and two hundred poorer for it.

  “I miss you,” he said, buttery smooth.

  “I miss you too.” She felt that tingling beginning inside, her Pavlovian response to his voice. “But soon enough you won’t be able to get rid of me.”

  “You have a point. On second thought….”

  “Hey, watch it,” she sulked.

  -62-

  Catherine got out of the cab and stepped up onto the curb, carefully taking in the perfectly quaint little house that couldn’t possibly house any sadness at all. She felt fidgety and nervous and didn’t know what to do with her hands, thankful that once she reached the door they had a purpose. She knocked—not too hard and not too soft—and immediately felt a rush of discomfort that coming here like this, unannounced, was entirely inappropriate. She willed the silence inside to continue, the door not to swing open. She turned toward the street, remembering how she used to play ding-dong ditch. Maybe she could take off right now, hide in the bushes, run from tree to tree, and no one would be the wiser. A grown woman reduced to an unruly child out of fear.

  “Can I help you?” A firm yet feminine voice asked, making her mind immediately jump to Mel at the diner in Nekoyah. It sounded like it could be her sister.

  “Oh, hi,” Catherine said quickly, turning to find a very un-Mel-ish looking woman staring back at her from the doorway—face thinner, hair gray, eyes closer together. But the stance was almost identical. And the no-nonsense attitude that exuded out of her pores was spot-on.

  “My name is Catherine Hemmings. I… came to see Renée.”

  “She’s sleeping,” the nurse replied. Her tone giving her away even more than the scrubs she was wearing.

  “Oh… okay. Is Cara here?”

  The nurse looked at her warily. “Who are you exactly—”

  “I’m right here! Hi, Cat!” Cara squealed right before bowling her over with the excessive force of unadulterated youth. Little arms locked around her middle and soft pigtails tickled her hands. After a hug of pure, honest appreciation, no question or hesitation in the face of her surprise visit, Cara pulled away and looked up at her. “Mommy sleeps a lot in the day while I’m in school so she can be awake for dinner with me and play games at night,” she said matter-of-factly, like her mother was doing shift work rather than lying weak and ravaged in bed all day and night.

  “I can see why she would want to spend time with you,” Catherine said, tugging lightly on one of her pigtails. “You’re like a ray of sunshine.”

  Cara beamed as if to prove her right.

  “And look how big you’ve gotten already! I just saw you a few weeks ago and I think you’re a whole head taller!”

  “Mommy says it seems like I grow an inch a day.”

  “That would be about right,” Catherine agreed, suddenly feeling like maybe this visit was just about perfect. Like there was a reason for everything in the world, including her recent bout of extremely bad luck and her brush with larceny that landed her here in Iowa. It was about time she met Renée face-to-face.

  “I’m having a snack to hold me over till dinner,” Cara said, parroting an adult. “Do you want some?”

  Actually she was pretty hungry, but she was still trying to keep her diet on track—smaller portions, less meals, NO snacks.

  “Come here.” Cara pulled her toward the kitchen.

  Catherine noted the homey atmosphere—the fact that it didn’t smell sickly in the house even though she knew full well that Renée was in a hospital bed in another room.

  “Do you like baby crackers?”

  “Baby crackers?” Catherine asked, amused.

  “These, silly.” Cara pointed at the box of Ritz Bits Sandwiches on the table.

  “Of course I do.”

  She poured some more on her plate, enough to share, making Catherine quite certain that it would be rude to turn the offer down. Plus, I am trying to eat smaller portions and these are miniature….

  “You need some juice,” Cara asserted, heading for the fridge like a proper hostess.

  Well, by all means, if you think I do….

  *****

  “So you changed your mind,” Renée said weakly from the bed. She was propped to a sitting position but she sounded like she’d just woken up.

  “Just when I thought Joel Trager was a man of few words,” Catherine said tightly. She’d hoped Renée didn’t even know about the breakup or anything else that had been going on, seeing as how it made her look flighty and unfit. “It was a ridiculous moment of panic. I just don’t want you to think that—”

  “Catherine, stop,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to interrogate you. Believe me; I have done my fair share of freaking out over the years. You should have seen how I reacted to the tumor.” A smirk of chagrin. “I’m not judging you.” Renée appraised her for a few seconds before continuing. “I’ll admit that I was concerned—”

  “Oh?” Catherine tried to be charitable and give a dying woman a chance before freaking out completely, but she was on the edge.

  “Please sit,” Renée said softly.

  “I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

  “You’re not. Most of my time is medicated TV watching, so please.” She motioned toward a chair.

  Not until Catherine sat would she continue. “You see, ever since I asked Fynn to take Cara, I’d been afraid that I’d hurt him deeply. Taken away his freedom to be him and find his way—what makes him happy. It wasn’t fair of me to ask him to finish out my life for me—”

  “He would do anything for Cara,” Catherine said earnestly.

  “Yeah, but he’s a tough enough nut to crack without baggage—with a five-year-old daughter on the way… well, women don’t stick around for that kind of thing. I knew that before I even asked him and I felt guilty about it, but not guilty enough…. I just wanted to leave this earth knowing where Cara is. What her room looks like. Who will be there for her when she comes home from school. Who will help her learn the easy things and the hard things too. But saddling a single man with what will one day become a teenage daughter is… to put it lightly, cruel.”

  “But Cara is such a wonderful, happy, sweet little girl.”

  “And we all know what they become,” Renée said with a smile.

  Catherine smiled back, remembering her father’s absolute bewilderment through her teen years. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

  “When you came around I was relieved.”

  “I figured you were horrified. A crazy chick shoving her way into Fynn’s life.”

  “No. You are his saving grace, Catherine—and mine too. I know that we haven’t even spoken, but Cara adores you. I just don’t want my illness—the death sentence that just keeps dragging out,” she said wryly, “—or Cara’s guardianship to come between you and Fynn.”

  “None of this craziness has been about Cara. I knew she was a part of his life from the beginning. I love her…. Sure I’m totally unsure of parenting in general. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, actually. But that doesn’t change the fact that I absolutely adore her. I was just afraid that you realized how totally inept I was, you know, when I returned her with an ear infection and probably on a sustained sugar high…. After she told you everything we did over that week
end, I figured there was no way you’d want me around your daughter anymore.”

  “I think it’s time for a motherhood confession,” Renée said, her eyes beseeching. “I once took Cara to a birthday party with a broken arm. She was about three and she fell off her tricycle. I was right there to kiss it better, and she seemed fine afterward. The next day I brought her to a party and a dad there was an EMT; he told me to take her to the emergency room. God, I felt like such an idiot. How did I miss that?”

  “Now don’t go making up an elaborate story just to make me feel better.”

  “No, it’s true. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Catherine winced noticeably, but Renée chuckled. “That’s got to be the worst part about dying—all jokes are off, when all I want to do is laugh.”

  “I just—God, under different circumstances—”

  “Hey, it is what it is,” she said simply. “Maybe that’s the drugs talking—I’m on some killer drugs—but I already went through woe-is-me. I also went through pissed-as-hell. Broke a lot of glasses, even a mirror—figured I already had all the bad luck in the world. Now, it isn’t so much that I’m resigned as it is that I’m at peace…. And that has to do directly with you. You complete the puzzle. I don’t have to worry anymore that I am changing everyone else’s lives for the worse by leaving—not that I have a choice in the matter. Since I have to go, at least I know Cara will have everything—even more than I was able to give her.”

  “But you are giving it to her,” Catherine said, tears in her eyes.

  “She talks endlessly about Gramma Lizzy and Pop-pop,” Renée said, matching tears in her own.

  “My parents. I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t jumping the gun. She came up with that all herself—”

  “No.” Renée waved her off. “She never knew her grandparents. She even asked for some for Christmas one year.”

  “Renée, I just want to assure you that Cara is a part of our family—Fynn’s and my family. She will be taken care of and loved like our own.”

  “I am so happy to hear that because I need you to do something for me.”

  “Please don’t tell me you want me to kill you and put you out of your misery,” Catherine joked nervously. Suddenly the room was filled with pure musical laughter that echoed through the quiet of the old house, and for that moment Catherine saw the woman Renée used to be before illness began leeching her life out from under her. Tears welled up quickly again to refill what had appeared in bittersweet emotion and been released in good humor.

  “I want you and Fynn to adopt Cara…. And I want you to do it while she’s still young.”

  “What?” Catherine was shocked.

  “I don’t want her to grow up with guardians. I want her to have parents. No confusion. No explanations to her friends, or at school. Just simply Cara Marie Trager.”

  Catherine’s breath caught. She hadn’t even known that Cara’s middle name was Marie. Something else they had in common. The same middle name. The same initials. And they shared love for Fynn. And Magnus. And they would soon share a deep sorrow of loss: Cara for her mother, and Catherine for her sister.

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to take your place, Renée.”

  “She deserves to have a normal family. She deserves the chance to move on. And you deserve the love and respect that come with motherhood. It will be easier on all of you that way. And maybe it won’t hurt as badly for Cara.”

  “Does Fynn know?”

  “I haven’t told him yet. Honestly, I knew he would fight me if I told him. I was having it drafted into my will to command him from beyond the grave,” she said spookily. “That way he would have to do it without giving me any lip. I know I’m being morbid, but I appreciate the chance to say it; this is the stuff I can’t talk about with Cara. You literally came at the perfect time…. Why did you come anyway? You’re like the answer to my prayers.”

  “Unless God is in the business of auto theft, I don’t think I’m quite that.”

  “Someone stole your car?”

  “Well, who stole what is up in the air, but it landed me here so it was good for something.”

  Sunday, February 27th

  -63-

  “So, are you ready?” Fynn asked as they walked back inside the house after seeing off Drew and Klein, who had also taken Tara back to their place so they could be alone for the night. It was a welcome reprieve after the madness of the move-in, unloading the truck and finding homes for all of her things among all of his things. The Trager house had doubled in stuff and things and whathaveyou’s in one fell swoop, so in the interest of square footage for maneuvering there was a lot of dickering, girls against guys, over what should stay and what should go—thank God the men were outnumbered (turns out Tara was good for something). It was far from perfect as yet, more “cluttered” than a true design style, but Catherine definitely saw potential.

  “Am I ready for what?”

  “The happily-ever-after portion of this relationship.”

  She leaned up and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Absolutely, totally, completely ready. You’re going to have to race me down the aisle.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  She waved him off. “Speaking of the wedding, do you have everything set on your end?”

  “Well, there’s the tux… and me… so yes, I’m pretty much set.”

  “Says the man with too little to do,” she sighed.

  “I would have done whatever you asked me to do,” he said smoothly. “Whatever you want, you just have to ask.” His eyes were piercing right through her, heating her up.

  “Well then, I would like—”

  “Except tonight. Yesterday was our pre-weekiversary and you missed it… so I was thinking you might like to give me something, seeing as how I started this whole wedding thing.” He spun the diamond ring on her finger suggestively.

  “Are you going to spend the next eighty years of our life together making up holidays and events on which we should have sex?”

  “It’s not like Hallmark makes cards for this sort of thing, so we have to show our appreciation for each other somehow.”

  “I guess you sort of have a point.” Catherine nodded her head lightly, willing to be swayed. “And you did agree to add Connor to your wedding party for little old me, so I should repay that kindness anyway.”

  “That’s all I’m saying.”

  She kissed his self-satisfied smirk off his face, hands wandering freely on her soon-to-be legal property.

  “You know,” he said, coming up for air, “speaking of the wedding party, I heard from my friend Jason… my best man.”

  She pulled away from him, suddenly alert to potential disaster—of course he has the Ebola virus and can’t make it to the wedding.

  “He said it was a pleasure meeting you.”

  “What?” she asked, startled and confused.

  “Yesterday. In Illinois. Ringing any bells?” Fynn prodded.

  “Uh… yes, I remembered Illinois,” she said carefully. “It’s a beautiful state. Entirely underrated…. So that’s where Jason lives?” she added innocently. If I’d addressed the invitations I would know this.

  “Do you happen to remember the Dewsom County Police Department?”

  “Jason was there?” she asked, coughing lightly. She felt like she was choking on her own tongue as it swelled to five times its size. Am I allergic to something now? The truth? Is the truth going to suffocate me? I get this far and I’m still going to die single?

  “Detective Banks, yes.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t have any defense, anything she could say at all.

  “So you lied about going the wrong way.” He pushed her up against the wall to interrogate her, sexily.

  “Would you admit to something like that?” she asked breathily.

  “Something like that wouldn’t happen to me…. Only to you, my dear,” he said deliciously.

  “But really, what are the chances there would be two idling U-Hauls in t
he same parking lot at the same time?”

  “For you? Pretty good I’d say, considering....”

  “I think Tara is a bad influence or she’s tainted or something,” Catherine charged, explaining away her predicament-prone tendencies as out of her hands. And right then she almost told him the rest of her Tara troubles—the whole wedding fiasco—just to seal the case on Tara being the root cause of everything. But there was a big difference between owning up to an honest mistake like taking your rented truck’s twin out of a parking lot unknowingly, and telling your fiancé about that time a couple weeks back when you wigged out and canceled their wedding and ever since have been piecing together a semblance of that event with spit and scotch tape and rubber cement. Two very different things.

  “I think you can get yourself into plenty of trouble all on your own.” He ran a finger down the inside of her arm lightly, all the way to the wrist.

  “Hey,” she protested the characterization feebly, unable to muster much indignation what with her weak knees and tingling lady parts.

  “Come to think of it, you’re just about to get into all kinds of trouble.”

  Friday, March 3rd

  -64-

  “You saw The Hangover, right?” Catherine asked from the passenger seat after being dragged out of her parents’ house where she’d been planning to have a nice quiet evening with her parents and Fynn and Cara before the wedding.

  “I dream of an adventure like that someday,” Tara swooned.

  Catherine cringed. A last-minute bachelorette party with Tara in charge had all the potential for disaster, even if it was conceived in good faith—celebrating mission impossible: Cat Tying the Knot.

  “Don’t worry, this party is going to be considerably more tame,” she assured her. “We’re not even leaving the state, hardly even leaving town.”

  But there was plenty of trouble to be had in any town Tara was in.

  When she announced, “We’re here!” Catherine peered between her self-imposed finger blindfold carefully, only to find herself looking out the window at her brother’s house.