“I told you.”
“I mean right now. You aren’t just hanging out in some hotel room relaxing. I can hear it in your voice. You sound strained and distant.”
“We do have several hundred miles between us.”
“A comedienne now?”
“Okay, I’m staked out in the guy’s front yard watching a beautiful family moment and plotting how to burgle the joint,” she snickered derisively.
“Shit, Cat—”
“I was just joking,” she huffed. It was only a partial lie—she was thinking about it, but of course she wasn’t doing it.
“You’ve got to let this go.”
“I should. I know I should. But I can’t….” Her voice simply died off to nothing as she lacked the will to stand up for herself and knew she would not accept defeat either.
“I even bought the cupcakes, you know,” Georgia said pointedly. “I got them from Cupcake Corner—made special for the occasion. They’re extra large and frosted in a purple and white twist with some kind of sparkly edible sprinkles.”
“They sound perfect,” Catherine answered tightly, feeling as low as possible right about now. She thought shamefully about the generic mini-cupcakes she had picked up at a mini-mart on her way back from Kohl’s earlier in her mini-car. They were on the end table back at the cabin, untouched. She’d bought them begrudgingly because it was tradition, not because they were just right for the day. She hadn’t felt like celebrating, while Georgia had spent the day thinking of her, and further, thinking of what her sister would have wanted—a little girl she had never even met.
-23-
She got back in the car and tried three times to get it to turn over, making her hanker even more for her plain old Malibu at home that would have been a reliable getaway car. She had considered getting rid of it many times over the years, living like many New Yorkers on a combination of public transportation and taxis, but she had never been able to reconcile losing the independence of having her own vehicle—something she’d had since she was sixteen. Not even the nightmare of parking in the city had been enough to deter her, although ironically this Smart-ass car would be a dream in NYC—the smallest crevice could be her perfect parking space.
The last thing she wanted to do right now was make the trek back down the driveway and admit to the Tragers that she’d broken down parked perfectly on the edge of the road at their mailbox. No, if the damn car wouldn’t start, she would abandon it and walk all the way back to New York rather than give Joel and Drew any more laughs at her expense. One more try, aided along by a shriek of raw animal anguish from the depths of her private hell, and the engine finally turned over. Peeling out on her tiny wheels, she hurried back to her humble little cabin in the woods, pulling to a stop only when she reached the front door.
She was at the lowest of low points. She had to reassess the damage and figure out her plan going forward now that she had all the pieces to the puzzle of Joel Trager. Shock had taken the wind out of her sails tonight, but not permanently. She could use this new information to steel herself for the next step. No more surprises. She would formulate and activate a new plan and then she would be on her way. But first, a nice hot shower to take the edge off.
Thankfully earlier she had gone by to ask her landlord for another night at the inn, which he kindly agreed to, telling her she was an easy guest—stay as long as you want. Her savior also came through with a stack of real towels and a bag of travel toiletries that he usually stocked the bathrooms with. Now she could really get clean and comfortable. She appreciated the hospitality but at the same time she assured herself she would be out of this place tomorrow, willing to sleep in the airport for a night if she happened to miss the last direct flight.
When she got inside and turned on the light, she noticed that her little belly flop on the grass had done a job on the blouse and jeans she had just purchased. She was again down to one outfit, the one she rode in here wearing. She couldn’t afford to keep buying clothes to wear on this trip. Back home she had put a moratorium on spending—she didn’t need any new clothes; want was an entirely different story. Now she was being forced to break her own financial restrictions just to get by and not end up looking or smelling like she was on Survivor: Nekoyah.
Catherine shoved the dirty clothes in the bag with her ones from earlier—grass and dirt stains mingling with coffee stains, none of it likely to come out after setting for hours or—gulp—days before being treated and washed. She hopped in the shower. The steam from the hot water did the job it was meant to do, distancing her from the pains of the day and erasing some of the frustration she’d been harboring inside. When the hot water started to run cool, she got out, dried off, and put on the union suit.
She could only see a hazy image in the mirror over the sink, so she swiped at her reflection with her towel to clean off the fog. But she still couldn’t see very well. She blinked a few times and then opened wide and looked at the mirror again.
“Dammit!” she said out loud.
She’d lost one of her contacts, probably in the shower or when she was drying her hair. Sometimes they had a mind of their own. Unfortunately, since they were disposables, she didn’t carry any solution or cases around with her, just wore them for a few weeks and then threw them away for a new pair. This pair was only a week old, and this was supposed to be such a short trip, so she hadn’t thought to bring her next set with her. In an ideal world that decision was perfectly legit, but here in harsh Nekoyan reality, Catherine was now half blind.
She peered down at the floor the best she could with her good eye, covering her bad one that would try to transfer mixed signals and screw up what little eyesight she had. She felt gently around the tiles for the little invisible cup, growing more and more certain she must have washed it down the drain—fitting considering the string of tremendously unlucky circumstances she had found herself in lately. Then, in the very last corner of the room, underneath the pedestal sink, she found the lens lying facedown on the tile. Since there was no telling what might have gotten on it in the fall, she couldn’t put it back in her eye, and rinsing it with water was unsafe and painful as all get-out. She wasn’t going to risk an eye infection—been there, done that years ago and still had the nightmares.
Carrying the lens cupped in her hand like it was a tiny living being, she grabbed a glass she’d found in one of the kitchen cabinets when she was searching for towels the night before. She rinsed it out and filled it with a small bit of water and dropped the lens in to keep it moist through the night—until she could get some solution to clean it.
On a whim she checked the outer pocket of her carry-on, remembering vaguely how she used to keep an old pair of glasses in that bag as a “just in case” for travel, back before disposables. When she pulled out the case and found her Sally Jessy Raphael red glasses inside she almost cried. She put them on and looked around. The prescription was way past expired but she was able to see better with than without them. She debated taking out her other contact to improve her sight but feared she would damage the good one unnecessarily. Instead, she removed the glasses lens on her good side to even out her vision. She put the glasses back on and went to the bathroom, admiring the ridiculous result. At least her glasses matched her pj’s. She put the lens back in the eyeglass case for safekeeping.
Her hand was on the light switch, about to plunge herself into darkness, when she heard rustling around the corner in the living/bedroom. Don’t tell me a raccoon or something even bigger got in here… like the Pineway Strangler. She picked up the little bottle of mouthwash from her goody bag of toiletries and unscrewed the top, prepared to splash it in the eyes of the intruder like it was burning holy water to fend off a vampire. Maybe it’s just a rat… a very large rat. She grabbed her union suit closer around her neck like that alone would save her life. One final glance in the mirror in case she might never see herself again, and she realized that maybe her appearance alone would be a better repellent than any weapon she
could yield, especially if it happened to be a rapist or serial killer in her room—she was looking mighty fugly tonight.
Catherine crept around the corner stealthily, her mouthwash at the ready, until she saw the shadow of an upturned wrench over her head. The mouthwash was quickly reduced to a harmless puddle on the carpet, dropped so she could cover her head with that arm and still protect her precious neck with the fabric of her bunched union suit.
“What the?” the intruder said.
“How’d you get in here?” she cried out, immediately recognizing that smooth, buttery voice.
“With the key,” Joel Trager answered, still holding the wrench in a decidedly threatening manner.
“But this is my room. I rented it.”
“Nice try. This place is closed for renovations.”
“I know. But the owner was kind enough to let me stay because there are no vacancies anywhere else.”
“Who’s the owner?” he quizzed her, not letting down his guard or the wrench.
“Mr. Stilman,” she said definitively. She couldn’t believe he would actually think her a liar-liar-pants-on-fire after everything he’d said recently.
He slowly lowered the wrench, eyeing her like he thought she might be diabolical.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me you’re the handyman here to fix my TV.” She motioned at the fuzz. When she’d mentioned the problem, Mr. Stilman had said he would look into it—one more thing he needed to do before opening anyway—but she certainly hadn’t expected same-day service and especially not nighttime service. She wondered what kind of chick flick movie plotline she had accidentally fallen into that her archenemy—the man who had made her life hell the last two days, who kept her trapped here with his ridiculous stubbornness, who forced her to come to this town in the first place—would work here.
“I’m not the handyman,” he said mockingly.
“Are you stalking me?”
His response was a short bursting laugh of disbelief. “Me stalking you? You’re the one who keeps showing up at my place uninvited.”
She thought about tonight, wondering if he had seen her on her most recent visit, but she pushed the thought aside so she could tell him all about himself. “And now you’re here in my place uninvited,” she stressed.
“It’s Stilman’s place,” he said dismissively.
“It’s mine until I leave.”
“And when will that be?”
“When you grow up,” she spat. He seemed amused and it stoked the fire of frustration inside her. “By the way, you still haven’t explained why the hell you’re here, and unless it’s that you’ve had a change of heart about my little business proposition, I think you can explain yourself to the police.” She nodded her head toward the phone.
He gave her a slow once-over that she swore burned right through her clothes, making her nipples harden under her arm that was still clutching the material of the union suit tightly. Her free hand, the scaredy-cat one that had dropped her loaded mouthwash, went to her face to stop her sliding glasses, her finger poking right through the missing lens. Oh my God, I’m a freaking mess. That’s what he’s looking at. He thinks I’m pitiful. Diseased.
Joel Trager cleared his throat and focused right on her uneven eyes, making her even more self-conscious than she’d been when they were wandering. “I happen to be a cabinetmaker and I was hired to do the cabinetry here. When I saw the lights on, I thought I might have left them on by accident. I was coming to turn them off.”
“How conscientious… and green of you,” she said sweetly, enjoying the jab after the obvious disdain he’d shown for her car. Two could play the patronizing game. In her head, though, she was thinking about how much she had admired the woodwork when she first saw the cabin, and that made her bristle with annoyance to think it was this asshole’s hands that had molded it. She opened her mouth to tell him to leave now that the confusion was cleared up, but the TV suddenly blared to life, filling the open space.
“Oh—ooh, yeah baby. Right there. Make me—make me—make me…. Yes! Oh YES!”
Joel Trager’s eyes first went to the TV and then back to her, taking in the whole package one more time—the wet and mangled bun, saggy red union suit, big red glasses framing her squinting eyes, no makeup. She was a train wreck without the porn soundtrack; with it she wanted to disappear into the floorboards.
“I wasn’t watching that,” she said quickly, stepping in front of the screen where the picture was all too clear now. Why? Why did I stop on that channel? she berated herself. Not that she had known what channel it was. It had been just one more number that called up harmless fuzz a few moments ago and for all the time she’d been in this hellhole so far.
“Oh, of course,” he said wickedly.
She pressed a button on the set behind her back, hoping it was the power, but the moaning only got louder. She pressed some more buttons, the sounds morphing out of bliss and into monotone sales pitches and cartoon voices and gun shots as the channels changed with increasing speed. Then she finally accessed the right button, cutting it off completely. And all the while Joel Trager kept his eyes on her, a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth.
Her heart was beating wildly with the exertion of trying to hold it together when nothing was going her way. There was no escape from this humiliation.
“Well, I guess I can go now that I know you’re a paid guest,” he said with complete satisfaction.
“Yes, I am,” she said, scraping together all the haughtiness she could muster. She grabbed her key off the top of the TV where she’d left it when she got back and dangled it in front of him as proof, just hard enough that it slipped through her fingers and onto the floor. She bent to pick it up and felt the breeze across her chest that told her the twins were out in the great wide open. She looked down into the massive, gaping neckline that was exposing her naked breasts right to him, righted herself quickly, and grabbed for the loose material that she had dropped in her embarrassment over the porn. Now she had taken her humiliation full circle, flashing him. Next she should streak through his yard or down Main Street.
“Well, goodnight Catherine Hemmings,” he said silkily. “I’ll leave you to your… dessert.” He motioned to the tray of mini-cupcakes on the nightstand, two sporting a single candle each. “Great show. I’d wait for the encore, but I think I’ll be able to sleep like a baby now.”
“Good riddance,” she choked out, the door closing on her words and hemming them in with her.
Wednesday
-24-
“Catherine?”
“What is it, Tara?” She knew she sounded irritable—but what state was there other than crabby at seven in the morning—a hard seven after a hard night.
“When are you coming back?”
She looked at her watch, as if the answer was so inconsequential she could read it in the hours and minutes ticking by, when in reality she had no friggin’ clue at this point. Not that Tara had any idea what was going on.
“Cat?” the voice prodded gently through the phone, the tone befitting someone talking a jumper off a ledge.
“What are you talking about? I took a week off from work. I’ll be back on Monday.” She forced certainty that was nowhere in her life right now.
“That’s not what I mean.”
A chill went down her spine. “When I’m done helping my parents.” It was more of a question, tossed out to test the life of the lie she had last used on her.
Silence greeted her on the other end, but Tara was not one for whom words were ever lost. It was a silence meant to flush out the truth. Somehow Catherine’s secret was out. Someone had tattled, and Georgia was the only one with the goods on her. She’d thought she would be safe considering Georgia and Tara talked through her or not at all. Obviously that theory was out the window.
“So?” Tara demanded impatiently.
“I don’t know, already. When I’m done,” she admitted, resigned. She ran her free hand t
hrough the rat’s nest that had come to rest on her head over night. She’d had little sleep again and she was really beginning to worry that her body was permanently curling in on itself from the confining pressures of the loveseat. She was already short; she couldn’t handle a stoop too.
“I heard you missed Josey’s birthday,” Tara said evenly.
Catherine was mute for a moment, hearing the trap her friend was laying and seeing no way to avoid it. “I—”
“How come I didn’t even know about Josey’s birthday?” There was a dark edge to Tara’s voice that she usually reserved for people she found piteously ignorant. “Or about Josey?”
“It’s not like that, Tara.” Catherine felt painfully ill-equipped to answer her questions.
“It’s not like what? I didn’t say it was like anything. I’m just asking.” She leveled her words low, where they would hurt the most.
“I just met you so long after—I don’t tell anyone…. It didn’t ever seem to fit in the conversation,” Catherine said helplessly.
“Over the last five years it never fit in any conversation?”
She bowed her head in shame, taking the blows through the phone like they were physically landing upon her.
“It hurts to think—”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Tara. I just never knew how to say it. Should I have brought it up at work or out at a bar—order an extra drink for my invisible dead little sister who never made it past six?” The words came out fresh and full of all the hurt and pain of loss she had harbored for over two decades.
“Listen, sweetie, we don’t think that this is healthy—”
Catherine shook her head in confusion; suddenly the voice coming through the line was completely wrong.
“We’re worried about you.” Her oldest, dearest friend’s voice blossomed again out of thin air.
“I have Georgia on 3-way,” Tara’s gruffer tone explained.
2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1) Page 16