2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (5 page)

Friday, November 17
^th

Quiet Riot blared from her purse, jolting the relative
peace of the cold morning.

“That’s Tara,” Cara announced, having heard that
ringtone enough.

“So it is,” Catherine said, trudging out the door in
her heavy boots and long winter coat, the cold biting at her uncovered hands. She
was juggling too much to chance a pair of mittens or gloves compromising her
grip.

One arm was cradled around the boxes of cupcakes she
had picked up the night before from the best bakery around. Two perfect
lavender boxes stacked and tied together like a gift of baked goods. She’d paid
a premium price for premium flavors, a selection that would dazzle kids and
parents alike—all gluten and peanut free, exceeding even Sophie Watts’s
expectations. Her other arm held the box FedEx had dropped off the night
before, the last of the party supplies, cornucopias she’d had shipped overnight
to use as goody bags filled with stickers and pencils and other approved
goodies that were currently stuffed in the bags hanging from her wrists. A
spark of genius that just might put all her naysayers to shame for good. Ideally
she would have already filled the goody bags by this point, but last night exhaustion
had overtaken her and Fynn had left her sleeping in his infinite husbandly
wisdom. She wouldn’t let that snag dampen her spirits though. She. Had. Rocked.
This. And she could easily stuff the cornucopias in the car before bringing
everything in to set up for the party. Plenty of time. Or she could throw old Sophie
Watts a bone and have her help make the goody bags just to hammer home the pure
awesomeness of her idea.

“Aren’t you gonna answer?” Cara asked.

“We have to get to school. I’ll call her back.”

“Promise?” Like it really mattered. Like maybe Tara
had gotten to her, working another angle altogether to force Catherine’s hand.

“Yes,” she sighed, trying to balance everything while
she finagled the key ring she’d hooked on her finger like a gaudy piece of
jewelry.

“I can do that,” Cara offered, reaching for it and
sliding the house key into the deadbolt to lock it.

“Thank you, sweetie.”

The music stopped suddenly and Catherine sighed in
relief, turning toward the car to find that Fynn had defrosted it completely
before he left to meet with a client. Without even being asked. Simply taking
care of her when she needed taking care of. So sweet.

“Stanley said that the Indians weren’t celebrating
with us on Thanksgiving,” Cara jabbered, hopping down the front steps one at a
time, her pompom on her hat hopping up and down with her. “He said they were
feeding us all that food to fatten us up so they could eat us over the winter
and not starve.”

“Stanley sounds like a douche,” Catherine said without
thinking.

“Mrs. Karnes gave him a book about the first
Thanksgiving to take home so he could learn more about it, but I think that he
doesn’t really care what happened.”

“What’s important is
you
know what happened,
and that you care about it.” She made her way gingerly down the steps,
sideways, thankful the snow they’d forecast hadn’t come through.

“I do. I think Thanksgiving is
wonderful
.” She
twirled toward the car.

“Well, let’s get to school and celebrate it then.”

Cara opened the back door and climbed in.

Quiet Riot started blaring anew and Catherine tried to
ignore it, but she knew that Tara would likely just keep calling. She set down
the boxes on the roof and reached for her phone.

 “Listen, Tara, I don’t have time right now. I’m
trying to take Cara to school and we’re running late.” The truth. She tossed
the bags and box of cornucopias on the passenger seat.

“Don’t be a pain. Just take me with you; you’re on
your cell.”

“I can’t even think straight let alone talk and drive at
the same time.” Another truth.

“Fine,” Tara relented. “But you better call me back. I
know where you live and you’ve ignored me long enough.”

“Speaking of which, do not leave messages on my
answering machine at home anymore.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you called me.”

“I’m serious, Tara. Not cool.”

“I’m serious too. It isn’t cool.”

“Fine,” Catherine relented, squeezing behind the
steering wheel.

“It’s a truce then.”

“Whatever,” she groused.

“Have fun, bitch. And call me back.” A firm warning
before hanging up. 

She should be happy that at least Tara still wanted to
talk to her after blowing her off as much as she had been. That was more than
she could say for Georgia, who hadn’t called to apologize since showing her holier-than-thou
side with Sophie Watts tendencies.

Catherine peered in the rearview mirror at Cara,
buckled safely in the backseat, reminding herself what mattered most. “Ready to
hit the road?”

“Yup. I think this is going to be the best party
ever!”

No pressure there.

“So… how’re my girls?” Fynn asked, meeting them in the
driveway as they got out of the car.

“Great! Look what I got!” Cara crowed, holding up her
hand proudly.

“What are—”

“Turkey claws! Aren’t they cool? Cat has a whole box
of them in the car!”

Fynn turned to Catherine, who gave him a blank stare
of disbelief, like Cara was completely crazy and there was no such thing in her
car, which there wouldn’t have been if she had been smart enough to ditch it in
the woods on the side of the road.

She felt like she’d been through the wringer and back
again, beaten into submission by a bunch of first graders and their helicopter
moms.  A long day she would like to forget. And it was only a half day at that.
Plenty of day left and all she wanted to do was go upstairs and crawl into bed.
They could wake her up next Thursday. For Thanksgiving.

“And I didn’t forget any of my lines either. Which I
was afraid I might do just like Cat forgot the cupcakes on the roof. But she
says it wasn’t littering because they’re biograble.”

“Biodegradable?” Fynn offered.

“Yup. But the animals probably ate them anyway. I hope
it was the chipmunks because I like chipmunks the best. Better even than
squirrels. Anyway, that’s what I told Mrs. Karnes. I said we were feeding the
animals and that’s why we were late to school.” She stopped then to flutter her
eyelashes at Catherine in a sweet but misguided attempt to wink. “It was a good
excuse. She never suspected a thing.”

“Were you mainlining sugar today?” he chuckled.

Cara’s face screwed up in confusion.

“Eat lots of good treats?” he clarified.

“Yeah! Cat got donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. I had
a half dozen. That’s what six is, right?” Cara asked, tugging on Catherine’s
coat with her clawed hand.

“Six?” Fynn looked to his wife who’d had a fit when he
allowed Cara to eat as much candy as she wanted on Halloween night because it
was a special occasion. One that ended with Catherine up all night tending to
Cara’s bellyache.

“They weren’t that big,” she asserted quickly.

“But they weren’t just the holes because those were little
nutballs, right Cat?” Cara giggled. “And Johnny is alleged.”

“Allergic?” Fynn asked.

Cara nodded.

Catherine caught Fynn’s eye, wanting to circle her
finger next to her head like it was all just crazy talk.

“I think donuts were even better than the cupcakes
would have been. Nobody brings donuts to school. It’s always cupcakes,
cupcakes, cupcakes.” Cara rolled her eyes. “Or cookies sometimes—ooh, next time
we should bring pie!”

“Wow, now there’s an idea,” Fynn smirked.

“It was a perfect day!” Cara sang. “Too bad Stanley
didn’t remember anything right, though. That darn rabbit.”

Fynn looked to Catherine questioningly, as if that had
something to do with her too—maybe it was her illegitimate rabbit, since he
seemed to sound an awful lot like her.

“Stanley Wright. The rabbit. In the play,” she yawned,
partly out of pure tiredness and partly to dramatize that tiredness so maybe he
wouldn’t delve much deeper and unearth every last humiliation. Catherine didn’t
want to talk about it. At. All.

“He never said anything, just chased the carrots
around, trying to eat them like a douche,” Cara said plainly.

Catherine cringed. She’d hoped that little word had
gone unnoticed this morning. But of course it was right there, filed away for
later. Used properly, at least, she noted. That aside, she really needed to learn
to keep her adult opinions to herself.

“Sounds like a rabid bunny,” Fynn said wryly.

“That wasn’t part of the play,” Cara assured him. “Just
like having two carrots wasn’t part of the play. But then Magnus got hungry, so
what can you do?”

“What can you do?” he asked, turning to Catherine for
the answer.

Good grief.
That pretty much said it all. She
felt a lot like Charlie Brown when he messed up everything by buying a twig
instead of a Christmas tree for the nativity play. Just Catherine Marie and
Chuck. Classic losers.

Suddenly Cara decided she was done, taking off up the
front steps and into the house where Magnus met her at the door, and she warned
him in no uncertain terms that she was
not
food.

“Douche?” Fynn challenged.

“I know. I know. Not what you want a six-year-old girl
calling people.”

“Did she learn that from Tara?”

Catherine almost agreed, selling her friend down the
river since it was just the type of thing Tara would do and she wasn’t here to
defend herself. An easy out. She bit guiltily at her lip. “Little ears hear
everything,” she eked out.

“Please promise me that the first word out of
that
one’s
mouth isn’t going to be douche or something worse.”

She pffted. “You know I’ve been really careful ever
since Cara got here. It was just a little slip. It was a… day,” she sighed,
refusing to describe that which was indescribably awful. She made for the porch
steps and the front door and the comfort of a warm home inside.

“So, are you going to fess up or do I have to wait for
the evening news to find out what went down?” he asked from behind.

She stopped midstep, turned back to him. “Are you ever
going to let that go?” Yes, she’d made the news before as one of three
unidentified females who’d crashed the annual jigsaw convention a few towns
over. Big deal. Nothing ever came of it. And Georgia and Tara were just as
guilty—actually, Tara was guiltiest.

Fynn picked something up off the ground. One of the
claws Cara had been wearing on her finger that must have fallen off in her
haste to move on to her next adventure. He looked it over. “What is this… some
kind of—”

“It’s a cornucopia. A teeny, tiny horn of plenty,”
Catherine grumbled, head down in defeat.

“What is it for?”

“The ‘gift bags’.” Using angry air quotes.

“Oh yeah, no treats allowed,” he smirked about the
rule.

“No. Those
are
the gift bags. I was going to
stuff them with all the party favors, prove I was room mother material and clear
my good name…. They were supposed to be bigger. At least they looked bigger
online.”

A smile played at the corners of Fynn’s mouth.

“It isn’t funny. It was humiliating. I opened it right
in front of Sophie Watts! A gross of them!”

“Why did you wait until you got to school?”

“They just came last night. And I was tired. And
you
let me sleep.”

“This is my fault now?”

“I’m just saying that the kids ended up with ghetto
bags, the brown lunch bags I brought for them to make puppets during the party.”
She felt the tears even before she knew she was crying. “And all those parents
think that I actually
planned
for the goody bags to be like that.
Another show of Catherine Marie’s half-assery.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“It
was
bad. Since I used the bags, we couldn’t
make puppets so Sophie Watts stepped in and ‘saved the day’ with her extra craft
supplies that she carries with her everywhere in a rolling suitcase. Just in
case someone screws up. Namely me. It was
unbelievable
…. And do you know
that she had lemonade in her trunk too?”

“In her craft case?”

“In her
trunk
, Fynn. Her car. Jugs of the
stuff. Ready to serve. She offered it up to me like a thousand sharp daggers
dipped in saccharine. I would have rather they all went thirsty than drink her
crummy in-case-Cat-fucks-up lemonade.”

“What?”

She stopped, realizing what she’d said. “I forgot to
get drinks,” she mumbled. “And cups.”

“Sounds like—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?”

“Tell me that Sophie Watts is not the enemy. She is,
Fynn. I know it. She might just be the Antichrist, or at the very least she’s
Martha Stewart’s evil clone. She has everyone else snowed, but I can see right
through her.”

“I was going to say that it sounds like you had a rough
day.” He stepped up to her and folded her into a hug. “And I’m not even going
to ask about the cupcakes.”

“Please don’t.
That
is all Tara’s fault anyway.”

“Tara?”

“It turns out that even from a distance she can screw
everything up,” she grumbled against his chest. Because the cupcakes would
never have been lost if she hadn’t had to put everything down to get out her
phone because Tara was calling and hanging up and calling again and she had—to—stop—the—noise.

“Do I want to know why Cara is preoccupied by Magnus’s
eating habits?”

“Probably not.”

“You sure?”

Catherine heaved a sigh, knowing it would come out
eventually. Too many people knew. Not the least of which being Drew. “I forgot
about Cara’s turnip costume. I remembered last night and rather than try to rig
something up I called Drew. She happened to have a carrot costume left over
from when Lyle was a carrot for Mrs. Karnes. Anyway, I didn’t want Cara to know
I forgot about her so I told her that Magnus ate the turnip.”

“You blamed the dog?”

“I’m not proud of it,” she assured him.