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

BOOK: 2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series)
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2 Months ‘Til Mrs.

 

 

a
novel

by

 

Heather Muzik

 

 

 

(Book
Two in the 2 ‘Til series)

 

 

2 Months ‘Til Mrs.

© 2011 by Heather Muzik

www.HeatherMuzik.com

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner, nor stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, except for brief
quotations in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

 

This novel is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is coincidental and unintended.

 

Cover Illustration by Michelle Black

www.acoloraffair.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

To
CMH

 

 

 

Acknowledgments

 

 

I want to
thank all the early readers who gave
2 Days ‘Til Sundae
a whirl and then
hounded me for a sequel—here’s to you! Also… Kristie Worrell (
http://needcoffeeplease.blogspot.com
),
for your friendship and support; Michelle Black, for bringing Catherine to
color and life yet again—beautifully. To my most trusted and brutally honest
advisor, Margaret Moyle—it just keeps getting better. To my family: Jack,
Jaxon, and Dustin, for your
patience
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Freakin’ New Year

 

 

Friday, December 31
st

 

-1-

 

           

Catherine stood on the gray stone step, wondering if
this was truly, undeniably, indisputably, definitively what she had been
reduced to. Sure it was good enough for the start of her life, but the start of
her New Year? Was this really better than spending the night alone in her
apartment in New York watching Times Square on TV as if it were a world away
rather than a few subway stops? At least if she was alone she could wallow in
self-pity and curse Mother Nature all night… because certainly Mother Nature
deserved all the blame. If it hadn’t snowed she wouldn’t have completely,
royally screwed everything up.

But it
had
snowed. And because of that little
unforecasted treasure of precipitation, she was standing here at the brink of
no return. Turn back now, and another two-hour drive later she could have
Sweet
Home Alabama
queued up on the DVD player and a bottle of wine in hand to
keep her company through the night—the same little concoction that had gotten
her into this whole “love” mess in the first place; back when she was alone
enough, drunk enough, and desperate enough to believe that she could do what Reese
Witherspoon had already proven to be impossible: jet in and out of a small town
with no hitches and no troubles and leave with the exact thing she’d come for. So
naïve. Joel “Fynn” Trager of Nekoyah, Minnesota had turned her life upside down
with his buttery voice. She never had a chance.

So maybe this
was
the better bet, or at least
the safer one. Just one more step forward and she would land directly in
Elizabeth Hemmings’ New Year’s Eve prime rib with a heavy helping of her
specialty sides like judgment and criticism—
It’s a little far for a drop-in
Catherine Marie. To what do we owe this unexpected visit? A call would have
been nice. Well, it’s a good thing I always make plenty for leftovers—you know
how your father loves his leftovers. I guess he will just have to do without
this time.  Would you like an extra serving of mashed potatoes? You look like
you could use them. And there is lemon meringue pie for dessert… I made it for
Thanksgiving and Christmas and everyone loved it. This time it didn’t come out
quite as well, but you will just have to take my word for it since you weren’t
here to try the others. Speaking of holidays, I’m surprised you would bless us
with some of your time for New Year’s….

Catherine stared at the glossy black door that her
father faithfully unhinged and repainted like clockwork every two years. She
was torn. As soon as the door opened she would be sucked down the rabbit hole
into that world where everything was the same and yet skewed in a fun house kind
of way, proving you could never
really
go home again. Once you left it
behind everything shrank and distorted like that blouse she’d bought off the
sale rack at Saks last spring, wore once, spilled her cocktail on, and one trip
through the wash later it was more fitting to a troll’s figure. That’s exactly how
her hometown felt to her now—dumpy and misshapen.

Not that any of this was new. At thirty-four she knew exactly
what she was getting when she came back to Chesterton, but this time there
would be extra helpings of guilt and shame, seeing as how she’d been too “in
love” to go home for the holidays. And there would be questions, too, as she
entered hostile territory alone. Funny how the misgivings didn’t start until
she reached the front step. She’d had the whole drive during which to freak
out, change her mind, bang a U-be, and go back. To slink away now—her father
would be absolutely disgusted at the waste of gas at today’s prices!  

Don’t be such a baby, Catherine! Buck up! There’s
real food on the other side—
instead of the pink Hostess Sno Balls she’d
probably be eating otherwise.

She reached for the doorknob but stopped herself
before touching the metal. Even though it was the same door she had burst
through, snuck through, and been yelled at for slamming all the years of her
young life, she didn’t feel right just walking in. Not that ringing the bell or
knocking felt right either—

“Jeez!” Connor exclaimed, grabbing his heart like he
had a bum ticker. “What the hell?”

“Nice greeting,” she deadpanned, hiding her own shock as
the door swung open unexpectedly and her brother burst out at her like a
jack-in-the-box before her knuckles even grazed wood.

“I think I just crapped my pants,” he quipped.

“Even nicer,” she swooned with fake admiration.

“Man, you smell like shit… you sure you didn’t crap
your
pants?”

“It’s
look
like shit,” she admitted curtly,
knowing her faded yoga pants were good for wallowing only and looked the part.
“What are you suddenly the fashion police?” she jabbed back, wishing she’d
taken a moment to straighten up before coming. If it was obvious to her
clueless brother—

“No, it’s
smell
like shit,” he said pointedly.

Catherine tested the air lightly, trying not to let on
that she might possibly believe what he was saying since most of what he said
was a load of exactly the thing she was trying to sniff out. But there it was.
It did smell like shit. She looked down at her feet, lifting first one and then
the other.
Dammit!
In the glow of the porch lights she could see what
had been invisible when she cut across the dark lawn—another gift from Miss
Kitty, the ancient, half-blind basset hound next door. Another pair of shoes
ruined.
Another reason to use the walkway, Catherine Marie.

“Sweet!” he chuckled, seeing the smear of crap at the
same time she did.

“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked, kicking
off her shoes with more gusto than intended and sending them into the perfectly
manicured bushes.

“I was invited, duh,” he said simply.

If Connor was here then Lacey was most definitely
here, which meant the prized
first
and
only
grandchild was here. Her
stomach rolled uncomfortably. A night with her folks was one thing, but a
family reunion with her little brother and his wonderful little family—
I’d
rather be alone.

“Mom! Catherine came to crash the party!” Connor
yelled over his shoulder into the house before turning back to her and
growling, “Now move, bitch, I’m on a mission.” He pushed her aside and walked
out the door, his breath huffing out in front of him.

“Party?” she called after him. But he didn’t respond.
“Party?” she said again, quieter this time, rolling it around on her tongue
like a peculiar new food with an unpleasant texture. She peered warily inside
the house, careful not to cross the threshold. “Is that the Christmas tree?”
she asked out loud, perplexed by the twinkling glow she saw deep within.

“Yup,” Connor answered, trucking up behind her fast.
“Out of the way. Let me get these in the house before I freeze and Mom and
Lacey have a shit fit.” He shouldered past with several stacked platters of
decidedly party-like food.

“But it’s….” Catherine looked at her watch as if to
register the date that she already knew. “The tree can’t still be up! It’s
almost January!” she exclaimed weakly. The tree in the Hemmings household came
down by December twenty-sixth. Always. Elizabeth Hemmings liked to put the tree
up early and take it down early. The family joke was that the year would come
when it would be down before Christmas even arrived, and one year when
Catherine and Connor were particularly ornery teens, their mother had
threatened just that.

“Nary a needle, but it’s still there,” Connor refuted
right before disappearing from sight, down the hall and into the kitchen.

“A party?” she eked out again, feeling like Alice in
Wonderland—nothing made sense in this topsy-turvy world.

Suddenly there was a shriek from the kitchen. “Connor,
you stacked them?” It was Lacey, her tone intimating death and dismemberment to
come.

“I am but one man, an efficient man,” he said plainly.
Then there was silence followed by his own disbelief. “What? It’s butt-ass cold
out there!”

Catherine could just make out some unidentifiable
grumbling coming from the same direction, probably a lecture from Lacey about
the young ears in their midst. Both her sister-in-law and her best friend,
Georgia, had invoked the same ridiculous no-swearing policy since conceiving,
like a fetus could be born with a full vocabulary. And then they both had their
babies within days of each other earlier in December, both little girls, both with
four-letter names that started with “N”—first Georgia’s Nell and then Lacey’s Niki.
It was all perfectly putrifical or maybe it was putrescent, she didn’t really
care except that it made her gag involuntarily. Now her best friend was bosom
buddies with her stuffy-ass sister-in-law, the two sharing all their prenatal
and postnatal traumas and dramas and generally suffocating minutia of their experiences
like they were the only women to ever successfully breed before.

“You crushed the cookies with the deviled eggs and smooshed
the eggs with the mushrooms!” Lacey’s squeal echoed through the house and out
the door.

“But the mushrooms are perfect,” Connor pointed out
unhelpfully.

“Really, Connor.” Her mother’s voice this time.
“Didn’t I teach you better than that?”

She could hear the hustle and bustle within like Grand
Central Station.
A party? And they didn’t invite me? Or even mention it?
Righteous
indignation fueled her to cross the threshold into the foyer. No matter what her
mother might throw at her, this was beyond the pale. Perhaps Elizabeth Hemmings
believed leaving her daughter off the guest list was suitable punishment for
Catherine’s absence from all family-related events for the better part of the
past year. But she’d been in the pursuit of
love
! And wasn’t her mother
the one who was constantly reminding her in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that
she was getting older with each passing day? Did she really want her daughter
to follow in Cousin Constance’s footsteps—give up completely and enter the
nunnery at thirty-six? … Although Elizabeth Hemmings preferred the term
convent. Sure, her mother talked a big game that there was no shame in choosing
God as your main squeeze… but really, no grandchildren? Catherine liked to
believe that she still had hope, and the last eight months she’d been chasing a
dream—no one should fault her that, least of all her mother.

“I caught thirteen mangy kids sledding on my lawn this
morning.
Thirteen!
” The voice wafted like skunk scent from the depths of
the house.

Even Uncle Dick is here? On a holiday?
She
thought her father had drawn the line when it came to his wife’s predilection
for feeding strays. A day or two each week was begrudgingly acceptable, but no
holidays—widower or not. The neighborhood grinch was not going to ruin William
Hemmings’ prime rib feast.
What the hell is going on here?

She headed for the family room, intent on having a
look at the fabled New Year’s Eve Christmas tree for herself.

“Catherine!” her mother called out as she passed by
the kitchen doorway.

She stopped and backtracked, noting the slight uptick
in pitch of her mother’s voice—surprise at a level that wouldn’t even register
on most people’s surprise scale. “Hi, Mom. What’s going on?” she asked,
entering the kitchen and motioning at all the food, a slight cockiness in her
step to mask the utter disbelief in her heart. She felt royally screwed over.

“We’re having a New Year’s Eve party,” Elizabeth said,
as if it was completely obvious, which of course it was. But Catherine’s point
was that it was
shamefully
obvious and her mother was not reacting in
kind. She didn’t seem embarrassed in the least at being caught potholder-handed
with a cookie sheet full of hot hors d’oeuvres. 

“A party?” she asked innocently, her eyes trying to
pin her mother on the spot, but Elizabeth Hemmings was wily and quick, setting
the hors d’oeuvres on the stovetop, slipping off the oven mitt, and whipping
the dishtowel off her shoulder en route to the dish drainer, where she
immediately set to drying the dishes that were conveniently waiting there.
Catherine looked toward her brother and Lacey for corroboration, but they were deep
in a low-toned, lovers’ spat over the bite-size party foods Connor had
destroyed.

“We do entertain sometimes, Catherine,” she pointed
out blandly.

She looked at her mother dubiously. Sure they
entertained, but not parties. Not in a long time. “Did my invitation get lost
in the mail?” she prodded, still planning to make her point, hoping to put a chink
in the imperturbable surface of Elizabeth Hemmings’ personality. She wasn’t
going to be the bigger person—which served as another jab at her mother who had
always tried to teach her to be just that.

“Maybe in cyberspace—” Connor offered suddenly, their
fight over with nary a whimper.

“Mom made great e-vites,” Lacey gushed.

Mom.
Like they were equals in the family. Like
they
shared
her. Catherine didn’t like to share. Just ask her
kindergarten teacher, Miss Holmes—
Catherine is a wonderful student,
naturally inquisitive and excited to learn new things, but socially she has
trouble getting along with her classmates, won’t play nicely, won’t share with
others
. She never liked to share toys and games, why on earth would she
want to share her mother? No matter how hard her mother could be for her to
take, sharing was even worse. Lacey used to call her mother-in-law Elizabeth.
Their relationship had always been strained and distant and outlaw-ish.
Catherine had taken comfort in that. Niki had changed everything.

“Really? E-vites?” Catherine narrowed her eyes at
Lacey who most certainly had plenty to do with that effort considering her
mother had no marketable “e-skills” whatsoever. She was a “from scratch” type
of gal—no boxed mixes, no cell phone, no computer files—just her and a pantry
full of raw goods; a phone that plugged into a jack (though at least it was
cordless); and quality stationary that she covered with full sentences, using
full words, all meted out in perfect Palmer penmanship. Elizabeth Hemmings
hadn’t sunk to the level of even
touching
the internet once in her life
until Lacey got pregnant and started sniffing around her mother-in-law, getting
her on Facebook so she could be sure to have all the up-to-the-minute news
about the pregnancy and now the growth of her granddaughter. And last time
Catherine checked, her mother had more “friends” than she did! It was a
travesty!

BOOK: 2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series)
13.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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