2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Now that’s a fireplace,” William Hemmings said
appreciatively, sitting back on the couch while Fynn tended the fire within.
“None of that flick-of-the-switch, gas-insert crap. A genuine masonry
fireplace.” Like it was a gold mine with unlimited value.

“Don’t mind him,” her mother brushed him off. “Your
father has taken to watching HGTV like it’s the Sunday Ticket, rooting against
the DIYers and designers and hopeless home buyers.”

“Elizabeth, they are breaking out brick hearths.
Brick!” A bark of disbelief, like the word alone explained the travesty. “All
to put in sleek and shiny glass tiles. Or dry-walling over all of it and
painting it with an ‘accent color’. They’re removing all the character.
Sterilizing everything.”

“Brick is a classic,” Fynn concurred.

“Exactly. It’s rough-and-tumble. It’s got texture and
strength. Material for a man’s man. But instead they’re selling everyone on
what’s prissy and clean and smooth. They’re manscaping our fireplaces now”

Catherine choked on her hot chocolate. She would have
bet her life that word would never cross her father’s lips. Ever.

“What’s manscaping?” Cara asked, seeming only
half-interested as she played with Caramellie, the tiny doll that started this
family, bringing Catherine to Minnesota to meet Fynn. And now she was a wife
and a mother and there were even more tiny dolls around, Caramellie’s friends
who lived in their own sundaes or sandwich cookie houses, all tracked down on
eBay for Cara’s birthday without any drama, furthering the theory that
Catherine’s quest for Caramellie had been kismet.

“Emasculating men,” Pop-Pop offered unhelpfully.

“Isn’t that like Jesus?” Cara asked.

Catherine looked to Fynn for help.

“An emasculating concession,” Cara insisted. “Garrett
told me. And he’s Joseph in the nativity play at their church so I think he
knows.”

“Jesus is an
immaculate
conception,” Gramma
Lizzy corrected. “God’s gift to the world, through Joseph’s wife Mary.”

Catherine gulped, realizing that now the church thing
was on the table, and they simply hadn’t decided where to go with that yet.
Would they or wouldn’t they? What would Renée have wanted them to do to guide
Cara spiritually? She could feel the weight of her own mother’s eyes upon her.

“I’m just tired of everyone wanting everything to be
modern and sleek and
easy
. Life isn’t supposed to be easy; it breeds
weakness,” William Hemmings said, picking up where he’d left off and saving his
daughter from the weight of a spiritual breakdown as well as an inappropriate
discussion about male body hair or the lack thereof. “That’s what’s wrong with
people today; they don’t want to have to lift more than a finger. Don’t want to
have to get up off their asses for anything. It all went to pot when they made
remote controllers for the TV. That whole industry has singlehandedly enabled a
whole generation of couch potatoes.”

“I know what that is!” Cara crowed. “Cat calls me that
on Saturdays when I’m watching my shows.”

“And she’s right,” Fynn said, getting up from his
crouch at the fire and tickling her on the way by.

She giggled.

“Mr. Hemmings, should I remind you why you started watching
HGTV in the first place?” Elizabeth prodded. “I believe you couldn’t find the
remote for the TV and weren’t going to get up and look for it.”

“You’re the one who put the remote away. Who does
that?” He turned to Fynn for support, but Catherine noticed her husband kept
his focus elsewhere, not wanting anything to do with coming between his
in-laws.

“Smart man,” William said appreciatively, even though
he was being left to hang alone. “He knows not to get on your bad side,
Elizabeth. He’ll do just fine in this family.”

Catherine smiled at the compliment, loving that Fynn
was being received so well into the fold. So well, in fact, she had a sneaking
suspicion that if her parents had to choose between him and her as being part
of their family, they would choose him.

“All I’m saying is that this generation is soft and
each one is getting softer. Pretty soon people will want to be able to go through
life without getting out of bed at all in the morning.”

“That’s a little drastic, William.”

“No, Elizabeth, that day is coming. Mark my words.”

“Oh, I’ll mark them alright,” she chuckled.

“And tell me, I know all you kids are into that zombie
apocalypse mumbo jumbo, but if that ever actually happened, you people do
realize that a gas fireplace would be useless, right? Someone has to be there
to provide the power. You can’t tap your own gas, but you can harvest wood with
some will and an ax.” He gestured toward the glowing fire, “This here will
still keep your family warm at night when the infrastructure collapses, while all
those people who want convenient “pretty” fires are going to be screwed when
the zombies take over.”

“Zombies are going to take over?” Cara asked, eyes
wide, crawling up on the couch and snuggling in between Catherine and Gramma
Lizzy. “Like on TV?”

“What do you know about zombies?” Catherine asked.

“Garrett watches them on TV all the time.”

The joys of having an older “worldly” cousin around.
She made a mental note to chat with Drew about what he shared with Cara.

“Oh, William, there are no such things as zombies.” Gramma
Lizzy wrapped a reassuring arm around Cara, kindling a jolt of jealousy that
shot through Catherine at not being first to comfort her, like it was a
mothering competition—point goes to Elizabeth Hemmings.

“I’m just saying that it’s something to think about.
And I for one am happy to know that my daughter has a sensible fireplace in her
house.”

“I think it’s about time
you
went to bed,” Fynn
said to Cara.

“Aw, do I have to?”

“It’s a school night, remember?” Catherine prodded.

“Well, I guess some things always stay the same—kids
and bedtime,” Elizabeth said wistfully.

“But what are Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop going to do all
day without me?” Cara asked in all seriousness.

“I think I will spend the day crying my eyes out,” William
joked.

“Don’t worry, Pop-Pop, Magnus can keep you company.”

“That big galoot dog of yours?”  

“Galoot. That’s a neat name,” Cara giggled.

“It’s not really a name,” Catherine said.

“It can be. Anything can be. I told you there’s a boy
named Branch Hornton on my bus.”

“Somebody named their kid Branch?” William Hemmings
asked in disbelief.

“Seems so.” Fynn shook his head at the sad state of
affairs.

“Why? Does he look like a Branch?” Pop-Pop offered.

Cara burst out in guffaws.

“What is the world coming to? Gone are the days when names
were names and things were things,” he said sadly.

“Like your Aunt Rose?” Elizabeth challenged.

“You know what I mean, Elizabeth. The way parents are
going now, there will be entire classrooms filled with kids named Waffle and
Celery and Carpet and Nail. Going to hell in a handbasket, we are.”

“The thing I don’t like is all the boys’ names that
people are coopting for girls. Like there aren’t enough girls’ names out there
already,” Fynn pointed out.

William gave a crisp nod. Men sticking together for
male rights to keep masculine names. “Although they probably want us to start
naming boys Rhonda and Christy. Shared names. Just like they want boys and
girls to share bathrooms in public.”

“Your father has more time on his hands than he used
to. More time to fester,” Elizabeth explained away her husband.

“I’m not festering.”

Catherine had never heard her father have so many
opinions about anything before. He’d always been a man of few words. And her
mother was mostly sighs and pointed looks and clichés. Quiet folk, she’d
thought.    

“So, what are you two thinking about for names?” her
mother prompted, segueing away from her husband’s views of the world at large.

“We haven’t come to terms,” Fynn said diplomatically.

In fact, they had argued a good bit about names. Catherine
nixed almost everything that had come down the pike, claiming bad connotations
with people she’d known; Fynn asserted that she was just trying to be difficult
and that no one could possibly know
that many
people; she claimed it was
perfectly possible to know
that many
people if you didn’t live under a
rock; he said that this way they were going to end up with a Blank Trager until
the baby was eighteen and could pick his or her own name; she said Blank wasn’t
actually a bad name; he countered, ‘Blank’ as in an empty space, not a name… and
so went their vicious little cycle. So, no, they hadn’t come to terms.

She was trying her best to show no bias either way,
shooting down names on both ends of the gender spectrum, even though the boys’
side was a futile endeavor. She acted like she cared, trying to keep the
charade afloat, all the while coveting the name Eve as if they were opposing
counsel in naming court, each with a limited number of refusals at their
disposal. If Fynn shot Eve down after all the time she had spent imagining
their future with her, it would be devastating.

“Just so long as it truly is a name,” William said.

“
Not
Blank,” Fynn pointed out meaningfully.

“Unless he looks like a Blank,” Cara quipped with a
giggle, floating on the edges of the conversation.

“Do you know what you’re having?” Elizabeth Hemmings’
gaze was a laser-guided lie detector.

“We’re waiting, remember?” she said, as if she and
Fynn were two oblivious peas in a pod.

“Only so many wonders left in the world,” he agreed.

“Oh, I forgot, I made something for Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop.”
Cara hopped off the couch and ran to the hall closet where her backpack was
hanging on a hook inside.

They could hear zippers unzipping and papers rustling,
and when she reappeared her hair was standing up in a staticky mess from
rubbing up under the coats in the closet. “It’s a present. For Christmas.” She
marched toward them, holding out a bundle of newspaper. “Since you won’t be
here.”

“But we were going to exchange presents and have a
mini-Christmas before they leave,” Catherine reminded her.

“I know, but I want them to have this one now.” She
climbed back up next to Gramma Lizzy on the couch and set the bundle in her
lap.

Elizabeth cradled it carefully in her hands like it
was a living thing so delicate and beautiful that you feared making any sudden
movement.

“You heard the girl, Elizabeth, open it,” William
prodded.

She peeled back the paper to expose a purple ball
ornament with white snowmen painted around its circumference. Elizabeth picked
it up by the red ribbon affixed to its top and held it aloft for everyone to
see, rubbing at the corner of her eye with the other hand.

“It matches our purple-y tree, and you can hang it up while
you’re here and then take it home to your tree.”

“That’s a great idea,” Fynn said, filling the silence
that had settled over the room.

“And the snowmen are my fingers,” she added. “We got
to put our hands in the paint and everything, and then we pressed them on the
ball, like when the police do fingerprints. There is a snowman for each of us: me,
Magnus, Fynn, Cat, the baby, Gramma Lizzy, Pop-Pop....” She pointed at each in
turn. “And that super tiny one isn’t a mistake like Stanley says. That’s Jimmy.
I made him with just the tip of my pinky because mice are tiny. I would have
made one of my mommy too, but she isn’t a snowman anymore. She’s a snow angel.”

Gramma Lizzy gathered Cara up in a one-armed hug and
kissed her cheek, words seemingly beyond her.

“Are you sure you can’t stay for Christmas?” Cara asked,
squinching her eyes and cocking her head.

“They have plans for Christmas with my brother and his
wife,” Catherine interjected.

“Another aunt and uncle?” Cara asked hopefully.

“Yes. Uncle Connor and Aunt Lacey,” Gramma Lizzy said
as if she had never been struck silent. She got up, hanging the ornament in a
prominent spot on the tree.

“Do they have any kids?”

Gramma Lizzy nodded. “A baby daughter named Niki.”

“Would that make her my cousin?”

Fynn nodded. “Just like Garret and Lyle and Jake.”

 Why don’t they come here?” Naively believing the more,
the merrier.

“Because they have family there,” Catherine explained.

“We’re family,” Cara asserted, seeing no difference.

“But they have more family. Lacey’s family.”

“Oh, the in-laws.” A grim nod that made Pop-Pop guffaw
out loud.

“I guess you’ve been talking about us, eh, Fynn?” he
said good-naturedly.

“It’s not what you think,” Catherine cut in. “We have
been trying to explain how the whole family…uh… works. Who is who and how
people are related to each other.”

“And that in-laws are more like outlaws? You’d rather
have them out of town rather than causing trouble in it?”

“Dad, it isn’t like that.”

“No, it’s fine. Everyone goes through it. I just
thought me and Fynn were getting along great.”

“We are, sir,” Fynn said quickly, reverting to a
teenage boy caught making out with the man’s daughter on the man’s couch.

“Oh William, stop playing with him,” Elizabeth chided.

He chuckled.

“And thank you, Cara, for such a lovely gift. So much
thought went into that and we will treasure it.”

“Yeah, come over here, you little noodlebug, and give Pop-Pop
a big hug.”

Cara happily obliged and then turned to Catherine and
Fynn. “Can Gramma Lizzy and Pop-Pop tuck me in?” She had her hands steepled
before her, pleading.

“Well…” Catherine drew out the word. “… I guess.” She
put on a smile but she was actually feeling a bit squeezed out. Since the
moment Cara had gotten off the bus home from school she had been all over Gramma
Lizzy and Pop-Pop—wanted to sit between them at dinner—wanted Gramma Lizzy to
help her pick out her pajamas—wanted Pop-Pop to help her with her homework. The
same parents that were giving Catherine conniption fits by being here were
becoming Cara’s best friends.