Christmas By The Shore (A Winter To Remember #1)

Chapter 4

4

T hree Weeks Later

It was the week of Thanksgiving, and Catherine knew better than to call McKenzie and ask where her pages were. If her friend's general demeanor that November was any indication, she had been avoiding her book like it was the plague. McKenzie had been going out a lot, checking in less, and giving the impression that she thought her book advance would last her the rest of her life financially.

This is why Cat wasn’t shocked when McKenzie called the Monday before Thanksgiving and asked if she could crash the Anand family Thanksgiving dinner. Catherine didn’t always go to her parents’ Cape May home for the holiday but wanted to this year. She would only take Thursday and Friday off and make up for lost time over the weekend, but it would be good to see her mom and dad. She’d missed Christmas the year before, as well as most of the Hindu holidays that her dad still practiced.

“Yes, yes, you can come with me,” Catherine told McKenzie from her desk, where she’d already been working for an hour even though nobody else was in the building yet. “You know you’re always invited.”

“I assumed, but I wanted to make sure. There was a chance your parents were planning something different this year.”

“They never plan anything different,” said Cat. “They are creatures of habit. I was actually just about to call my mom and see what she needed me to bring. I’ll keep you posted.”

They hung up, and Cat promptly dialed her mother’s line. Her mother answered, her voice sounding far away. “Hi, sweetheart!”

“Mom, I can hardly hear you!” Catherine hated it when her mom put her on speaker and left the phone on the other side of the room. “Can you please not leave me on speaker?”

“One second, dear,” she said. “You caught me right in the middle of washing my hair. I just need to throw it up in a towel.”

“That’s fine,” Cat said. “But then will you hold the phone so I can actually hear you?”

A few seconds went by, then her mother’s voice came through the phone with perfect clarity. “Is this better?”

“Much. Thank you.”

“Good. How are things?”

“Things are fine. Work’s been busy, but that’s par for the course.”

“You’re in reading mode, are you not?”

Cat laughed. It warmed her heart that her mother knew the ebb and flow of her work as a publishing agent. “I am. Thanks for remembering. I’m done with all the cold calls, so now I’m working my way through the pile of books from authors we’ve worked with in the past.”

“Anything good so far?”

“Actually, yeah. There are a couple really good literary novels and a fantasy book that’s really taking some big risks. I’m a fan so far, but I’ll let you know when I finish it whether or not I think it’ll be published by SparkPlug.”

“You know how I love me some good fantasy. If only you were more open to breaking the rules and letting me read books that haven’t been published yet.”

“That wouldn’t be fair to the authors,” Cat said. “Though I have a stack of new books I’ll be bringing with me, advanced reader copies, so you really can’t complain.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, I’m calling to talk to you about Thanksgiving.”

Her mother groaned. “Oh my goodness, don’t even get me started. It’s not like I thought this trip was going to be simple, but I definitely didn’t realize it was going to be this involved. They sent a packing list and everything, not that we’ve even started on that.” She laughed. “I told him to get the suitcases out of the basement days ago, but of course he forgot, so now I have to drag them upstairs and hope to avoid the spiders.”

“Packing?” Cat frowned. “For what? Did you just say you were going on a trip?”

“Yeah, the cruise, remember?”

“Cruise? I don’t know anything about a cruise.”

Her mother paused a moment, then sighed angrily. “Did your father also forget to call you and let you know? That was another thing I asked him to do, but I should’ve double checked that he actually followed through! On Halloween, when he mentioned he was texting you, I said, ‘Don’t forget to tell Cat that we’re not going to be in town for the holidays this year,’ and he assured me he wouldn’t.”

“Wait—back up. So you two are going on a cruise? Over Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah,” she said excitedly. “We got a really good deal, and we’re going to see a bunch of countries that are on my bucket list.”

“When—when do you leave?”

“Tomorrow! And then we’ll be back on the second.”

“Of December?” Cat clarified.

“No, of January,” said her mom. “It’s a holiday cruise. It goes through Christmas and New Year’s as well. Isn’t that fun?”

“Wha—huh?” Catherine wasn’t sure what to say. Her parents had never gone out of town for the holidays like this, and while she wanted to be happy for them, she was also feeling a little left out all of a sudden.

“I said, doesn’t that sound fun? ” Her mom raised her voice, clearly thinking that it was some kind of bad connection that caused Catherine’s confusion.

“Oh–er. Yeah. No, totally.” She pushed some humor into her voice. “That sounds like a blast!”

“We thought so, too. I really wish your father would have mentioned it to you sooner, though. I hope you weren’t planning on coming home for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. We just sort of assumed, after the last few years, that you were going to be too busy with work anyway. Of course, if you were thinking about coming home, then we would perhaps?—”

“No, I wasn’t,” Catherine said before her mom had a chance to continue. She could tell that the woman was going to say she’d call the whole cruise off if Catherine wanted to come home and see them that holiday season, but Cat couldn’t let them do that, especially after missing so many years of spending quality time with them for really no good reason.

“Are you sure?” she prompted.

As much as it pained Catherine to admit, this was a fair assumption on her parents’ part. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been home for both of the major winter holidays at the same time. Plus, the fact that she often did a lot of work when she was in Cape May anyway, there was no reason for her parents not to think she would be busy.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said quickly, clearing her throat of emotion. “I am swamped, so it’s not a big deal. I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d make it back for Thanksgiving, but then McKenzie asked if she could come along, so I thought I would try to make it for her sake, but it looks like we’re just going to have to figure something out between the two of us.”

“Again, I’m sorry this is so last minute.”

“Really, it’s all good. A relief, actually. Now I don’t have to feel bad about working through the holiday.”

“There you go!” Her mom laughed. “That’s what I thought. Well, anyway, I’ll text you the details of our trip so you have them, and we’ll call you whenever we have service if that works.”

“Sure! Sounds good! Have fun!” Catherine knew her enthusiasm was coming off a little forced, but she couldn’t help it. She was glad when her mom jumped off the phone without further discussion of the trip, and she was left to her own devices. The disappointment she felt over not seeing her parents for Thanksgiving was stronger than she was expecting. Somehow, it was made worse by the fact that they had forgotten to tell her they were leaving.

If this had been any other year, Catherine possibly wouldn’t have found out about her parents’ departure until after they were already gone. She might not have called them to discuss Thanksgiving plans since she wasn’t planning on returning for dinner herself.

Am I a terrible daughter?

Her computer chirped with an incoming email, subject line URGENT.

Catherine was deeply relieved to have something else she could focus on. She opened the correspondence and dove into the chaos of one of her writers, who was causing a PR nightmare by insulting the Queen while overseas for his UK book tour. She wasn’t typically responsible for cleaning up these sorts of messes, but she was truly grateful for the distraction, so she told everyone she would put the fire out.

She then spent the rest of that day on the phone with various diplomats, British newspaper writers, and even someone low-level at the Palace who could help her ensure that the publishing house’s apology for the writer’s comments was read by the Royal Family.

It was exhilarating, and the thrill of having nipped a crisis in the bud made her feel like she was a young intern again. Back then, she had to think on her feet and never drop the ball because the world of publishing was highly competitive, and she wanted to make a name for herself early on.

Which is exactly what she did. And that’s what got her here, in a position that rarely entailed as much of this kind of work. She missed it a little and enjoyed the chance to show off her other skills besides finding good writers in a sea of untalented ones.

She was in such a good mood, in fact, that when McKenzie texted to see if she wanted to grab a beer after work—Catherine said yes.