Snow Going Back

Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Kate’s run of bad luck had unfortunately not quite been over. She hadn’t noticed the gentle slope of the road leading up to the house the day before, when the snow had still been settling, and on her way out she’d felt too fuzzy to give it much thought. But she’d realised the moment she’d seen it on her return that she wouldn’t get the car back up. She tried anyway, but no matter what she did, it just slipped casually from side to side as soon as it hit the slope. After fifteen minutes of attempts, Kate had given up and parked on the side of the road, then walked the rest of the way, regretting some of the heavier items in her shopping bags.

After a well-earned hot chocolate topped with a gravity-defying mountain of mini-marshmallows, Kate had succumbed to her cold-induced lethargy and simply curled up with a blanket in a cosy chair beside a window overlooking the garden. She’d watched the snow fall slowly to the ground, each flake carrying another whisper of that special magic that only snow can bring to the world. And in the peaceful silence Kate felt herself finally relax into an unfamiliar state of complete calm.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, the snow had stopped and the sky had turned a deep inky blue, devoid of sun or snow cloud. Somehow, she’d slept away the entire afternoon, and although she knew she could easily continue through the whole night, too, she did feel considerably more energised than she had. There were several missed calls and messages from her mother, the messages filled with links to different wedding articles and services. Kate debated sending a quick reply to say she’d call tomorrow, but knowing Eleanor would ignore that and take the fact Kate was beside her phone as an invitation to call straight back, she decided against it.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bedroom, Kate laid out three sheets of paper in front of her. There wasn’t an awful lot of information to take in just yet, but they were a starting point. She picked up the first one and studied it thoughtfully. Erica had managed to pull a fair amount of information from Aubrey Rowlings’s social media profiles. Aubrey was thirty-two, a college dropout who’d gone through a string of jobs, never lasting more than a year, other than at Coreaux Roots. Aubrey had been there for just over three years.

Though the rest of Erica’s findings were of no use legally, they still gave Kate some insight into who she was dealing with. Aubrey’s online persona showed her living the sort of lifestyle Kate imagined might befit a mediocre motel heiress. Not quite the private jets and yacht summers the Hiltons could afford, but the champagne flowed freely and the Chanel was pointedly placed in every regally posed selfie.

It was clear though, when Kate read further, that this was all a facade. Aubrey rented a one-bedroom apartment in a very average part of town and earned only a modest wage. All in all, she appeared to be more interested in faking appearances than actually working for anything.

According to Aubrey, Cora had been grooming her to take over and become the sole leader of Coreaux Roots. But unless there was a lot she was missing from this picture, Kate couldn’t see why Cora and William would want to hand their beloved company to Aubrey.

Placing the profile back down, Kate picked up the one beside it. Evelyn McEwan was Aubrey’s grandmother, Cora’s sister and a failed actress who had, when the sporadic small-time roles she occasionally won dwindled to nothing, written and self-published an equally unsuccessful book titled Me, Myself & the Flickering Spotlight of Hollywood .

Evelyn hadn’t properly worked a day in her life from what Kate could tell. But she’d still been busy. She’d had one daughter with her husband, Fred, who’d died ten years before. Since then, Cora had been paying Evelyn’s rent and living costs through a monthly stipend.

Evelyn claimed to have a letter from Cora expressing that she should be given the house, along with a fifty per cent share of the company – but that she didn’t need to actually run the company. That she was to become a silent partner and live out the rest of her days in comfort from the income. This seemed as suspicious to Kate as Aubrey’s claims, from what she knew about William and Cora so far.

Moving on to the last of the three, Kate read the few sparse lines of information that had been available on Edward, William’s brother. There was no photo, as he had no online presence for Erica to search through. All they knew was that he was twelve years William’s junior and ran a small news press a few towns over. Public records showed that he had a son living in Australia, but that was it.

Edward had sent one short correspondence to the office, expressing that he wished to lay claim to the company and other assets in full. He claimed it was his duty to ensure Coreaux Roots survived, as the only blood relative who understood what it took to run a company and to protect it from those who would run it into the ground. That he owed this to his brother’s memory.

Kate let the paper drop to the floor. All three had requested a meeting with her, but she’d asked Erica to field them for now until she could get a better overview on things. Ideally, she wanted to figure out how close William and Cora had been to each of them first. And where better to do that than right here?

Photos, lovingly saved birthday cards, frequent plans in old diaries. Those would be pretty good indicators. She just had to figure out where to find them.

Kate twisted round and grabbed the second steaming cup of cocoa she’d made herself today, from the bedside table. She blew on it gently, breathing in the sweet, comforting smell as she looked around the room. This room wasn’t quite as modern as the other rooms in the house. The salmon-pink walls, frilly cream curtains and bedspread, and the lace doilies on the bedside tables all told tales of a very different time. But something about the room had drawn her in. Perhaps it was because it was the one room she could actually get a sense of Cora in. The desk in the corner had an old sewing machine out on top, the case open and a tub of cotton reels left beside it. The scissors were out, too, slightly open, as though Cora had been midway through using them and had meant to come back.

Kate had thought about tidying the desk to work at, but she couldn’t bring herself to move any of it. It seemed wrong somehow, like she’d be removing the last living traces of Cora. She stared at it now, imagining the old lady she’d seen in many photos around the house, sitting there, threading the needle.

Her phone rang, and the sudden interruption made her jump, hot cocoa splashing over the rim of her mug and down her front.

‘Ouch! Ugh , great…’ Kate stared down at the brown stain on the front of her green button-up pyjamas with a look of tired annoyance, before reaching for the phone. She closed her eyes and debated ignoring it again but then reluctantly answered, knowing she would only be delaying the inevitable. ‘Hi, Mum.’ She leaned back against the bed and pulled up her knees.

‘ Finally !’ Eleanor exclaimed accusingly. ‘So your phone is working and you are alive then, Katherine?’

‘Yep,’ she replied. ‘It would seem so. How are you?’

‘ Don’t you how-are-you me , young lady !’ Eleanor replied indignantly. ‘I’ve been worried sick !’

Kate instantly felt guilty. ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m fine though, honestly.’

Eleanor tutted impatiently. ‘I know you’re fine, Katherine. I’m not worried about you . I’m worried about this absurd idea of you working from another continent when you need to be at home planning your wedding !’

Kate pressed her lips together in a long thin line and shook her head.

‘Katherine? Did you hear me?’ Eleanor demanded.

‘I did,’ Kate replied wryly. ‘You’ve spoken to Lance then?’

‘Of course I have,’ Eleanor replied. ‘I wanted to make sure he was OK, poor boy. He put so much into that amazing proposal and then you swan off halfway across the world the very next day! Honestly, Katherine, what is the matter with you?’

The six-inch tall doppelganger devil who Kate liked to imagine lived on her shoulder from time to time poofed to life. It nudged her neck and whispered a wickedly tempting response into her ear, but her angel counterpart appeared on the other shoulder just in time and leaped across with a well-aimed rugby tackle. As her two fantastical mini-mes fell away, Kate simply sighed.

‘I have to say, I’m amazed the man still wants to marry you at all , the way you’ve been acting,’ Eleanor continued.

Kate’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I mean , Katherine, the way you’ve been acting since the moment he popped the question hasn’t been very nice,’ Eleanor replied, her tone still huffy. ‘You think you hide it well, but you don’t . At least not from me . I know you better than you think I do, you know.’ There was a pause as she sighed. ‘I know you aren’t a fan of surprises. You never have been, but you spent all day looking like you’d rather have been anywhere else. And you covered it well enough. Luckily, men don’t tend to notice anything that’s not spelled out for them in black and white, in my experience. But Lance will notice that his future wife is so uninterested in her wedding that she’s run halfway across the world.’

Kate rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m not running away from anything, Mum. I’m legally obliged to be here, and it’s bound into a very specific contract that it has to be me.’ It wasn’t a total lie. ‘If I could have avoided this, I would have. I’ve looked for any possible way out, but there just isn’t one.’

‘Hmm,’ Eleanor mused. ‘Send the contract over to me. I’ll give it a look over, see if I can find anything.’

Kate had to pull the phone away as the little devil began to scramble back up.

You are not a lawyer! she silently mouthed at the screen. Then, taking a deep calming breath, she put the phone back up to her ear.

‘… because there could be something in that, Katherine – that’s the sort of thing people often overlook.’

‘Mm,’ she mumbled noncommittally. ‘Anyway, look, I’ll be back as much as I can between now and the wedding. I’m just so glad I have you and Amy back there to hold the fort.’ She dangled the bait and waited.

Eleanor sniffed. ‘Well, yes. You do have us.’ Her tone brightened. ‘And I’ve had some utterly brilliant ideas, even if I do say so myself. I think I have a bit of a knack for this, actually. Small or not, I can promise you now, with all I have planned, your wedding is going to be absolutely spectacular. It really is. You should see the design boards I’ve had made up. They should be coming back from the printer first thing in the morning, just in time for the first meeting tomorrow. I called the girls to arms the moment I heard about all this, so don’t worry. Mother has it all under control.’

Eleanor’s words sent a little ripple of dread through Kate’s middle. The devil cringed and the angel twisted her clasped hands with a worried grimace.

‘Right,’ she managed, her tone sounding much calmer than she felt. ‘Well, um, I actually need to go now, Mum.’ She put Eleanor on loudspeaker and sent a frantic SOS text to Amy. ‘And you probably need to go, too, I imagine. It’s past three in the morning there.’

Anyone else calling at this time would have surprised her, but this was Eleanor. A woman more stubborn than a hundred mules could ever hope to be collectively. After Kate had ignored her calls, she’d probably set an alarm to try again now.

‘Yes, I probably should sleep. There’s a lot to do tomorrow.’

There was a short pause.

‘You know, you’re a beautiful girl when you show it, Katherine. You know, when you don’t have your hair up in that horrible bun or wash yourself out with one of those awful grey suits. You work hard, you’re interesting and you’re clever . Really clever. All in all, you have a lot to offer the world. To offer a partner.’

Kate squeezed her gaze with a suspicious frown. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said cautiously.

‘You truly dazzle , Katherine,’ Eleanor said simply.

Kate glanced at the screen to double-check it was actually her mother on the end of the line. Apparently it was.

‘But there’s one advantage you don’t have and never will,’ Eleanor continued.

Ah, here it comes , Kate thought with resigned amusement.

‘You’re not a man . Men have the luxury of time . When they hit forty, their looks just get better. Fifty? They call them silver foxes. Do you know what they call us?’

‘Silver cats?’ Kate quipped.

‘No, darling, and your sense of humour won’t help you then, either,’ Eleanor replied. ‘What I’m getting at is that while men look better with age, we do not. You’re at your peak, Katherine. Forty is around the corner, and I can assure you, if you found yourself back on the single line again then, you wouldn’t land another Lance.’

Kate let out a burst of laughter. ‘Wow, OK. Thanks, Mum!’

‘You’ll still look good for your age, but you’ll be tired around the edges,’ Eleanor continued, ignoring her. ‘You’ll be labelled – wrong as it will feel – as being the woman who chose a career over having a family. Past her sell-by date for any man shopping for one.’

‘Emmeline Pankhurst is turning in her grave right now,’ Kate said flatly.

‘ Emmeline Pankhurst was married to her husband at twenty-one,’ Eleanor shot back, unfazed. ‘Don’t try to out-feminist me , Katherine. You’ll lose.’

Kate shook her head with a wry smile. She and her mother had two very different ideas about what feminism was today, but now wasn’t the time.

‘I’m not saying it’s fair, but it is the way of the world,’ Eleanor continued. ‘Lance is a gentleman. He’s intelligent, successful, ridiculously handsome, a good man and he loves you.’

‘Mum, I know all this,’ Kate said, stifling a sigh. Clearly her mother noticed more than she gave her credit for. She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s brought this on, but there’s really no need to convince me. OK? Especially at three in the morning. Seriously, you should get some sleep.’

‘Alright, well…’ Eleanor paused reluctantly. ‘Goodnight, darling.’

‘Night, Mum.’ Kate ended the call and ran her hands over her face. Glancing back down at the screen, she realised her battery was nearly completely dead. ‘ Damnit .’

She’d accidentally left her adaptor in Boston and had forgotten to buy a new one. Luckily there was one socket in the kitchen that had a USB port, so she’d been using that sporadically. Standing up, she padded out into the hallway and down the stairs to the kitchen.

She connected her phone to the charger and then stopped to get a glass of water. Leaning back against the kitchen counter as she sipped it, she thought back to Eleanor’s words about how spectacular she planned to make this wedding. Those words had filled her with dread, and that dread now lurked in the pit of her stomach. Once Eleanor had set her course, there was very little anyone could do to stop her. She was too powerful a force. Unstoppable. A battleship stuck on full speed, parting every wave it crossed without pause.

Kate closed her eyes as a wave of helplessness washed over. She had no control over anything from here. Then again, it didn’t feel like she’d had much control back home, either. It was all moving too fast, and she felt like life was simply dragging her along in its wake. Would it ever calm down enough for her to dust herself off and get her head around everything? Or was she stuck in this nightmarish state of overwhelm for good?