Wreathed

by Curtis Edmonds

  “Are you OK?” he asked. “Can I get you some water?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “I just heard that the box had already been shipped, that’s all. I didn’t think your uncle was in there. I was a little surprised.”

  “Well, he’s not getting out of the box, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m not worried.” I’d made it through an entire funeral without having one bit of twitchy anxiety. I wasn’t going to let a FedEx box bother me, no matter what was in it.

  “That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t think you were the type to be touchy about dead bodies. I mean, here you are, sitting on the bed where Uncle Sheldon died.”

  Adam had left the bedroom door open, which was a good thing, because I would have done horrible damage to the door frame if he hadn’t. The front door was closed, but it was unlocked and it had a lever on it instead of a doorknob. I was able to fling it open, and I was just aware enough to keep from falling into the open maw of the U-Haul truck. I lost a bit of forward momentum in the process, which kept me from running full-tilt across the highway and onto the beach and into the deep blue water of Delaware Bay. As it was, I made a sharp right turn and collided with an elderly gentleman. He had a bristly white mustache and he was wearing a black suit.

  He managed to both hold himself up and keep me from falling to the pavement. “Steady there, miss,” he said. “Steady. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just calm down.”

  I stood there, bent over, with my hands on my knees, trying to control my breathing enough so that I knew I wouldn’t die, because if I died I wouldn’t be able to kill that idiot Adam for letting me sit on a dead man’s bed like that.

  “That’s right,” the old man said. “Breathe. It’ll be just fine, you’ll see.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and took in another gulp of air. “I’ll be OK as soon as I have a chance to calm down. I just had a little scare, that’s all.”

  “I understand perfectly,” he said. “By the way, your name wouldn’t happen to be Gwendolyn Jarrett, would it? Emily Thornhill’s daughter?”

  Chapter 14

  The old man’s name was Daniel Miller, and he was a partner in a three-man law firm that handled real estate issues in Cape May Court House, a mile or two up the Parkway from Cape May proper. He hadn’t been looking for me at all, he assured me, but he was very pleased to see me nonetheless.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Your mother,” he said, “is next on my list. After young Adam here. I take it that he’s the young man over there.”

  Adam was making his way toward us, warily, the way a cautious person might approach an injured woodland creature. “Are you OK?” he asked, from a safe distance.

  I could not kill him at that moment, because that would leave a witness, and Mr. Miller seemed like a nice old man who didn’t deserve to die because he was an innocent bystander.

  “I am going to live a nice, long, happy, and fulfilling life,” I said, “no thanks to you.”

  “I am sorry. I mean, I had no idea you would react that way.”

  “You mean the completely normal way that anyone would react to finding out she was sitting on the bed where someone died?”

  “I said I was sorry,” he said.

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Miller said. “I have no wish to intervene in this highly entertaining and stimulating discussion you two are having, but I do have sensitive matters to discuss with the both of you, and it would be a courtesy to us all to take care of this inside. Yes?”

  We all went back in Sheldon’s apartment. Adam took a moment to determine just who Mr. Miller was and why he was there, and then he rummaged around in Sheldon’s refrigerator, emerging with a large bottle of cranberry juice. I drank mine out of a “Strategic Air Command” coffee cup that Adam had retrieved from one of the boxes in the U-Haul. Mr. Miller took a courteous sip of his juice and then withdrew two envelopes from a battered black leather briefcase. “I apologize if this is a bit unusual,” he said. “But I had strict instructions from my client, Mr. Berkman.”

  “So what is this?” Adam asked. “A last letter? Final instructions?”

  “Nothing so exotic, I’m afraid,” Mr. Miller said. “It is just an ordinary codicil to Mr. Berkman’s will, with one specific bequest, based on one specific condition. What I am hoping to get from the two of you—or from Ms. Thornhill, if she’s available—is confirmation that the condition has, in fact, been met.”

  “I don’t understand,” Adam said.

  “A codicil is an amendment to a will,” I explained.

  “I know that,” he said. “I went to college, you know.”

  “You said you didn’t understand. I was trying to explain. To be helpful.”

  “You’re not being helpful,” Adam said. “You’re being annoying.”

  “Can we get back to the subject at hand?” Mr. Miller asked.

  “Sorry,” I said, more to Mr. Miller than to Adam. I didn’t intend to let Adam off the hook for scaring me just yet.

  “What I was trying to say is that I didn’t know there was a codicil, much less one that was conditional,” Adam said. “I’m the executor of the will. It seems to me that I should have been informed of this codicil beforehand.”

  “I have to apologize to you both,” Mr. Miller said. “First, to you, Mr. Lewis. Your uncle drafted this codicil nine months ago. He gave it to me, and specifically asked me not to deliver the codicil to you before his death. I advised him against doing so, but he was very clear in his mind about what he wanted. I am sorry to spring this on you at such a sad time. Having said that, if I had followed my instructions to the letter, it might have been worse.”

  “What instructions were those?” I asked.

  “Well, this is a place where I must apologize again, this time to you and your mother, Ms. Jarrett. My specific instructions were to attend the funeral and deliver these envelopes, after I had documented the condition that triggered the codicil. Unfortunately, I had a family emergency and wasn’t able to make it to the church on time.”

  “Is everything OK?” Adam asked.

  “Perfectly fine,” Mr. Miller said. “Unfortunately, my inability to attend the funeral personally means that I was unable to determine whether or not the condition was actually met.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Was the codicil tied to the funeral in some way?” That would be a very odd thing to have in a codicil, but people had come up with stranger things.

  “At this point,” Mr. Miller said, “I would prefer not to answer any questions until both of you have had the chance to review the document in question.”

  I can take a hint as well as anyone. I ripped open the envelope and scanned the codicil. The key sentence read: I do hereby bequeath the property known as 228 Idaho Avenue in Cape May, New Jersey, in fee simple to my former wife, Emily Thornhill, and her heirs and assigns, on the condition that she attend the funeral and/or memorial service held after my death.

  “You understand my concern,” Mr. Miller said. “If I had been able to attend the funeral, I would have been able to personally verify Ms. Thornhill’s attendance at the funeral. As it is, I must rely on the good faith of both parties to confirm that the condition has, in fact, been met.”

  “Give me a second,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone. I opened Safari, pulled up the voice prompt, and said “Gawker Curtains blog.” It took a second, but I was able to pull up the Curtains site, and sure enough, the story about Sheldon’s funeral was right there. “Mystery Woman Shows Up at Funeral of Cape May Man with Maudlin Obituary.” Vanessa’s picture, as she had said, was tremendous.

  I handed the phone to Mr. Miller. “That’s my mother,” I said, “walking up the stairs to the church. The photo appears in a blog post, dated today. I can get an affidavit from the photographer if it’s strictly necessary.” I decided not to mention that I dearly hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary.

  “It’s not necessary,” Adam said. “We both know your
mother was at the funeral. We all sat together. That’s not what I’m worried about. What I want to know is what kind of property it is that we’re talking about, and when my uncle bought it.”

  “I can look that up, too,” I said, and opened up the Zillow real estate app. The property at that address had been bought nine months ago for below market value—which still made it a princely sum, considering what market value was for property in New Jersey shore towns. “It’s listed as a fixer-upper,” I said. “Do you know if he was trying to flip the house, Mr. Miller?”

  Mr. Miller folded his hands. “Ms. Jarrett, I hope I do not have to remind you of the strictures of the attorney-client relationship with respect to confidentiality.”

  “Of course not,” I said. Flipping a house seemed an odd thing to want to keep secret, but why else would someone who was already living in a retirement home take out a huge mortgage on a dilapidated house that they didn’t need?

  “So,” Adam said, “nine months ago, my Uncle Sheldon bought this house. And now he’s giving it to Wendy’s mother, just because she went to his funeral?”

  “Without revealing anything confidential, having her come to his funeral meant a lot to him,” Mr. Miller said.

  “Would you mind?” Adam asked, gesturing in the direction of my iPhone. I handed it to him so he could check out the Zillow listing. “This explains some of the charges on his Home Depot card. I couldn’t figure out what that was all about.”

  “So he was trying to fix it up, then,” I said.

  “It’s my fault. I told him about all the money I made flipping houses before the recession, and he must have figured he could do it, too. I just can’t believe that he borrowed that much money for a house down here, and then he goes and gives it away to his ex-wife from fifty years ago. That makes zero sense.”

  “Again, allow me to apologize, Mr. Lewis,” Mr. Miller said. “If there is any way I can be of assistance to you, let me know.”

  “Thanks,” Adam said.

  “I have one more item for each of you.” Mr. Miller dug two key rings out of his briefcase. “The first one is for Mr. Lewis; it’s the safe deposit box—the deed for the house is in there, and some other personal items, I believe.”

  “What about the key to the house?” Adam asked.

  “There are two keys,” Mr. Miller explained. “One is in the safe deposit box, that’s yours. The other is for Ms. Thornhill, and I have that one here.” He handed me the other key.

  “Wait a second,” Adam said. “You can’t just give her the key to the house like that. It’s not hers.”

  “Those were your uncle’s express wishes, I’m afraid.” Mr. Miller said. “Ideally, I would have put the keys in her hand at the funeral, and given her directions to the house.”

  Adam sat straight up in his chair. “That’s ridiculous. The codicil doesn’t give her the right to just take the house. I mean, I’m the executor. I would have to make the transfer. Get her name in the chain of title.”

  “That’s all true,” I said. “The house doesn’t pass to my mother until you complete the title transfer. But it doesn’t hurt anything for her to have the key, just to look around.”

  “As long as she was just looking around, I don’t think that would be a problem,” Adam said. “But this whole thing is nuts. I mean, totally squirrely. I never figured Uncle Sheldon for this kind of melodrama.”

  “Well, we all have our little secrets,” Mr. Miller said. “I know I’ve said it already, several times, but I really do apologize. Unless either of you have any questions, I should be going.”

  It took Mr. Miller a while to straighten up, and to repack his black briefcase. We tried to thank him, but he waved us off and headed out the door.

  I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Adam to finish washing out the cups we’d been drinking from and load them back in the truck. It was a nice moment, quiet, almost domestic.

  “Do you need me to help with the airplane models?” I asked. “It looks like that’s all you have left to pack.”

  “They’re too fragile to throw in the back of the U-Haul. I am going to ask the facility to hold on to them for a few days. They don’t have anybody ready to move in, and now I am going to have to come back here anyway to get into the safe deposit box and look at the mortgage and figure out what is going on here.”

  “Not to speak ill of the dead,” I said, “but that was an awful thing for your uncle to do, springing a surprise like that on the day of his funeral. In a way, it’s a good thing that the lawyer couldn’t make it.” My best guess is that my mother would have chewed out poor Mr. Miller something awful if he had been bold enough to serve her with legal papers at the funeral.

  “You do this for a living, right?” Adam asked. “Did you ever come across something this weird?”

  “Ambushing people at a funeral? That’s a new one on me. You do get clients who ask for odd things in their wills. Most of it’s not that unusual—deciding who gets what family heirlooms, or who has to take care of which pet, that sort of thing. Sometimes people give their money to strangers, or set up gifts to unusual charities. But I frown on putting that in your will, from a legal perspective. If you have something different or unique you want to do, you’re almost always better off doing it while you’re alive rather than trying to control things from beyond the grave.”

  “Or from beyond the FedEx box, as it were.”

  “Ha,” I said. I still wasn’t ready to forgive him for that.

  “Seriously, though. I had no intent to scare you that way. I mean, I never would have said anything if I thought you would run off like that.” He had the most devastating twinkle in his eyes when he said that, as though the idea of me running through a seaside retirement community in sheer panic was one of the funniest things he had ever encountered.

  Of course, I hadn’t been that frightened of sitting on a dead man’s bed. That wasn’t why I took off running in my best heels, pell-mell towards Delaware Bay. I had been seriously freaked out about having an explicit sexual fantasy on that bed, one that could have come reasonably close to being an actual sexual experience, or at least it might have if Adam hadn’t been so damn unromantic about the whole thing. I couldn’t very well tell him that, of course, because God knows how funny he’d think that would be.

  “Let’s just not talk about it, shall we?” I suggested.

  “I just want to rewind a little,” he said. “If you don’t mind. I said I had two things to do before I left. One was dropping off the urn, and the other one was asking you if you wanted to go to dinner sometime.”

  “Oh,” I said, reverting back to my monosyllabic ways. What was it about Adam that made the connection from my brain to my mouth stop working?

  “I had been thinking maybe you might want to have dinner somewhere tonight, but I need to head north and you are probably going to want to eat with your mom.”

  “Oh. Her.”

  “I guess we could all go out together, but that doesn’t strike me as a good idea right now.”

  “That’s reasonable enough,” I said. I needed Mother to come with me on a date like I needed a large, seeping, gaping wound in my abdomen.

  “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but your mom is a little intimidating.”

  “You haven’t gotten to know her very well. She’s a lot intimidating. And you’re changing the subject. We were talking about dinner.”

  “Yes. Sorry. Are you free next week? We could meet halfway. I know a nice place in New Brunswick that would be perfect.”

  It had been a long day. I had to put up with my mother’s craziness, and gone to a funeral, and eaten one too many dumplings at the wake, and I’d sat on a dead man’s bed. Now a cute guy who was interested in me was asking me out, and the last synapse I had working in my brain right at that moment was the one that said, say yes.

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be nice.”

  “Good,” he said, and his features relaxed into a winning smile. “Will Friday at eight be
all right?”

  “That would be lovely.” I couldn’t make the muscles in my face move. I was simpering, and I knew it, and I couldn’t stop.

  “OK then. Deal?” He stuck his hand out, like we were closing a real estate deal, and I shook it.

  “Deal,” I said.

  I held on to his hand a little longer than I needed to. He didn’t try to disengage, either, but after a long moment he smiled. “Your mother is waiting for you,” he said, “and my uncle is waiting for me to drop him off.”

  He let go of my hand and picked up the FedEx box, and we walked out of the apartment together. He got in his U-Haul, and I watched him drive off. Every time I think he’s said the least romantic thing possible, I thought, he comes up with something new.

  Chapter 15

  I wasn’t in a hurry to check in on my mother, so I drove over to see the house that Sheldon Berkman had left to her in his will. The building on Idaho Street was spacious, imposing, and horribly, aggressively pink. I had no idea whether it had been painted pink when Sheldon had bought it, or if he had painted it that way. If it was his fault, then there was an open question as to whether the Air Force needed to revise its testing procedures for color-blindness.

  As bad as the pink was, it clashed with the abominable mint green porch railing and the dark green shutters. The only other color was the white faux-Victorian scrollwork under its dingy gables. Three yucky-looking wicker chairs sat on the porch. The yard was microscopic and badly tended. The house looked altogether dismal, and I decided not to bother going inside just yet—I figured I could always check it out tomorrow, if Mother was interested. I took photos with my phone and got back in the car and headed to the hotel.

  I made a quick detour into the liquor store for the necessary supplies for cocktail hour. I got a bottle of vanilla vodka and two bottles of diet orange soda. The creamsicle is not the most complex of mixed drinks, but it is tasty and easy to make if you’re drunk. The cashier gave me an approving look, anyway, so I figured I hadn’t gone too far wrong. I am a person who has tried to mix chocolate vodka with Yoo-hoo, so I am perhaps abnormally sensitive to what cashiers at liquor stores think. (I am, seriously, not endorsing mixing chocolate vodka with Yoo-hoo here. The resulting concoction is most vile, although it will get you drunk fairly effectively, and I had a very detailed and intricate dream that night about Willy Wonka.)