Wreathed

by Curtis Edmonds

  “It will not be fine. It is never going to be fine. You should check the bathroom for icebergs.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said.

  “Not that bad? Not that bad? This is unacceptable.”

  “Some people like having a cold room to sleep in, so they can be warm under the covers.”

  “Those people are fools and idiots. Is there another bedroom? Preferably one south of the Arctic Circle?”

  “There’s only one other bedroom, and it is set up for kids. Bunk beds. Don’t worry. It’ll warm up before too long.”

  “Can I take a moment and remind you exactly why you wanted to come here?”

  He grinned that insufferable grin of his. “I remember.”

  “This is an activity that is usually conducted without clothes. I am feeling distinctly underdressed at the moment. I could use a scarf. And a parka. And a set of hand warmers.”

  “We could go downstairs. Get some coffee. Come back when the room is warm.”

  “If we do that, I can’t promise I’m going to want to come back here,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to have sex with you, tonight. But if we wait too long, I am going to think of reasons not to do this, and there are reasons not to do this.”

  “OK, then,” he said. “I have an idea.”

  “Do tell.”

  Adam found a wide, low armchair, which was upholstered in a green nubbly fabric. He picked it up effortlessly and carried it over to a far corner of the room. “The main vent is over here,” he said. “Come here. You can feel the heat coming up from the floor. And I turned the thermostat up to seventy-nine; it should be warmed up before too much longer.”

  I followed him over to where he was standing. It felt marginally warmer there, like going from a glacier to a slightly smaller glacier at a lower elevation.

  “What would you want to do?” I asked. “Just sit here and wait for the spring thaw?”

  “You realize that we’re doing this all backward, right? I mean, we haven’t even kissed yet.”

  “So?”

  “So I was thinking that we should.”

  He wreathed his arms around my body, encircling me. It was already feeling warmer. I gave him a long, low, wet lingering kiss.

  “See, that’s what I mean,” he said. “We need to do things in the proper order.”

  “Stop talking,” I said.

  I straightened up a bit, and he responded just the way I wanted him to, by kissing my neck. He took his time, pressing his lips against my soft flesh, exploring with his tongue, then repeating the process. I felt my breaths get deeper and sharper as desire swept over me, wave on wave.

  Adam slipped my cardigan off, and it fell to the floor. He found the zipper of my dress, lowering it just enough to find the bra underneath. He unfastened the bra with a practiced hand, and drew my body closer to his. I lowered my lips against him and kissed him again. His tongue felt smooth and warm in my mouth, like a bracing glass of wine.

  I let him come up for air after a long moment. “Getting warmer?” he asked.

  “Working on it.”

  One of his hands was caressing my back, and the other one was beginning to explore my neckline. He was careful not to expose too much of my bare flesh to the cold air, for which I would have been grateful if I wasn’t so lost in the earthy smell of his cologne.

  “It’s body heat, you know,” he said. “If you’re ever stuck in a snowbank, you just huddle up with someone.”

  I straightened up to kiss his lips again, hoping to get him to shut up. He pressed his hand against my chest, moving it in slow, gentle circles.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  I glanced over at the bed, at its thick down comforter.

  “It’s a risk,” I said. “But it’s one I’m willing to take.” My dress fell halfway down my body, taking my bra with it. The room was still ice-cold, but I was feeling a warmth course through me, and when he looked at me in that moment, I felt it blaze to my very fingertips.

  “Let’s get in bed before I get frostbite,” I said.

  Chapter 21

  I woke up the next morning under that toasty comforter, warm, happy, sexually fulfilled, and utterly alone. Adam wasn’t in bed next to me. He wasn’t elsewhere in the room. I couldn’t hear any telltale morning sounds coming from the bathroom. Despite all the ups and downs, it had been a wonderful evening, ending in a deeply satisfying and thrilling way. I had expected the morning to be even better, and here I was, naked and alone.

  There has to be a reasonable explanation, I thought. You don’t just get up and leave someone alone in a room without a reasonable explanation, or at least a note. I looked around the room, and indeed, there did seem to be a scrap of white paper on the coffee table. The problem was that the only way I would be able to read the note would be to get out from under the comforter and expose my bare body to the elements. It was warmer than it had been, but there was every possibility that it was still ice-cold out there, and I had zero interest in testing the veracity of that possibility.

  OK, I thought. He left a note. But I couldn’t figure out why he had ventured out of the bedroom this early. I considered the alarming possibility that he might be a runner—not that he had run off, mind you, but that he was one of those monomaniacs who believes that it’s advisable to start your heart each morning with a brisk five-mile run. For all I knew, he was a marathoner, which would require me to either stand around assorted racecourses across the country, waiting for him to jog by, or else start running myself. I shuddered at the thought.

  I snuggled deeply into the covers, trying to stay as warm as possible. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back to sleep, but it was clear that the demands of biology were going to force me out of bed sooner rather than later. I wiggled my way down to the far end of the bed and commenced wrapping myself up in the comforter and sheets as tightly as possible. I bunched the bedding under my arms and stood up, and unsteadily made my way over to the closet, hoping against hope that someone had left a robe or a sweatshirt or some warm piece of clothing.

  The closet was empty. I swore. I would have thrown things if I had things handy to throw. I swept back towards the bathroom, stooping to pick the note off the table on the way. It was ice-cold in the bathroom, but the note was scorching hot:

  I have gone to get coffee. I can’t want to be back, so I can get back in bed with you. There was more to it, including a line about devouring your warm flesh that I hoped just meant that he had spent too much time reading vampire or werewolf fiction, but it was deeply felt and enthusiastic and if he managed to show up in the next five minutes with actual coffee, with cream and sugar, I would be willing to forgive him.

  When Adam didn’t appear right away, I decided to jump in the shower, mostly to warm up. The water was satisfyingly hot, and the towels were thick and soft. I wrapped the largest one around myself and headed back into the bedroom, where Adam was waiting with two tall cups of coffee.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I had a little clothes shopping to do,” indicating a large red plastic bag on the foot of the bed. “I thought you might appreciate it.”

  “You went clothes shopping?” I was mystified. Not that he didn’t need new clothes, mind you, but it seemed like an odd thing to do, especially in a beach town that probably didn’t have a lot in the way of clothes stores.

  “Well, I mean, that towel looks very fetching on you and all, but you might want to wear something else for later.” He pointed towards my dress, lying in a wrinkled heap on the floor.

  “Coffee first,” I said. He reached across the bed and handed me one of the cups.

  “Two sugars,” he said. “I didn’t know if you took creamer or not.”

  I took a long, restorative sip. “It’s fine.” It was better than that. It was hot.

  “You read the note,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I did. It was very nice. Romantic, even.”

  “It’s not my strong suit, but I try.”


  “You did very well last night,” I said. “I had a great time.”

  “The first of many. Hopefully.”

  “We’ll see. For the moment, I would like to fix my hair, if you can be a little patient.”

  He smiled that infuriating, insufferable smile that indicated that he thought he had my number. “Not a problem.”

  It turned out that the red bag contained a black sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, both of which said “Jenkinson’s Boardwalk.” “Best I could do on short notice,” Adam explained.

  I thought about giving him a tongue-lashing for abandoning me in order to buy me some cheap, tacky fleece. But it was still chilly outside, and it beat freezing to death. “I appreciate it,” I said.

  “Of course, you don’t have to wear it right now,” he said. “If you don’t want to.”

  “I think clothes are a good idea right now,” I said. “Do you have any specific ideas on how we should spend the rest of the day?”

  “I am just trying to take things one moment at a time,” he said.

  “Well, it’s worked out so far.”

  “That it did,” he said. “By the way, while I was out, I went and fetched the copies of the paperwork for the estate, like you asked before. I had meant to give them to you last night, but I forgot.”

  “Just as well,” I said. “Real estate and romance don’t mix.” I slipped the sweatsuit on, and it was more than a bit baggy.

  “Anyway, no need for you to go over it right now, but at some point, we’re going to need to talk about the issue with the house. Did you and your mother take a look at it when you were down there?”

  “We did a quick drive-by.” I drank the last of my coffee, and wished Adam had thought to grab me a scone or a muffin or something else with some calories in it. “We were in a hurry to get back. Mother did a little research, and she found out that the house in the will was the one where she and Sheldon had their honeymoon, back fifty years ago.”

  “I hadn’t known that. I guess that’s why he bought it, then. How does she feel about the house? Do you think it brings back bad memories for her?”

  “I think it brings back good memories,” I said. “But they’re painful memories, too.”

  “So, if there was an arrangement we could make, where the estate took the house off her hands, would she consider it?”

  “I can’t speak for her, Adam. And I have a rule about not doing settlement negotiations in sweat pants. But if you made her a reasonable offer, I’m sure she’d listen.”

  “A reasonable offer based on what?” he asked.

  “Well, based on the equity in the house. I’d have to look at the paperwork. Do you happen to have the HUD-1 where I could look at it?”

  “Sure,” he said. He opened up his gym bag and drew out one of those red-brown expanding file folders that lawyers call a “redwell” and everyone else calls “one of those expanding file folder thingies.” Everything was arranged in file folders. I was impressed. Adam may not have been the most romantic man in the world, but there was a lot to be said for practicality, too. The HUD-1 was in its own folder, and I looked at it first.

  “What kind of offer were you thinking about?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t decided,” he said. “I want this to be fair. Say, maybe twenty-five thousand in exchange for a quitclaim deed.”

  “Seriously?”

  “That’s a pretty good haul for just showing up to a funeral, and getting rid of a house you don’t want,” he said.

  “How did you arrive at that figure?” I asked.

  “Honestly? It’s based largely on the amount of money I could raise. Given the debts that the estate has accrued lately, I would be taking money out of my own pocket. Twenty-five thousand dollars is a significant percentage of my net worth at the moment.”

  “Have you looked at these documents closely?” I asked. “Because if you had, you’d realize just how bad an offer that is.”

  The HUD-1 is the document that gets completed at any real estate closing. It is basically the summary of who contributes what money to the deal, and where the money goes. The HUD-1 for the house on Idaho Street indicated that Sheldon Berkman had purchased the property for $645,000 in June of last year. Given its size and location, it was priced about forty or fifty thousand dollars under the comparable value for homes in the area. That indicated that either Sheldon had gotten a very good deal, or that the house was in very poor condition—and given that the house was over fifty years old, I thought the latter was more likely. Whichever way it was, that type of information doesn’t show up on the HUD-1.

  What does show up is the amount of the mortgage. Sheldon had only borrowed $375,000 to buy the house. That meant that Sheldon made a down payment of $270,000, which likely represented every nickel he had managed to save throughout his Air Force service and his subsequent career. If the house was the sole asset left in the estate, that meant the codicil had taken that one asset away from Adam and gifted it to my mother.

  I could see why Adam would be sore about this; anybody would be. It wasn’t fair for him. But it wasn’t reasonable for him to want my mother to trade him a quarter of a million dollars in equity for a twenty-five-thousand-dollar gratuity. Nobody would ever agree to such a lopsided deal.

  Having said that, I knew Mother wasn’t crazy about the house. She’d be glad to be done with the property and the long shadow that Sheldon Berkman’s death had cast over her life—but not if that meant walking away from hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  “It’s not a terrible offer,” Adam said. “Admittedly, it’s not ideal. But I take over all the risk. I assume the mortgage payment, which is not insubstantial, not to mention the property taxes. I’ll find a real estate agent and try to find a buyer. It’s a very tidy guaranteed profit for your mother, and all she has to do is sign a piece of paper.”

  “She can rent the place out and make that much in one year,” I pointed out. “It’s not reasonable.”

  “You’re assuming that she’s entitled to the house,” Adam said. “I am not convinced of that.”

  I should have stopped there. I should have realized that he was talking nonsense and changed the subject and taken him downstairs to get something to eat and replenish our blood sugar. You don’t gain anything by arguing about important issues on an empty stomach. Maybe everything would have happened the way it did without me pressing the issue the way I did, but it still would have saved a lot of upset and hurt feelings later on, mostly mine.

  “You are wrong,” I said. “Look at the codicil. It is very clear about this. My mother went to the funeral. That was the only condition in the codicil, and the grant of the house by your uncle to her is very clear. She fulfilled the condition; therefore, she inherits the house, complete with the mortgage and the equity. You don’t have any claim to it as executor, and you don’t have any claim to it as the heir.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “I don’t think the codicil is necessarily valid.”

  “The codicil was signed properly. It was witnessed properly. The affidavits are all here. Everything appears to be in order.”

  “I understand all that. And I know you do this for a living, Wendy. But I don’t think my uncle was in his right mind when he wrote that codicil. I don’t think he meant to give all that money to your mother. I think he was delusional.”

  “The legal standard for whether someone is in their right mind for drafting a will is very low. Admittedly, this was an unusual bequest.”

  “Admittedly,” he said, taking a sip of coffee.

  “But it was made to someone that he knew; someone that he had a relationship with. He didn’t give it to the Hell’s Angels or the Three Musketeers or the three-armed alien people from beyond the Crab Nebula. He gave it to his ex-wife. Even if he was as lovesick over her as he seemed to be, that’s pretty far from being delusional.”

  “You don’t know how much he talked about your mother, especially since he moved down to Cape May. Delusional is putt
ing it mildly. As far as his financial condition goes, believe me, you don’t know the half of it. The house is the only asset left in the estate, and there are all kinds of debts that are coming due, and I don’t have the liquidity to deal with them effectively. This is a very messed-up situation, and it’s all falling into my lap, and I cannot make it come out right unless I can make a deal with your mother about this house.”

  “Believe me when I tell you this,” I said. “Threatening a contest of this codicil in court is not going to make things any easier for you. It is not going to make things less expensive. And, I don’t know if you realize this or not, it is going to put the two of us on opposite sides of a lawsuit.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “If you file a will contest, I will be the one who represents my mother in court. There are conflict-of-interest rules for attorneys in this kind of situation, and the biggest one of those says that you can’t sleep with an opposing party.”

  “Holy shit,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “I am not trying to sandbag you with this information,” I said. “I’m not. If I had thought this was a real possibility, I never would have gone out with you in the first place. But if you’re seriously going to take my mother to court over this will, we can’t see each other. It’s as simple as that.”

  “What the hell? We can’t see each other anymore? Over Uncle Sheldon’s will?”

  I crossed my arms over my new, itchy fleece sweatshirt. “I have to, Adam. I don’t want to. But I don’t have a choice. If you’re going through with this will contest, we have to stop seeing each other. And we have to do it now.”

  “I don’t have a choice about this, Wendy.”

  “Then neither do I.”

  Chapter 22

  Adam didn’t handle the news very well. I couldn’t blame him, because I didn’t handle the news very well either, but he was more obnoxious about it. I think he had expected to come back to the room and enter straight into another round between the sheets, and I’d disappointed him already. (Not that I would have been averse to such a thing, but a girl likes to have a coffee first sometimes.) So he was already worked up, and me breaking up with him—no matter how reluctantly—made things worse.