Wreathed

  Adam said that it was a B-52, I thought. It was the same plane, the one I had seen at Sheldon’s old apartment.

  Well, the wreath got here some way, why not this? If Adam didn’t bring it over himself, maybe one of Sheldon’s friends did. No reason to worry about it.

  “I thought I heard somebody,” a voice said. And it wasn’t my voice. It was a hard voice, harsh and stern.

  I must have jumped sixteen inches in the air. I came down awkwardly, twisting myself to see where the voice was coming from. I banged my left hand on the glass of the cabinet, hard enough to hurt my hand but luckily not enough to crack the glass. I yelped loudly, partly out of pain and partly out of fear.

  I could see him framed in the doorway. He was short and balding, with powerful arms and dirty hands. He was wearing a leather tool belt that bristled with sharp implements. His face was cold and still at first, but then as I looked at him, I saw his eyes widen and the corners of his mouth crinkle with happiness.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “You came. You came after all.”

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “You haven’t aged a day,” he said. “Do you know that? Still as beautiful as the last time I saw you.”

  A bright pinpoint of realization dawned in my brain.

  “You are a dead man,” I said.

  Chapter 25

  “Don’t be scared,” Sheldon Berkman said. “Look. Everything’s all right. Calm down.”

  I did not calm down. I screamed. It was a high, pure note that would have cracked any wineglass in the general vicinity. With my uninjured right hand, I picked up a navy throw pillow and chunked it as hard as I could at Sheldon. My momentum carried me towards the fireplace. When Sheldon took a step backwards to dodge the pillow, I grabbed the fireplace poker and brandished it in his general direction.

  Sheldon Berkman was a dead man, and he was standing between me and the stairway and the front door and my car. I tried to extract my phone from the pocket of my hoodie with my left hand, but my hand was still smarting like anything and I abandoned the effort. I couldn’t think who to call anyway. The police? The local exorcist?

  “Wait just a minute,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. I didn’t mean to startle you like that. Can you put that thing down, please?”

  I was not going to calm down. I wanted Sheldon to get out of my way, and if that meant running a fireplace poker through his eye socket, I could handle that. I tried to say that, but I was hyperventilating just then and it came out as a vicious hiss. I held the poker up and cocked it back, as though I was getting ready to bring it down on Sheldon’s unprotected skull.

  He put his arms up in what he must have thought was a nonthreatening way and took a step into the room. “Are you OK?” he asked. “Looks like you banged your hand there.”

  “What are you doing here?” I said, slowly and deliberately. It came out as a rattle, deep and throaty. “Get out of my way.”

  “I don’t want to upset you,” he said. “But I can guess who you are. You’re Patricia, right? The daughter.”

  “No!” I shouted. I took a swipe at him with the poker, and he took a step back. “I am not Pacey.”

  “Gwendolyn, then.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I edged towards the left side of the room. If I could get him to maneuver to my right, I thought I could squeeze past him and rush down the stairs. “Wendy,” I yelled. “My name is Wendy. What are you doing here?”

  “OK,” he said. “OK. Look. Wendy. You need to calm down. Your face is all red. Just put that thing down, and let’s talk like civilized human beings.”

  “Get out of my way first. And answer my question.”

  “I’d rather not do either one, right this second. I would also rather not get skewered by that poker. If we go downstairs, quietly, I can get you some ice for your hand.”

  “How do you know my name?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re Emily’s daughter,” he said. “It’s obvious. You look just like she did at that age, which was the last time I saw her. I thought you were her. I didn’t mean to startle you just now, but you look extraordinarily like her. And you have the same kind of temper, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “You are a dead man. I am going to smash your head in with this fireplace poker for scaring me like that. Since you’re already legally dead, I can’t be tried for murder.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “You’re a lawyer. I had forgotten that. Were you at the funeral? I know your mother went, but I didn’t know if she was by herself or not.”

  “Get out of my way,” I yelled. I raised the poker over my head and cocked my wrists, as though I was getting ready to hit a baseball over whatever it is that you hit a baseball over.

  Sheldon opened his mouth to say something, thought better about it, and retreated down the hallway. I held on to the poker and made my way to the top of the stairs. My knees were shaking, and I took the steps slowly, one at a time. I tried to transfer the poker to my other hand, but it was too sore for me to work my fingers. The poker went clattering down the stairs. I clutched the banister with my good hand, and stomped my way down the staircase. I felt light-headed by the time I got to the bottom, and I sat down on the last stair. I was still breathing heavily and I tried to calm myself down.

  I looked up to see Sheldon standing with a kitchen towel wrapped around some ice cubes. “For your hand,” he said. “Are you all right? I came down the back steps. I thought you might’ve fallen.”

  “Just give me the ice,” I said. I wrapped the towel around my left hand. The ice stung, but it took a bit of the pain away. “If my hand is broken, I am blaming you.”

  “I do want to thank you for not breaking my cabinet. Or my skull. Why don’t you take a minute to pull yourself together, and I’ll make you some coffee. If you drink coffee.”

  I looked up at him, taking his measure. He looked amazingly vital for someone who had been dead for three weeks. He was wearing a dark-gray T-shirt with the Air Force logo, jeans covered with sawdust, and heavy work boots. He had a close-cropped fringe of gray hair and kind eyes. His nose was permanently bent to the left.

  “I don’t want your coffee,” I said. The last thing I needed right then was a stimulant. “I want you to tell me why, in the name of God, you thought any of this was a good idea.”

  “That’s a long story,” he said.

  “You have the time to tell it. You don’t know it yet, but you’re coming with me. We are getting in my car and driving north out of here.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “You wanted to see Emily Thornhill? You’re going to see her. Today. What she decides to do with you is her business.” Mother would never believe me if I just called her and told her that Sheldon was alive. But if I brought him to her, in the flesh, she’d have to believe me. And I had no doubt that she would find a way to settle Sheldon’s hash for pulling this stupid stunt.

  “I don’t think that you and me driving up there would be a good idea,” he said.

  “You don’t get a vote,” I said. “You were perfectly willing to get her here and surprise her, by which I mean scare her out of her mind, because that’s what you did with me. I don’t see any problem with driving up there and letting her know that you are alive, in person.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I want to see her. That’s the entire point of the plan. But I was hoping that she would come down here. Maybe you could call her and have her drive down tomorrow?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You are not getting out of this that easily. You can’t scare me that badly and expect me to fetch my mother down here for you.”

  Sheldon threw up his hands in frustration. “I said I was sorry. I never had any intention of scaring you. I was up on the third floor, sanding the baseboards. Hence all the sawdust. I thought I heard someone moving around down here, so I came down to check it out. For all I knew, you were looki
ng to buy the place. With all the work I’ve put into it, I ought to turn a pretty decent profit.”

  “You were the one to do all this, then,” I said.

  “Pretty much. Would you like to take the grand tour?”

  Another pinpoint of realization sparked in my brain. Sheldon wasn’t dead. If Sheldon wasn’t dead, then the question of who would inherit the house was moot. Sheldon would retain possession until his death. And the codicil wasn’t operative—chances were that it had never been operative. Likely as not, it was just an impressive bit of window dressing designed to lure Mother to the house on a false pretext. That meant that I didn’t have any reason not to see Adam. Ethically speaking, I was off the hook. We could go out to dinner tonight to celebrate his uncle’s return from the dead, assuming that Mother didn’t kill Sheldon dead between now and then.

  “You faked your death,” I said. “You have to undo that. My mother deserves to be the first to know, and you owe it to her to tell her in person. After that, we can tell everyone else.”

  “I was going to tell her. I was planning on telling her the day of the funeral. I had it all planned out, and it would have worked, if Danny showed up when he was supposed to and done what I had told him to do. All he had to do was give her the codicil that he drafted, and then walk her over here. I spent the whole day cooling my heels in the foyer, waiting on her to open the door.”

  “By Danny, you mean the lawyer? Mr. Miller? He told me he had a family emergency, and that’s why he didn’t go to the funeral,” I said.

  “Is that what happened? I had no idea. Do you mind if I get a chair real quick?”

  “Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

  “As long as you don’t knock me out. Just a sec.”

  I took my hand out of the towel and shook it. It was starting to get numb, but not quite there yet. I redistributed the ice and wrapped it back up. My breathing was finally normal, and my heart rate was down to where it had been before I went upstairs.

  Sheldon came back from the kitchen with a chair, and sat in it with the back of the chair pointed towards me. “So why didn’t your mother want to come see the house?” he asked. “You were down here anyway. I would have figured anybody who inherited a house would at least have been curious about what they inherited.”

  “You will have to ask her,” I said. “I would do that right before she tears you into little ribbons. And I want to be there to see that.”

  Sheldon reached behind his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Your mother will be very angry with me,” he said. “I get that. If you break it to her gently, though, it might not be so bad. Who knows, maybe she’s mellowed out in the last fifty years.”

  “You didn’t see her after the funeral. She was not mellow. She was the farthest thing in the world from mellow. She was extremely unhappy. She was spouting poetry.”

  “Oh. That doesn’t sound good.” His face twisted into a scowl. “If she’s going to be that angry with me, I can’t say I don’t deserve it. But I never meant for this to go on this long. It was supposed to be over by now.”

  “Mother is going to tear a giant strip off your back and beat you over the head with it,” I said. “And she’s not alone. Think of everyone else who went to the funeral. All those nice people at the wake, from your retirement community. You have to tell them, too. You have to explain this lunatic idea of yours to fake your death.”

  “Everybody else already knows,” he explained. “Danny knows; he was the one who filled out the phony death certificate. The minister at the church knows; he didn’t care so long as I threw in an extra thousand dollars as a donation. A guy I knew in the Air Force runs a mortuary in Philly; he took care of that paperwork for me, even threw in an urn for free. I filled it up with dust from my Shop-Vac, and then I told my bush pilot friend in Alaska it was coming. Ed and Hans and Paulie set up the reception; they were supposed to steer Emily over here if she went there. The newspaper didn’t care whether I was really dead or not. It wasn’t that difficult, and of course I only expected to be dead a day or two. I never expected that your mother just wouldn’t show up.”

  “The entire funeral was phony?” I asked. “All those people knew you weren’t dead?”

  “Not everybody. Some of those folks are senile, you know.”

  “But what about Adam?” I asked. “Why would you go through with this whole crazy, numbskull idea if you knew he would think you were dead? Why hurt him like that?”

  “Oh, Adam knows I’m alive,” Sheldon said. “I asked Danny to tell him after the funeral. I knew it would be difficult for him, but I’m not cruel enough to keep him in the dark all this time.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, but with a little less conviction than I actually felt. “Adam would have told me if he knew you were alive.”

  “Adam knows better than to say anything to anyone,” he said. “I know him. He won’t contact me until after I let him know it’s all right. But he knows I’m alive, he has to.”

  I lifted my left hand and flexed it carefully. It was numb, and it had stopped throbbing and I didn’t think I had a broken bone anywhere. This was good, because if Adam had been stringing me along all this time, I would need both hands to strangle him properly.

  “We’re getting in the car,” I said. “You and me. Now. And we’re going to show the world you’re not a corpse.”

  “Can we stop and get lunch first?” Sheldon asked. “I haven’t eaten yet, and it’s a long drive up to your mother’s.”

  “We can get you a burger on the way up,” I said. “And we’re not going straight there. We’re going to Freehold first. Adam deserves to know the truth, or if he already knows, I deserve to know why he’s been stringing me along.”

  “Adam’s been doing that?” he asked. “He’s a nice kid. That’s unlike him.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Well, all right then,” Sheldon said. “You can tell me all about it in the car.”

  “I don’t know what the story is, anymore.” If Adam had been lying to me this entire time—if he had slept with me, and let me break up with him over a will he knew wasn’t valid—that would be impossible. But I had just thought it was impossible for Sheldon to be alive, too. A lot of impossible things seemed to be happening lately. “What I do know is that my life started going screwy when you decided to fake your own death. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I can explain,” Sheldon said. “But like you said, it’s a long story.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but the last thing I want to do in this world is spend the whole drive up to Freehold listening to you tell me about you and my mother and what you did to each other in 1962.”

  “But that’s the problem,” he said. “You only know half of what went on.”

  Chapter 26

  It didn’t start in 1962. That’s the first thing you need to understand. I was in love with your mother when she was in seventh grade, and I was in eighth. Now, she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t talk to me. She didn’t talk to anybody. Everybody knew who she was, and everybody knew who her grandfather was. Not that she made a big deal about being from a rich family or anything, but it impacted how you looked at her. She was treated differently because of that, and I don’t think she handled it well. That’s probably why they took her out of public school and sent her to prep school when she was old enough.

  But I was in love with her, all the way back then. I had one class with her in high school. I’d failed freshman geometry the year before, and they made me retake it. I sat behind her, and I almost failed again because I spent the whole time smelling her hair. It smelled like apples and honey.

  Once she went off to prep school, I figured I would never see her again. It didn’t bother me too much. I knew it would never work out. We didn’t have anything in common that I knew about. My dad always told me you didn’t ever want to marry someone that was too high above you or too far below you, because it never worked out, and I guess he was
right about that. Anyway, I dated other girls in high school. I had fun. But I never stopped thinking about your mother, wondering how she was doing, that sort of thing.

  I saw her one time, at the King of Pizza—I guess she was home for the weekend, having dinner with her family. She sat at the table across from mine. I spent the whole time looking at her, until my mom told me to stop staring. I think her brother saw me looking at her, too. They didn’t send him to prep school, because he wanted to play football and be on the swim team and just be a regular kid. Nice guy, you know, but he didn’t want just anyone dating his sister.

  At some point, your mother noticed me. I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden she’s interested in me. But, being your mother, she couldn’t do something as simple as ask me out. She always had to do things the hard way. What she did was find my sister’s best friend and tell her she thought I was cute, and that was supposed to get back to my sister, who was supposed to tell me. It worked, although I supposed I shouldn’t have.

  Anyway, I was not a total idiot, so I asked your mother out, and of course she said yes. So when we went out, I played it very cool. The perfect gentleman. We went out, saw a movie, and I drove her back home. I did not lay a hand on her, not once. We had a great time, don’t get me wrong, but she didn’t give me much in the way of encouragement. I was fine with that. If she wanted to take it slow, I was willing to take it slow along with her. This was 1962, you remember. Girls then weren’t forward the way they are now. But I didn’t care. I was in love.

  So the day after Thanksgiving, I was sitting in my house, doing my homework, and listening to a football game on the radio. And your mother just showed up. She came in to the house, said hello, and said she wanted to go into Philly to get pizza. I figured, hey, why not. So we went and got a slice, and we just sat there again, staring at each other, not talking. Except this time, when we were leaving, she stole the car keys out of the pocket of my varsity jacket. She got behind the wheel of my car, and I had to ride along or be stranded on the wrong side of the bridge. I was a little ticked off, because I didn’t like anyone else driving my car, but I could tell she had something on her mind and I was willing to go along with it.