Chapter 15

It is important, at this point, to reflect on the IUD of the Levonorgestrel-releasing type. In the case of the Cunningham twins, the brand of IUD inserted in them when they were sixteen was called Liletta®. That brand is engineered to work for up to six years. That (and other brands of the same type) release the hormone Levonorgestrel slowly, in the womb. That hormone prevents pregnancy from developing by thinning the lining of the uterus, thickening the mucus plug in the cervix to prevent sperm from entering the womb, and preventing sperm cells from moving and surviving inside the womb. In theory, a woman’s egg might actually be fertilized, but the hormone prevents attachment to the wall of the womb and thus, the fertilized egg cannot survive.

It all works very well in women who can tolerate the hormone. But at some point there is no more Levonorgestrel to release, which means the only utility the IUD can then provide is its movement inside the womb which could dislodge a fertilized egg where it has attached to the lining of the uterus. If a woman wishes to have continued protection, she needs to have the depleted device removed and a new one inserted. Obviously, as the narrative has already described, the twins had not thought about this. That’s one of the detrimental side effects of a birth control method you don’t have to think about and can even forget about over time.

Basically, when Paul did get the job in Lincoln and told the twins, and their job searches resulted in jobs in or near Lincoln, and they found a place to live, by the time all this was done the Liletta® IUD’s in their wombs were in excess of six years old and were, in fact, depleted.

That fact is important enough that it needed to be established. Now we can learn about the details that finally brought the three lovers together again after a five year hiatus that everybody who knew them assumed would dissolve their romantic relationship.

Beth found a job teaching in a small town called Crete, about half an hour from Lincoln, proper. She took that job because it also allowed her to work off part of her student loans. Emma was hired by the Nebraska Medical Center and, because of her experience, was hired as an ER nurse. Paul, during his interview, was encouraged to contact Hi View Realty, which had helped a number of other employees find housing in the Lincoln area. When he did, he met Rebecca Bocholt, an agent for the company, and they discussed his needs. He said he planned to marry one of two twin sisters and that, temporarily, the other sister would be living with him and his fiancée until she could find her own place.

“Do you want to rent or buy?” asked Rebecca. “Prices are pretty high right now, regardless of which you choose.”

“Price is an issue,” said Paul. “Beth’s a teacher and they don’t get paid well. My job will have a better salary but I’m just starting out, too.”

“Getting a loan might be an issue,” said Rebecca. “Are you willing to think outside the box?”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Paul.

“I know about one place you might be able to get but it’s definitely a fixer-upper. The pro is that the bank owns it and would love to get rid of it. They might carry the loan themselves, just to get it sold.”

“What is it and where is it?” asked Paul.

“It’s in the country,” said Rebecca. “The bank foreclosed on a farm and when they auctioned the land, they re-platted two acres that the house and outbuildings were on. The tillable acres were sold at auction but nobody bought the house. It’s an older farmhouse, two stories, and was probably built in the forties or fifties. Lots of people have lived in it so there’s a lot of wear and tear.”

“How much do they want for it?” he asked.

“They’ve been asking for two-twenty, but I happen to know nobody’s shown any interest. You could offer a hundred and fifty just to see what they’d do. That might start a dialogue. I know they really want to get out from under this thing.”

“We need to see it,” he said. “The girls will be here Thursday. Can you set something up by then?”

“Sure,” chirped Rebecca. “I’ll also try to have some other properties for you to look at.”

“That sounds great,” he said.

Sometimes realtors know that what the client says they’re looking for (usually based on price) isn’t really what they want. Say, for instance, someone says, “All we can afford is a hundred thousand dollars.” When the realtor actually shows them what a hundred grand will buy, these days, the reaction is, “This is a dump! We can’t live in something like this!” This disconnect between the dream of owning a home and what it will actually cost to match the dream is why people get talked into buying something they really can’t afford. A good realtor will try not to put the client in that position.

When the twins and Paul were taken on a tour, Rebecca showed them the kinds of places that were priced similarly to the farm house. She saved the farm house for last so that they could make appropriate comparisons. In her mind Rebecca thought the farm house could be gotten for a steal. Yes, it would be a fixer-upper, but Paul and Beth were young and capable of making repairs and redecorating. The house was bigger than the others she showed them, and it had plenty of bedrooms and the sister could stay upstairs while the newlyweds could live downstairs. Another good point was that insulation had been added to the walls and in the attic. New windows had also been installed about five or six years before the farm failed. The house was old, but tight, and heating and cooling it would be reasonable in terms of cost.

“Now this is workable,” said Emma, forgetting that she was just supposed to be tagging along while Beth and her fiancé house-hunted. She tried to look sheepish. “I mean if I was going to get married I think this would work better than the other stuff we’ve seen.”

Beth climbed the stairs and walked through the rooms on the upper floor. The stairs and floors creaked, but that was to be expected. There were six rooms upstairs, one of which was a bathroom and one of which was too small to be considered a bedroom. That left four rooms that could be used as bedrooms. In one of them the door was off the hinges and in another there was a hole in the wall, down low, that looked like someone might have kicked it. All of these rooms would have to be repainted before they could be used. The floors were bare hardwood, worn and grimy, but maybe they could be cleaned and sealed with something.

She went back downstairs and found Paul surveying what Rebecca called the master bedroom. It was large, maybe fifteen feet wide and a little longer than that. One wall was shared with the interior kitchen wall. The master bathroom was next door. Rebecca suggested they might be able to put a doorway through the bedroom wall into that bathroom, next to the walk-in closet that had obviously been added after the house was built.

The kitchen was also large, with a bank of windows on the outside wall that made it bright. A door in the rear wall led to a mud room that had benches in it where one could sit and take off muddy boots. There were fifteen or twenty hooks on the walls where, presumably, coats and hats had been hung in the past. Next to that room was another enclosed area that had hookups for a washer and dryer. Two fifty gallon water heaters were in there and what looked like a small furnace.

“This is a ground source heat pump,” said Rebecca. “There are pipes that go underground and water is circulated through them. The heat pump discharges heat into the ground in the summer, which is how the AC works and, in the winter it takes the heat from the underground and heats the home. These systems are very expensive to buy, but very economical to use. They’re also less likely to break down and less expensive to repair if they do. This is a real plus for this property.”

The rest of the lower floor, almost half, was one large, open room, with square supporting pillars instead of load-bearing walls. There was room for a dining room table and probably two or three couches. A fireplace had been closed up. A large pellet stove had been installed on the hearth and used the old chimney as a flue.

Beth pulled all three of them into a huddle, far enough away from Rebecca that she couldn’t hear. Rebecca, for her part, edged away from them to give them some privacy. Huddles were good. Huddles meant there was interest.

“What do you think?” asked Beth.

“It looks workable to me,” said Paul.

“There’s plenty of room,” said Emma. “It’s a short commute to Lincoln and Crete.”

“Can we afford it?” asked Beth.

“I don’t know,” said Paul. We’ll have to talk to the bank.”

“I think we should do that,” said Emma. “It’s better than anything we’ve seen, even if it needs a lot of work.”

Paul left the group to talk to Rebecca.

“Is there any information about how much utilities were when people still lived here?” he asked.

“I can get that for you,” said Rebecca.

“Okay. Let’s talk to the bank and see if we can work something out,” he said.

The bank was delighted that someone was interested in the property. It was listed in the liability column of the bank’s holdings.

Phil Griggs was the loan officer whose office Paul and Beth were ushered into. Emma did not attend.

He started not by talking about the house, but determining what kind of credit history the pair had. There wasn’t much to talk about, because the only credit record either Paul or Beth had were the credit cards they’d had since they graduated from high school. Both had been taught to pay off each month’s totals and never pay less unless it was absolutely necessary. Bob and Julie had helped out the twins while they were in college and Paul had lived a Spartan life during his education. The result was that their credit ratings were comparatively good. Still, there wasn’t much for a loan officer to look at.

“You might need a co-signer,” he said. “Is that possible?”

“Possibly,” said Beth. “I’d have to talk to my parents.”

“How’s their credit rating?” asked Phil.

“Hang on,” said Beth.

She pulled out her phone and called her mother.

“Hey, we’re at the bank, talking to a loan officer about buying a house. If we need a co-signer would you and Daddy be willing to do that?”

“Possibly,” said Julie. “Your father would want to look at the property.”

“What’s your credit score?” asked Beth.

“It’s eight-something,” said Julie. “I don’t know the exact score. I know that when we went car shopping last year they said we qualified for anything we wanted.”

“You got a new car?” said Beth. “I didn’t know that!”

“We didn’t actually buy one,” said Julie. “We just shopped. It was cheaper to just fix the van and keep driving it than buy something new.”

“Hang on,” said Beth. She turned to look at Phil. “She says it’s eight-something but doesn’t know the exact number. Also my father would want to see the house.”

“That’s all fine,” said Phil. He was excited. A credit rating over 800 was phenomenal and would be accepted as a co-signer instantly by the bank. “I think we might be able to do something, here.”

“We haven’t talked about how much you want for the property,” said Paul.

“We’re flexible on that,” said Phil, “as long as you can qualify for a loan.”

“You already said our credit history is thin,” said Paul. “And ‘flexible’ isn’t a price.”

“Make me an offer,” said Phil.

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Paul, promptly.

Phil leaned back in his chair.

“That’s a lowball price for this property,” he said. “We’ve been asking a hundred thousand over that.”

“And nobody has made you an offer at all, according to our realtor,” Paul replied. “We’re willing to buy it, but we can’t afford to spend more than one-fifty and still be able to pay off our student loans.”

“You could rent the outbuildings to farmers in the area,” said Phil. “That barn is big enough to store harvesters and tractors.”

“Maybe we could do that, but we can’t count on that as income to offset house payments,” said Paul. “Come on. You want to get rid of this place. Sell it to us and carry the loan yourselves. If I know my father-in-law to be, you’ll have your co-signers and the property will be collateral. You have nothing to lose. If we can’t make the payments – and I think we’ll be able to – then you can sell it again. Meanwhile we will have fixed it up and improved its appeal.”

Phil thought for a few seconds.

“Wait here,” he said.

He got up to go talk to the vice president of the bank about the only offer they’d received on the old Wadsworth property. He was gone for less than ten minutes. He sat back down and looked at the young couple on the other side of his desk.

“We need to talk to the co-signers. If that works out, then we can do business.”

At this point in time Bob, Julie, and Muriel were aware that Beth and Paul had been talking about marriage. There had been less than ample discussion about this with the parents but that was due to the fact that the trio were all too busy to go home frequently. By this time, the parents had finally stopped assuming that Paul and his girlfriends would break up. All three adults would have asked questions about where Emma fit into this new plan for Beth and Paul to get married, but they didn’t get a chance to do that. The fact that Emma was not, apparently, involved in the house-hunting that Beth and Paul were doing was also curious.

Julie found out the answer to this in a hurried conversation with Beth just before the parents all went to look at the house. Muriel was included in this group without explanation.

“Where is your sister going to live?” asked Julie.

“With us, in the beginning,” said Beth. “There is plenty of room. You’ll see.”

“Won’t that be ... awkward?”

“No, Mom,” said Beth.

“How can it not be? You were both his girlfriends for the last five years!”

“Only one of us could marry him,” Beth whispered. “Don’t worry. We’ve worked everything out.”

Julie held her tongue. It was obvious what was going on. Emma had been employed out west like Beth had. Now both were moving back to the Lincoln area, just as Paul asked Beth to marry him? She wanted to grab her daughter and shake some sense into her but she didn’t. Instead she thought about the fact that her daughters had waited for Paul to finish college. They had finished college, themselves. They were employed and making adult decisions ... not counting this threesome business. They were happy. They hadn’t spent time in bed with Bob for over three weeks.

Who was she to decide how her daughters were to live? She remembered how her mother had tried to butt into her marriage to Bob, back in the day. She didn’t want to be that kind of mother to her daughters.

“You’re as crazy as crazy can be,” she sighed, “but we’ll support you. All we want is for you to be happy.”

There was a heartfelt hug, during which Beth whispered, “Everything will be fine. We’ve worked a long time to get where we are.”

“I know you have,” said Julie. “That’s why this crazy idea might actually work.”

Bob, Julie, and Muriel all walked around, looking here and there. They went upstairs together and Beth could hear them talking, but couldn’t understand the words. When they came back down they looked at the master bedroom and kitchen again. Bob went out into the mud room and then into the utility room. Bob even went out and looked into the outbuildings, though Julie and Muriel did not. When he came back, he, Julie, and Muriel huddled. Again Rebecca, who had led the small convoy to the house, was encouraged. Huddles were good.

“It’s rough,” said Bob, when they finally approached their progeny.

“It’s also big,” said Julie.

“There’s room for family,” said Beth.

“You plan to ... have family?” asked Muriel.

“Of course,” said Beth. “We love each other. We want to have at least two kids.”

“I never thought this would happen,” said Muriel.

Beth hugged her, giving her just as good a hug as she’d given her mother.

“We’re very happy,” she said into the other woman’s hair. “You’ve raised a fine son. I love him to pieces.”

Muriel also wanted to ask about Emma, but did not. This oddball trio had done fine, to this point, even better than fine, considering what she had thought would happen.

And if they bought this house, she’d be able to come see her son and daughter-in-law more often. That made her happy.

Muriel did not go with them to talk to Phil Griggs. His discussion with Bob and Julie was cordial. It was nice to talk to people who had stellar credit.

A week later a contract had been drawn up and was ready for signatures.

There would be no waiting period for the new owners to move in because the bank had already had all applicable inspections done when they foreclosed on the farm.

Roughly five years after they moved away from the Lincoln area, the twins and Paul returned.

They did not return to a life of leisure. The house had been lived in hard. Every room needed paint, whether there were holes to patch or not. The upstairs work went slowly, with the exception of one room, which was fixed up to be “Emma’s room”, for when someone outside the family came, and to present at least a façade when Beth and Paul got married and his sister-in-law continued to live there.

All three went shopping for an engagement ring for Beth but she wanted something unorthodox (surprise, surprise). What they got were twin rings for the women, made of polished tungsten inlaid with a line of crushed fire opals around the middle. They were simple and inexpensive, but also beautiful. The women considered them their engagement rings and wore them home. On the way, Emma said, “You’ll have to get Beth a diamond. People will expect it.”

“I don’t need a diamond,” said Beth.

“I know that,” said Emma. “There are appearances we need to keep up, like my room upstairs.”

“It seems stupid to spend time and money fixing up a room and even putting a bed in it that will never be used,” snorted Beth.

“What?” Paul said in feigned surprise. “I thought that was for when you invite Mister Mysterious over for a little tumble.” He grinned.

“That’s not funny, Paul,” said Emma.

“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” said Paul. “I know who he is, you know.”

Beth, who was sitting in the front seat (again for appearances) leaned toward Paul, who was driving. Emma’s hands appeared on Paul’s and Beth’s bucket seat backs as she pulled herself forward.

“What are you talking about?” asked Emma, at the same time Beth said, “Don’t joke about that, either!”

Paul kept driving.

“Finally,” he said, calmly. “You said something at the same time, but which was different. We should mark this down on the calendar.”

“She’s right,” said Emma. “This is not a laughing matter.”

“I know that,” he said. “If he’s who I’m sure he is, you love him very much.”

“Paul!” yipped both women, back in duet mode.

“I’m a genius, remember? And the number of candidates who had frequent access to you was vanishingly small. It’s a good thing you didn’t tell anybody else about him because you wouldn’t have to be a genius to figure it out.”