The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  I parked directly outside, beside a lamppost with a sign announcing a Carols by Candlelight gathering scheduled for the following evening down at the bandstand by Plover Pond. I would not be attending that event, no sir, no ma’am, no matter how hard my mother tried to strong-arm me into holly-ing and holy-ing. Just the idea of cheerful carolers singing merrily of silent nights, baby boys and joyful tidings in that particular spot raised a fierce prickle of anger behind my eyes.

  Grabbing my handbag, I climbed out of the car, slammed the door behind me and, gasping at the shock of freezing air and buffeting wind, set the remote lock and alarm. At the double beep, a nearby man walking a dog on a lead turned in surprise. He smiled indulgently at my foolish big city ways and patted his pet, which was shivering despite being swathed in the absurd canine equivalent of a holiday sweater.

  “You don’t need to lock your car here, ma’am. We don’t have criminals in this town.”

  I recognized the old man at once as my one-time high school chemistry teacher, but he clearly didn’t remember me. “I know exactly what kind of town this is, Mr. Wallace.”

  Enjoying the look of surprise on his face, I spun on my heel and took a step toward the café, but something brushed up against my legs, tangling my feet, and the icy sidewalk slipped out from under me. I fell hard, slamming flat on my back and banging my head against the lamppost. White lights popped in the blackness behind my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

  I heard pants and grunts. Someone was crouched beside me, asking me something. I wanted to tell them to back up out of my space, but there was a weight crushing my lungs flat and no air to speak. Hands helped me into a sitting position, and a voice said, “There now, stay calm. You’ll feel better in a moment or two. You just got the wind knocked out of you.”

  The grunts were coming from me, not the dog, I realized. Embarrassment superseding panic, I forced a small breath in through my nose, and then pushed a slow breath out through my mouth. That helped. Uttering a curse on my next exhalation helped even more.

  “There you go,” the voice encouraged.

  I opened my eyes and saw Mr. Wallace bending down to peer at me solicitously. His dog sat beside me, licking my hand, and a small group of people had gathered around to watch my growing relationship with the sidewalk. I waved them away.

  “Give her some space, folks. She’ll be fine in a minute, just let her catch her breath.”

  Face hot, and still trying to steady my breathing, I glowered down at my feet to see what had tripped me up. A broadsheet of the The Bugle was twisted around my ankles, its headline urging me to support the campaign to rename Pitchford. As I snatched the crumpled newspaper off my feet, my gaze was snagged by a black-and-white photograph of a face. Then a blast of wind whipped the paper out of my hand, and it was gone, flapping down the sidewalk and into the afternoon mist like a pale bat.

  “Here, let’s get you to your feet,” Mr. Wallace said.

  Accepting the proffered hand, I allowed myself to be pulled upright.

  “Thanks,” I wheezed. My chest ached like I’d been kicked in the ribs by a mule.

  “Can I help you somewhere?”

  “I’m fine. Just need to sit for a bit.” I indicated the café with a jerk of my chin.

  Mr. Wallace insisted on lending me a steadying arm for the few steps to its entrance. I was uncharacteristically grateful for this chivalry; I still felt a little faint and dizzy. At the door, I glanced back over my shoulder, but there was no sign of the newspaper. Thanking my escort again, I entered the café.

  “Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” said the man standing just inside, under a hanging branch of mistletoe.

  I stepped aside smartly. Time had not been kind to Pete Dillon. He’d been in the same year as me in high school, but back then he’d been six-foot-one of solid quarterback muscle. And he’d had more hair. Now he had a small paunch, his features were more smudged than chiseled, and his hair had receded to deep widow’s wings at the top of his temples. His smirk was the same, though, as was the assessing look he gave me from top to toe. Pete had always been a player, and good-looking enough to have his pick of the girls. I’d never been interested, which had annoyed him no end even though I don’t think he ever truly wanted me. He just wanted me, and everyone else, to want him.

  “It’s you, Crystal’s daughter. Gina … something,” he said.

  “Garnet.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, like I was having him on. “Long time no see. It must be, what — seven or eight years since you were last here?”

  “Nine and a half.”

  He nodded. “That’s right, yeah. Because didn’t you leave town the year after—” He cut himself off, grimacing.

  “I left right after I graduated high school.”

  “You’ve changed. You cut your hair. And didn’t you used to be a blonde?”

  “No.”

  In high school, I’d worn my hair long down to the middle of my back because Colby had loved it that way. I cut it short when I moved to Boston, and now it just brushed my shoulders. But it had only ever been chestnut brown.

  “And didn’t your eyes used to be brown?”

  My eyes were blue. “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  “Here, let me take your coat.”

  I looked around. The café was mostly full, but there were still a couple of empty tables.

  “Can I sit anywhere?”

  “Sure. You look kinda pale. You okay?”

  “I just need coffee.” And to sit down.

  “We got coffee. All kinds.”

  I headed to an empty table at the far wall, rubbing my aching hip where, no doubt, a bruise was already blossoming. Pete trailed behind me, rattling off the options.

  “Our special today is a Christmas spiced cinnamon steamer, but otherwise we have all the regulars — cappuccino, espresso, latte, macchiato.”

  The place was a regular Starbucks. Back when old man Dillon ran the joint, you could get your cup of joe black or white; both had tasted the same, and neither had tasted much like coffee. I sank into the chair with my back against the wall. A tight knot of pain was gathering behind my eyes. Was it due to the blow I’d taken to my head, or was it just caffeine withdrawal? It could also just be a tension headache brought on by being back in Pitchford — I could feel my shoulders hunched up tight, inching toward my ears.

  I cricked my neck and rolled my shoulders, telling Pete, “I’ll have a large regular coffee. Extra, extra hot.”

  “One Americano — grande, extra hot — coming right up.”

  “Extra, extra hot,” I said to his departing back.

  With a sigh, I leaned back and looked around. Surprisingly, Dillon’s Country Store and Café was charming. The enameled tables, with their drop sides and tops decorated in a variety of country motifs — black-and-white floral edging, cream with blue windmills, pink roses on pale green — looked to be originals. One wall was dominated by a huge Hoosier cabinet, complete with threaded glass drawer knobs and shelves laden with decorative sugar canisters, spice jars, striped milk jugs and flour sifters. Artfully arranged beside the antique cash register on the counter up front were handcrafts, maple sugar candy, and cotton sacks of Dillon’s Own Finest Arabica coffee beans.

  The young couple at an adjacent table got up and headed out, leaving a neatly folded copy of The Bugle lying on their table. Had I seen what I thought I had back outside, or had my brain been rattled by the encounter with the lamppost? I was about to grab the paper when a tall mug of coffee was plonked down on the table in front of me by an attractive woman in an old-fashioned waitress uniform.

  “Garnet McGee, as I live and breathe!”

  “Judy Burns,” I replied.

  “It’s Judy Dillon now.” She tapped the wedding band on her ring finger as she sat down in the chair on my left, blocking the newspaper from my view.

  I wasn’t surprised to discover that Pete and Judy — or Punch and Judy, as we’d called them ba
ck in the day — had wound up together.

  Judy gave me an appraising look, taking in my heavy, lace-up Doc Martens, black jeans and turtle-neck, my unstyled hair and bitten nails. “Are you married?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Any kids?”

  “Tell me about yours.” Clearly, she was eager to.

  “We have three.” Judy wriggled in her chair, preening.

  “Congratulations,” I said. She seemed to expect it.

  “There’s Deanna, who’s nine, Dallas, who’s seven, and our baby, Dayle, who’s just turned three. That’s Dayle spelt D-A-Y-L-E, because she’s a girl. They’re all girls.”

  Bet Football Pete loved that. I touched the side of the coffee mug with assessing fingers. It was warm, not hot and definitely not extra hot, let alone extra, extra hot. Why did they never believe me?

  “So you live in Boston now?” Judy asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your mother misses you terribly. Every time I visit her store for a reading she tells me how she longs to see more of you.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “You shouldn’t leave it too late to catch a man, you know. Your face starts sagging and your eggs start rotting after thirty-five.”

  “Judy, you always were a charmer.”

  I dug a finger into the pad of flesh at the base of my left thumb and rubbed hard, a process, so my mother always said, that was supposed to alleviate headaches. The old white scar on my palm stretched and crinkled in tandem with the movements.

  “And you’re how old now — thirty-one, thirty-two?”

  “I’m twenty-seven, same as you. We were in the same year at high school,” I snapped.

  It wasn’t that I feared getting older, or that I envied Judy her husband and all those rug rats. It just wasn’t a part of my plan to get married. On the contrary, as Perry had seemingly noticed, it was my modus operandi never to get too close to anyone, to leave them before they could leave me. But I had thought that, by this age, I’d already be qualified and running my own practice in a charming Victorian-style brick townhouse in South End or Beacon Hill. It was never part of the plan to still be struggling to complete my thesis while working as an assistant in the university’s psychology department, and still accepting financial help from my father to pay for my apartment. I might no longer live in my parents’ house in my old home town, but I wasn’t independent, not really. And that rankled.

  I tore the tops off three sugar packets, poured them into my coffee and stirred.

  Judy eyed this with a critical eye, no doubt thinking I’d find it even harder to snag a husband with a diet that was sure to thicken my waistline. Hers, I noticed, was as trim as it had been a decade ago, and her breasts, if anything, seemed both larger and perkier. But there was a tightness around her eyes and mouth that made me think life with Pete and the three D’s wasn’t all sunshine and roses.

  Tilting back my head — a movement which made it throb — I gulped the lukewarm coffee down in one continuous swallow. I gingerly explored the tender lump on the back of my head. I’d better not mention my fall to my parents, or my mother would tip six kinds of remedies into my mouth and no doubt spout some nonsense about the incident being an omen of bad luck presaging a drop in my fortunes. My father would insist I get a doctor to check me out. Was Doc Armstrong still practicing, I wondered.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt your gossip session, but could you possibly get Garnet’s order in?” Pete had returned and was scowling down at his wife.

  I fully expected her to put him in his place — she’d never been one to keep her mouth shut — but she stood up hurriedly, smoothed her apron, gave me a smile which didn’t quite reach her eyes, and asked, “What’ll it be?”

  She hadn’t brought me a menu, but I didn’t like to point that out in front of Pete.

  “Something hot.” I was still feeling chilled after my stretch on the icy sidewalk.

  “Soup of the day? Our Saturday special is—”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be right back.” She stepped around Pete and headed back to the kitchen.

  “Good coffee, huh?” he asked me.

  “The best,” I said, straight-faced.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, smirking as widely as if I’d just complimented him on the size of his dick, before the bell on the door summoned him to welcome a new family of customers.

  Judy reappeared, told me my soup would be just a couple of minutes, and began clearing the cups and plates from the table next to mine, putting the folded newspaper on her tray.

  “Can I have that?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I took it and held it against my chest for a long moment, unsure whether I really wanted to check inside, then placed it flat on the table in front of me. There, on the front page beneath the banner, was the headline I’d seen about renaming the town. Delaying the moment of opening the paper, I read the short article beneath.

  The move to rename Pitchford in line with its charming New England identity was being spearheaded by Michelle Armstrong, Pitchford’s town clerk and treasurer. So, Jessica’s mother, at least, was still alive and living in town. She’d moved up in the world since the days she was a mere committee member, regularly coming to the K12 school shared by the handful of towns in the surrounding area to do “inspections,” and embarrassing her daughter by being overly friendly to the kids, acting as if she herself was still eighteen.

  Armstrong argued that Pitchford’s old name didn’t adequately convey its tourist potential and caused endless confusion with Pitchfield over in Washington County. She was pushing for the town to be renamed Pitchford Springs “in a fitting acknowledgment of the importance of the natural water springs in the town’s economic resurgence.” My father said that, these days, the Beaumont Brothers Water Company employed half the town — and almost all the newcomers — and contributed generously to its improvements.

  Reading between the lines of the article, the town clerk’s quest to reinvent Pitchford as the cutest little village in all New England was meeting with considerable resistance from older residents. Nevertheless, she’d no doubt still get her way. My mother always said Michelle Armstrong was as bullheaded as a Taurus, as vindictive as a Scorpio, and as petty as a Pisces. My father said she was a woman he never wanted to cross. I didn’t care one way or another what they called the town. Giving it a new name wouldn’t change its true nature, any more than sticking a mahogany veneer on a coffin changed that it was a cheap pine box for a corpse.

  “Here you go.” Judy placed a bowl of soup down in front of me. This time she didn’t linger.

  Bracing myself for what I was about — or not about — to see, I opened the newspaper and glanced down. And there it was, in the bottom right corner of page two.

  Seeing the photograph of him was like getting winded all over again. I focused on the headline above the picture instead.

  Tenth Anniversary of the Disappearance of Colby Beaumont.

  6

  THEN

  Wednesday December 19, 2007

  A blizzard set in on the night Colby never came home. I twisted myself into a sick knot of fear while it raged for two days — dumping a foot of snow over the town, freezing the pond, closing the school, preventing a search, and blowing away any clues that might have been left behind.

  I startled awake on the third morning, alerted by the sound of silence after days of shrieking winds. The world outside my window was shrouded in white, and a feeble sun strained half-heartedly to raise its head above the horizon.

  As I hurriedly dressed in my thermal clothes and snowsuit, the rough purr of the snow blower started outside — my father must already be clearing the path and driveway. I grabbed my phone and ran downstairs, only to find my mother was still in her bathrobe and slippers.

  “Why aren’t you dressed yet? They said the search would start at sunrise.”

  She handed me my snow boots and gave me what I think was supposed to be an
encouraging smile. “I’ll be staying here, Garnet, where I can do more good.”

  “Doing what precisely?” I asked, thrusting my feet into the boots and yanking on gloves and a beanie.

  “I’ve already lit a candle and—”

  “We need searchers, not candles.”

  “Perhaps I’ll use a pendulum and map.”

  I snorted. Under the best of conditions, I had limited patience for her drivel. Today, with Colby’s life at stake, I was tempted to slap her.

  “And even though the signs are bad—”

  I didn’t want to hear this. “Signs? Have you been studying bird entrails, or consulting the dead?” I snarled, heading for the front door.

  “And I’ll keep praying for St. Jude to intercede. He’s the patron saint of lost causes.”

  “It’s not a lost cause. It’s not!” I yelled at her as I slammed out of the house.

  My father took one look at my face and said, “She’d get in the way more than she’d help, you know that.”

  “Let’s go. Please let’s just go,” I said.

  Dad had fitted snow chains to the tires of his car the day before, but he still inched with infuriating carefulness down our street, ignoring my orders to go faster. Plow trucks had already cleared and salted the way on the bigger streets, and down on Pond Road an emergency truck was parked beside an old oak where a fallen limb had taken down the power line. The screams of the power saw tore through the snow-muffled silence, setting my teeth on edge.

  A search party was gathering at the bandstand, stamping their feet, blowing into gloved hands, and sipping on steaming cups of coffee. We immediately walked over to Colby’s father and uncle — Philip and Roger Beaumont. With their identical graying blond hair, brown eyes and thin noses, they looked so alike, they could’ve been twins. That day their faces were pale and pinched tight with worry. Colby’s father had their young Dalmatian on a lead; perhaps they’d brought him in the hopes he could help track Colby, but surely even a champion bloodhound couldn’t detect a scent buried under a foot of snow. The dog yelped in recognition and came over to leap up against me.