The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  “Sure, kiddo. I don’t think a letter from the good Lord himself can wait.”

  Sure enough, there was indeed a bulky envelope on the hall table. A thrill of excitement shot through me when I saw that it bore the logo and return address of the Roseacres Nursing Home and had been sealed and addressed to me in shaky handwriting.

  “Is this from Doc Armstrong?” I asked my mother as we climbed into the car.

  “That’s right. Jesus said the doc gave it to him before he died and said he should be sure to give it to you.”

  “It’s Jesús,” I ground out in frustration. “It’s pronounced Hay-soos!”

  “Yes, dear. But on his nametag it was spelled Jesus, you know,” my mother said. “Oh, my goodness, I clean forgot the flowers and the hostess gift for Bridget! Bob, would you mind …?”

  “Yes, dear,” my father said, with a sigh.

  “They’re in the kitchen, I think,” she called after him.

  Ryan started the engine and left it idling so the heater could warm up the car while we waited for my dad. I slid a finger under the envelope flap, tore it open, and extracted the contents: Colby’s pen and a stack of papers. There was no covering note. Puzzled, I quickly scanned the papers. They appeared to be test results from a laboratory in Boston. Why the hell would Doc Armstrong have wanted me to have these?

  “I made up a bag of crystals for Bridget,” my mother was telling Ryan. “Red amethyst for strength, sodalite for compassion, aquamarine for hope, and black obsidian to expel negative forces and open her third eye — because that’s always useful, don’t you think?”

  By the light of my cellphone, I examined the reports more closely. They appeared to be from tests conducted at regular three-month intervals for the last four years; the most recent was dated just three weeks previously. The results at the bottom of every single page were the same: less than 0.005g/L; within normally occurring range.

  “I’ll show her how to lay them out in a crystal grid. That enhances their power, you know. Oh, my goodness, perhaps I should have made up a collection for Cassie, too?”

  Mystified, I shone my phone’s light on the central section of the reports and read carefully. Saw what had been tested. And for what. And let out a long, low “Ohh!” of realization.

  “What’s that, dear?” my mother asked.

  Yellow flooded my vision, but this time I didn’t fight it. Finally, I had an idea what it meant.

  Ryan shot me a searching glance in the rearview mirror. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Proof of absence,” I said, half-smiling in amazement. “Which, as you know, is not the same as absence of proof.”

  My dad climbed in the car then, looking flustered and holding a large bunch of white lilies surrounded by a swath of feathery fern leaves, and a small cloth bag with drawstring top.

  “What took you so long, Bob?” my mother asked.

  Ryan turned around to see what I was doing — which was taking photographs of every single page and uploading them one by one to the cloud. I was taking no chances with crucial evidence going missing again.

  “They weren’t in the kitchen. I had to hunt all over for them,” my father grumbled. “Is there a reason why you put them in the guest restroom, Crystal?”

  “Hmmm. I suppose there must have been a reason. At the time.”

  “Can we go now?” Dad asked impatiently.

  “Sure, of course,” Ryan replied, but he looked reluctant as he turned back around in his seat and steered us down the driveway.

  I was already on Google, searching as fast as my fingers could fly over the screen. Making connections. Putting it all together. Clue by clue, fact by fact.

  “Yes,” I murmured. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Glad you agree, dear. I did have a moment’s doubt — white lilies, you know, death! Plus they were out-of-season pricey — but the only flowers that weren’t past their prime were carnations, which I always consider such a tight-fisted, begrudging sort of flower.”

  My mother nattered on as Ryan drove us to the Beaumonts, shooting occasional glances back at me. He clearly couldn’t wait to find out what I was doing.

  It all made sense to me now — the two years of record-breaking rain, what Lyle saw, what his father said in class that day, the sick cows, the missing laptop, and Blunt and his father, especially his father. I could guess who Doc Armstrong had been arguing with just before he died and why he’d chosen not to be around when everything came out. And he’d wanted it to, that’s why he’d sent me the information.

  “I wonder who else will be there tonight, and what Bridget will be serving? She’s a fine cook, you know, but fancy. I remember once …”

  The calls and searches on Colby’s phone — I’d been wrong about some of those. Now I knew what they’d really been about, as well as the empty box, trying to tell me something was missing, and the mysterious Itai-Itai. The call to the MIT professor made perfect sense when I checked what subject was her specialty. I even understood the significance of the exasperating yellow.

  “… and turkey can be so dry. But perhaps she’ll serve goose. Or a lovely ham!”

  I could see how it had happened now, and I knew why. How I wished I was wrong.

  48

  NOW

  Sunday December 24, 2017

  I tucked the envelope and my phone into my handbag as we pulled into the curved driveway in front of the massive Beaumont mansion. Ryan opened my door and insisted on escorting me to the front door, leaving my father to take care of the flowers and my mother. None of the three other cars already parked out front showed any damage, I noted, but at the sight of the last car, a silver Chevy Malibu, Ryan suddenly pulled up short.

  “Oh. This could get awkward.”

  “What is it?” I asked, but the front door was already opening, answering my question.

  “Hello, Garnet, long time no see!” Colby’s older sister gave me a friendly hug. Then her surprised gaze fell on my companion. “Ryan.”

  “Hi, Vanessa. Home for the holidays?”

  “Yeah. So” — she glanced between Ryan and me, as if assessing the nature of our relationship — “come in!”

  Bridget arrived to welcome us then, and we were swept into the living room on a wave of greetings, thanks and perfumed hugs. Bridget’s “You really shouldn’t have,” when she received the crystal baggie from my mother, sounded entirely sincere.

  Vanessa introduced us to her husband, Rick Torres — a stocky lawyer with a habit of blinking his eyes rapidly every couple of seconds — and said, “Our little girl’s upstairs sleeping, and I never mess with a sleeping toddler, so you’ll have to meet her another time.”

  Philip and Roger Beaumont greeted me civilly, but coldly; Michelle Armstrong pointedly ignored me but explained to Ryan that although she felt completely crushed by grief at the loss of her husband, she’d felt it important to come and draw comfort from the support of good friends; and Jessica explained that Nico wouldn’t be coming because he was in the middle of painting a new masterpiece from which he absolutely, positively could not be pulled away. Domino, trotting up to greet the visitors, stepped back from me, ears flat against his head and tail between his legs. A sound that was half-whine, half-growl escaped his bared teeth.

  “What’s up, boy?” Ryan said, ruffling the dog’s head and giving me a quizzical look.

  I shrugged. Really, there was no way to explain what I suspected the dog’s problem was without sounding like a total lunatic.

  Roger took my coat and hauled Domino off to the kitchen, while his brother handed me a tiny glass of sherry. I downed it and immediately accepted a refill. Dutch courage would be required this evening.

  “May I go say hi to Cassie?” I asked Bridget.

  “She wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t. Come, we’ll go together.”

  I followed her upstairs and once again admired the lovers’ bronze statue on the landing, once again came face-to-face with the picture of Colby in the family photograph
gallery on the wall opposite. I kissed two fingers, laid them on his lips, and whispered, “I’ve almost worked it out.”

  I was about to follow his mother down the hallway to Cassie’s room when my gaze slid to the picture next to Colby’s. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, but this time there was nothing supernatural about the sensation.

  I was looking at a picture of the Beaumont family — Cassie cradling a black-and-white puppy, Vanessa making bunny-ears behind both her father’s and uncle’s heads, while Bridget was absent from the shot. Maybe she’d been the one taking it. They were gathered outside their old house near my parents’ place, posing for a quick picture just before they set out for a family vacation to judge by the collection of bags at their feet, and the suitcase Colby had paused in the act of putting into the trunk of a car.

  A large, charcoal-gray car. A BMW.

  Totally engrossed in the picture, I started in surprise when Bridget spoke beside me.

  “She’s fast asleep, and I’d rather not disturb her. Could we try again later?”

  “Cassie — right. Yes, sure, I will.” I tapped the photograph. “This picture, Mrs. Beaumont?”

  “We were off to spend time at the house in Martha’s Vineyard.” She sighed. “It seems like that was the last time we were all truly happy.”

  “And whose car was this?” I asked, and nodded when she told me.

  Dinner — roast turkey, not at all dry, with all the trimmings — was a noisy affair. I sat quietly between Ryan and Vanessa, listening to the chatter around me with half an ear, while I tried to put the final pieces of the puzzle together. Jessica, her face drawn and pale, told us that Nico was entering his own blue period, which was nothing like Picasso’s, but that we should expect great things from him. This set my mother off on a tangent about turquoise and blue lace agate which had Vanessa’s husband blinking even more often.

  Bridget diverted her with an offering of more gravy and regaled us with a story about the fight for the last turkeys in the new grocery store in town. “Why, I thought your mother might snatch this bird right out of my hands, Jessica!”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Jessica said, while Michelle gave her practiced smile and said, “It was on the menu for our lunch tomorrow. But we’ll make do with a hickory ham.”

  Then Roger recounted an anecdote about how he’d bumped into his old pal Fred at the garden center.

  “He’d brought along a branch from his Pinus resinosa to show the experts there, wanted an opinion on why the tree is dying. He had them all scratching their heads, trying to figure out what disease would cause twisted branch tips and browned needles like that. I could have told them, but I didn’t want to get old Mrs. Hale in trouble.”

  “Mrs. Hale?” Philip said. “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “She’s Fred’s neighbor, and she’s been complaining about that tree of his for years. Says it puts a permanent shade over her yard, kills her lawn, spoils her view, and now the roots are lifting her driveway. Seems she finally got tired of asking Fred to take care of it and took matters into her own hands.”

  His brother smiled at him indulgently. “I suppose you caught footage of it on your drone?”

  My ears perked at that. “Drone?”

  “You spy on the people of Pitchford with your drone?” Vanessa asked, instantly outraged.

  “I don’t spy. But I do occasionally get accidental footage of folks around here,” her uncle said.

  I placed my knife and fork down on my plate. “What’s your intentional footage of?”

  “People have rights to privacy, you know,” Vanessa said. “You can’t just do what you want when it impinges on other people’s rights.”

  “Vanessa,” her father said, “please don’t start.”

  “But—”

  “Clear the plates away, would you, dear?” Bridget asked her daughter. “I’ll bring the crème brûlée.”

  “Talk about Big Brother watching! Soon the clocks will be striking thirteen on a cold day in April,” Vanessa muttered as she collected and stacked the plates. Jessica leapt up to help, but I stayed seated, eyes on Roger.

  “Do you ever film over the woods on the hill up behind the estate?” I asked him.

  “Indeed, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Well, it’s a very picturesque spot, isn’t it, with the trees and the view.”

  “I’m sure you must see some very interesting things. And you probably like to keep an eye on your investment.”

  “Of course. This development didn’t come cheap.”

  Bridget placed the shallow dishes of baked custard with their caramelized sugar tops in front of each of us.

  “Get back to the story, Roger,” my father said. “What exactly did Grandma Hale do?”

  “Well, I hope this won’t get her in trouble with our local constabulary,” Roger said, waggling his eyebrows at Ryan, “but she’s been spraying whatever parts of that tree she could reach through her fence for months.”

  Everyone laughed politely, except my mother. To her credit, she would never have prioritized lawns and driveways ahead of magnificent trees.

  “What did she poison it with?” I asked.

  Roger raised his hands in an I-have-no-idea gesture. “Some sort of herbicide, I expect. Perhaps a common weed killer.”

  I nodded, cracking my spoon through the hard sugar topping of my dessert. “So, not something like cadmium, then?”

  Roger’s smile became fixed. “I don’t think cadmium’s a weed killer.”

  “You’re right there. It’s a heavy metal.” I could feel Ryan’s gaze on me as I ate a spoonful of the silky custard.

  “Cadmium is the name of a paint pigment. Yellow thirty-seven, I think,” Jessica said. “It’s been used in art since the early nineteenth century. It was a favorite of Monet’s.”

  “Not sure whether it would do any damage to a tree, but it’s poisonous to humans,” I continued.

  “Really, dear?” my mother said. “Did you know that in minute doses, poisonous substances like arsenic and hemlock are used in homeopathy?”

  I tuned out the hubbub of hot debate about the safety of homeopathy that followed; I was thinking. It wasn’t too late to drop this whole thing. If I went ahead now, if I told what I knew, I’d be destroying a family and initiating a sequence of serious consequences that would cost many of the people around this table deeply. If justice came at such a high price to so many, would Colby still want me to pursue it?

  Screw that, I knew what I wanted. Besides, I’d promised him. Promised Cassie, too.

  49

  NOW

  Sunday December 24, 2017

  Raising my voice to be heard above Michelle’s accusations of homeopathic quackery, my mother’s outraged defense, and my father’s futile attempts to defuse the argument, I said, “I also have a story to tell. And, like Roger’s, it’s also about poison.”

  Philip swallowed hard and said, “Bridget, I think it’s time for coffee, now.”

  Roger tossed his napkin beside his plate and pushed his chair back from the table. “Good idea. Let’s all go to the living room where it’s nice and toasty by the fire, and chat about something more cheerful.”

  But Ryan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I’d like to hear Garnet’s story.”

  The Beaumont brothers exchanged a glance, and Michelle said, “Really, I don’t think any of us wants to hear—”

  “I do,” said Vanessa, wriggling in her chair as if settling in for a bedtime story. “Once upon a time …” she cued me.

  “Once upon a time, about eleven years ago,” I began, “there were two years of very heavy rains in Vermont.”

  “I remember it well,” my father said.

  “Me, too,” said Jessica.

  I nodded. “Yeah, your senior AP chemistry project was about acid rain, and your test results were affected by the high rainfall.�
�

  “Global warming, end times warning,” my mother said in a sing-song.

  “There was so much water and so little sun that Vermont’s dairy cows, including those on Farmer Johnson’s farm at the bottom of Kent Hill, developed a bad kind of eczema due to a fungus on the pasture plants. The only thing that worked to treat them was to give them huge doses of zinc — added to their food, and applied to their bodies in a special ointment.”

  “When do we get to the good part?” Vanessa said.

  “When the zinc was excreted in the cows’ manure and washed off their bodies by the rain, it was carried deep into the ground by the heavy rains, until it hit the rising water table. And along the way, it collected a toxic chemical passenger.”

  They were all looking at me now.

  “Cadmium.”

  Yellow threatened at the edge of my vision. Not now, Colby, I thought.

  Jessica tucked her chin back in surprise. “Why was there cadmium in the soil?”

  “Cadmium is an ingredient in organophosphates — the fertilizers our farmers toss so generously on their crops. The ground’s full of it. Normally that’s not too much of a problem because cadmium binds to the soil and stays there, inert. Even when it rains.”

  “I bet California wishes it could have some of our rain and snow right about now,” Roger said. “Those wildfires are wreaking havoc on their forests.”

  “You said normally it’s not a problem. But?” Ryan prompted me.

  “But one of the properties of zinc is that it loosens those chemical bonds, so the cadmium, freed from the soil particles, travels down into the water table.”

  “Dear me, that can’t be good,” Bridget said.

  “It’s very bad,” I said. “Especially when Beaumont Brothers Spring Water Company draws its water from that very water table.”

  “Excuse me!” Roger exclaimed indignantly. “But we draw our water from the source of the spring right at the top of Kent Hill.”

  “You do now. But back then, you took it directly from a well sunk into the water table at the bottom of the hill, on the Johnson farm side. Easier. Cheaper, too, no doubt.”