The First Time I Died

by Joanne Macgregor

  Ryan raced around the table and leapt over me to hurtle after him. Ears ringing, and holding onto my jaw as if it might fall off my face, I got to my feet and followed them into the hall.

  Roger was already lying face down and motionless on the marble floor. Either Ryan had landed a good one, or Roger had hit his head when he landed — either way, he was out cold. Ryan pulled out his phone to call for backup, but I marched straight over to Roger and kicked him in the ribs.

  “That’s for stealing Colby’s phone. And that’s for wrecking my car, and chasing me onto that fucking pond!” I kicked him again. “And that’s for Cassie!”

  Ryan put his hand over the mouthpiece and waved me away from Roger’s unconscious form. “Stop that, Garnet!”

  “What? He was resisting arrest.”

  I waited until Ryan began speaking into the phone again, then took a little run at Roger and kicked him in the balls. “And that’s for Colby!”

  “Garnet, I’m not kidding — stop that!” Ryan dragged me away from Roger and backed me up against the front door. “Stay!”

  His back was to the hall, and the stairs, and the landing above. But I could see everything. The bronze lovers, still clinging tightly to each other in that last moment, plummeted down from above and smashed into Roger’s head with a sickening, wet crack before thudding onto the marble floor. One of the bronze heads broke off and skidded away from the blossoming pool of blood. I stared up at the landing where Cassie stood, insubstantial and pale as a wraith, her trembling arms still raised above the rail.

  “I stumbled,” she said. “I bumped into the statue and it fell. Very sorry.”

  But she didn’t look it, not at all.

  Epilogue

  Plover Pond had long seemed menacing and sinister to me, but that day, it looked merely pretty. Pale winter sun glistened on its frozen surface, and the reeds and bare winter trees formed a spiky coronet around its edges. Only the small group of people, silently clustered with the Beaumonts near the water’s edge, spoiled the picture-postcard-perfect scene.

  Bridget and Vanessa stood on either side of Cassie, holding her up while they scattered Colby’s ashes onto the water.

  My parents and I watched from higher up the embankment. I wanted to be down there with them — I craved the connection of holding a fistful of that gray dust, prolonging a last touch with Colby, even as I shuddered at the thought of it. But when I made to walk down and join them, my mother held me back.

  “No, dear,” she said, patting the back of my hand. “It’s still too soon.”

  I nodded at the surprisingly sane bit of wisdom. I wanted to offer what consolation I could to the Beaumont women, but they seemed to want only each other. I was a reminder of Colby’s murder, and they were too full of anger at his father and uncle, and surely also at me for bringing the whole thing up again and being the cause of them losing yet more family members, to want to talk to me.

  “Rest in peace, Colby,” I whispered, the mist of my breath fading in the air, along with my words. “Always and forever.”

  In the week since the Christmas Eve dinner, a lot had happened. Pete Dillon and Philip Beaumont had been arrested, Roger Beaumont’s body had been taken to Burlington to await the chief medical examiner’s attentions, and operations at the Beaumont Brothers water bottling plant had been shut down until further notice. The police had yet to decide whether or not to bring charges against Cassie, but it was clear she wouldn’t live to see a trial. We McGees had celebrated a subdued Christmas, my mother’s plaster cast had been removed, and my bruises and tender-tipped fingers had all but healed.

  What had not happened, however, was anything remotely spooky. I hadn’t had a single vision. No words had fallen into my mind, no surges of foreign feelings had flooded through me, no lightbulbs had blown, and I’d felt no mysterious drafts. Even my bouts of nausea and the incessant headaches had disappeared.

  Just as Professor Perry had predicted, all my guilt-induced hallucinations and symptoms had subsided along with my guilt. I hadn’t been the cause, directly or even indirectly, of Colby’s death. And whatever I may have owed our love, I’d settled it by solving his murder. I was free to be me again. Rational, logical, more-or-less normal me — only with different-colored eyes.

  “You need to hurry if you don’t want to miss your bus, kiddo,” my father said.

  My car was still in the shop. I’d promised my parents I would make a long weekend of it when I came to fetch it, probably at the end of January. Right now, I was headed back to Boston; I had a meeting with Perry scheduled for the next day.

  Ryan Jackson gave us a ride to the bus stop at the gas station in Main Street, stowed my suitcase in the storage compartment, and kissed me — this time, on the lips. And this time, I didn’t pull back.

  “Dinner when you come back to get your car?” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  But I said it with a smile and a nod, because it was time to start living and feeling again. Perhaps even — one day — loving again. And Ryan had, after all, brought my heart back to life once. Maybe he could do it again.

  I scored a window seat, shoved my handbag under the seat by my feet and wiped a forearm against the window to my right, clearing a circle in the condensation. As the bus pulled away, I waved at Ryan and at my father, who’d given me a murder mystery to read on the ride, and at my mother, who’d pressed a lilac gemstone into my hand as I climbed onto the bus full of folks headed back to the big city after the holidays.

  “Lepidolite – for clarity in decision-making,” she’d said confidently.

  I’d already made my decision. I now knew, as Perry already had, that I was not cut out to be a psychologist. Beyond that, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life except to sleep for a week. It had been an exhausting trip home, and I was eager to get back to the neighbor-noisy sanctuary of my apartment, to enjoy the quiet solitude of my own mind.

  I dropped the stone into my parka pocket, where it clicked against the amethyst quartz I’d found in the shallows of the pond. Opening Dad’s novel to the first page, I sighed happily and began reading.

  The book was almost finished by the time we reached Boston, and though we made multiple stops and collected even more passengers on the way, the seat beside me, on my left, remained empty.

  The second book in the Garnet McGee series, The First Time I Fell, is available here!

  Dear Reader,

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on your favorite online site or on Goodreads. Every review is valuable in helping other readers discover the book.

  Other books for adults by this author

  The First Time I Fell

  The First Time I Hunted

  Dark Whispers

  A sneak peek from The First Time I Fell is at the end of this book

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  I’d love to hear from you! Come say hi on Facebook or Twitter, or reach out to me via my website and I’ll do my best to get back to you. - Joanne Macgregor

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to my editor, Chase Night, and to my fabulous beta readers, Emily Macgregor, Nicola Long, Edyth Bulbring, and Heather Gordon, for all their invaluable feedback. You improve my writing immeasurably, and I deeply appreciate each one of you!

  Thanks also to technical consultants for this book — Mary Scholes and Tamiru Abiye from the University of the W
itwatersrand, and Tyler Arbour for so generously sharing their expertise in heavy metals, biogeochemistry and ecology. Any technical errors are my own!

  I’m also grateful to Cameron Garriepy for being my expert Vermont reader — you have a beautiful state!

  Continue reading for a sneak peek from The First Time I Fell

  Sneak Peek from

  The First Time I Fell

  (Garnet McGee, book 2)

  – 1 –

  Saturday, March 10

  There’s a first time for everything, they say. My first time at breaking into a house was not going well.

  It wasn’t surprising, given that I wasn’t a professional burglar. My six years of studying psychology had equipped me to breach the defensive walls of the human mind, but for the door in front of me, I needed a key.

  I checked under the mat on the top step — which greeted me with a cheerful Welcome to the nut house! — but found only a flattened, desiccated spider. Peering under the ceramic pots of blue spruce on either side of the front door and searching the small front yard for a false rock also yielded nothing. Perhaps I’d missed an obvious trick — this was, after all, a gated community in a small town deep in the heart of rural Vermont, where folks weren’t too worried about security. I tested the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  I stole around to the rear of the property, keeping an ear open for the sound of dogs, but heard only the crunch of snow under my new Doc Martens. The back door was also locked, but a small square window on the far side of the house was open an inch. Spotting a wrought iron bench under a nearby tree, I dragged it over, placed it directly beneath the window and climbed onto it. Then, groaning with the effort it cost my upper arms, I hoisted myself up.

  Lifting the window outward and holding it up with one arm, I slid underneath and pushed forward. The latch dug painfully into my stomach, and when I let go of the pane, it dropped down onto my back, wedging me between the window and the sill, with my torso inside and my legs outside, wriggling like a trapped bug. Pushing the window back open with an elbow, I squirmed through the opening, but as the balance of my weight shifted, I toppled headfirst onto the toilet, breaking my fall with one arm plunged into the bowl before tumbling onto the tiled floor.

  Crap. This was so not the way I’d wanted to start.

  I scrubbed my hands and rinsed my arm at the basin and then dried off on a pink hand towel before heading downstairs to the front door. The interior of the house was almost obsessively neat — I’d ruin that soon enough — and decorated in a frou-frou style that set my teeth on edge. Lladró figurines of shepherdesses, harlequins and kittens were crowded onto shelves, embroidered cushions held court on old-style sofas upholstered in floral linen with ruffled skirts, and potted plants clustered in corners like church gossips. Lace doilies defended the polished surfaces of side tables as well as the hall dresser, where mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Andersen stood at attention in a letter rack.

  I jumped as the doorbell chimed. Dogs barked furiously on the other side of the front door. Someone had noticed my arrival.

  I twisted the latch on the lock and opened the door. A slim man stood on the front step, holding the leashes of two beagles that leapt, yelping and yapping, around his feet. He had brown hair and eyes, a thin nose, looked to be in his early forties, and was not unattractive, although the combination of bowtie and thick cardigan was a little prissy. He’d fit right into the Andersen house, though.

  He gave me a friendly smile. “You must be the house-sitter. I saw you drive up.”

  His gaze darted back and forth between my eyes in the way I’d grown used to in the last few months. After I’d died and been resuscitated back before Christmas, the iris of my left eye had gradually turned from blue to brown, and it looked like the change was permanent.

  “I’m Ned Lipton. Lipton like the tea, although I’m not related to the family, more’s the pity! I’m your neighbor.” He gestured to the house on the other side of the picket fence that bordered the Andersen property. “You have no neighbor on the other side,” he added, unnecessarily. “Unless you count the hazelnuts.”

  A small copse of trees, their twiggy branches like black claws frosted with snow, stood on the other side of the Andersen house. That would account for the nutty crack on the doormat.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” he said.

  It was a swankier neighborhood than I was used to. Back in Boston, I lived in a small apartment with little furniture, noisy neighbors and a view of a parking lot. Though normally wedded to the bustling anonymity of the city, that morning I’d packed my laptop, a box of academic texts and journal articles, and a suitcase of clothes and toiletries into the trunk of my Honda and driven back to my old hometown. For the month of March, while the elderly Andersens enjoyed a “Sizzling Seniors” ocean cruise to destinations exponentially more exotic than New England, I'd be looking after their house in the Beaumont Golf Estate, taking care of their dogs, and trying my damnedest to finish my master’s thesis.

  When I’d told my supervisor, Professor Perry, that I no longer intended to be a psychologist and wouldn’t be doing a doctorate, he’d been unsurprised, but he’d urged me to complete and submit my thesis anyway.

  “That way, at least you’ll get your master’s degree and have some letters behind your name. Maybe sometime, somewhere, that’ll count for something,” he’d said, sounding doubtful.

  My mother and father, who still lived in Pitchford and were in the same gardening club as the Andersens, had set up the house-sitting gig.

  Dad had called to let me know of the offer. “It’ll be an ideal opportunity for you to work in a quiet environment with no interruptions.”

  “And we’ll get to see you every day!” Mom had added.

  I’d been tempted more by his sales pitch than hers, but I’d vacillated over the decision, having no real desire to return to Pitchford so soon. Or ever. There were many in Pitchford who would not be thrilled by my return, but at least these beagles and Ned Lipton seemed pleased to meet me.

  I shook my new neighbor’s hand. “I’m Garnet McGee. Are these the Andersens’ dogs?”

  “Yup. The female, this one with the mostly white face, is Lizzie. And this boy” — he indicated the dog with a black patch over its eye — “is Darcy.”

  “Cute,” I said, crouching down to pat the dogs.

  Darcy licked my face and Lizzie sniffed my damp sleeve, no doubt wondering why I smelled like toilet water. Ned unwound the leashes from his legs and handed them to me, along with a bag containing a pooper scoop and a box of disposable bags.

  “Nancy — Mrs. Andersen — has probably left a long list of instructions for you, but I’ll just emphasize that you do need to pick up every single doggy-doo if you don’t want to fall foul of the homeowners’ association busybodies. And, trust me, you don’t.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  “If you need a tour around the estate, or a cup of sugar, or for me to keep an eye on the dogs when you go out, just let me know. And, uh” — he straightened his bow tie nervously — “maybe you’d like to come over for drinks or supper sometime? Or we could do some stargazing? The Hephaestus meteor shower peaks this weekend, and I have a great telescope.”

  “I’m kind of in a relationship already,” I lied, trying to let him down gently.

  Ned flushed and said, “Of course. Pretty young lady like you is bound to be. Well, I’ll be on my way.” He turned to go.

  “Wait!” I said. “The Andersens didn’t happen to leave their keys with you, did they?”

  “You don’t have the keys?”

  “I was supposed to get here earlier for the handover.”

  My neighbor had been called in for an emergency shift at work, and I’d offered to look after her six-month-old baby until the sitter arrived. It was the first time I’d been alone with such a tiny, helpless being, and it had panicked me a little — the scrunched, purple prune of a face howling unintelligibly, the gag-inducing sm
ell from the diaper, the terrifying responsibility. I seriously hoped the Andersens’ dogs would be easier to care for.

  “They probably left the keys with the guard at the gatehouse for you,” Ned said.

  “Of course. I should’ve thought of that.”

  He nodded, said, “See you around,” and was halfway down the path when he turned to ask the question I’d hoped he wouldn’t. “So, how did you get inside without keys?”

  “I– There was an open window.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that, but he also smiled and walked off humming a cheerful tune, so I figured he wouldn’t be reporting me to the Homeowners’ Association for criminal behavior.

  – 2 –

  I set the door latch so it wouldn’t lock me out, closed the door behind me and set off for the guardhouse, with one leash in each hand and the poop emergency bag slung over my shoulder.

  The Beaumont Golf Estate was a high-end gated community built just outside the small town of Pitchford, in Windsor County, Vermont. Two- and three-story custom houses with their own swimming pools, tennis courts and patios out back, dotted a gently sloping hill crowned by a dense wood of trees and hemmed by an eighteen-hole golf course perched above the Kent River. From the Andersen house, located near the top of the estate, there was a glorious view of the rolling foothills which stretched all the way across to the snowy ridges of the Green Mountains. Some residents of the town grumbled that gated developments didn’t belong in Vermont, that they ruined the sense of space, openness and freedom. They may have been right, but I still wouldn’t have said no to owning one of the Beaumont Estate’s fine houses.

  Both Darcy and Lizzie strained to go faster, dragging me into the nearby play park that was set like a gem in its surrounding square of luxury houses. At one end of the park, a couple of children played on swings, a teeter-totter and a jungle-gym tastefully constructed from stained pine logs and sisal ropes, while parents looked on indulgently. As we neared the other end, where a few ducks waddled about near a small pond, the beagles went bananas, barking like the hounds of hell and lunging forward. The ducks clustered together and squawked back loudly. Clearly, this was a long-standing feud between the species.