The First Time I Died Read online

  Turning her palms up in a helpless gesture, she gave me a desolate smile. “I feel closer to him here.”

  I nodded. I could understand that, sort of. I felt closer to him here, too. At every turn there was a reminder of him, or us. But that wasn’t something I wanted — it hurt more than it consoled. Maybe, if you immersed yourself in the space where the person had been and welcomed the memories, then perhaps you got used to them after a while. Perhaps you grew desensitized, and the shock of it didn’t wind you or hurt as much. But looking at the woman opposite me, broken and crushed despite her erect posture and neat hair, I thought maybe that was a crock of shit. Maybe the pain never left you.

  “And, of course, there’s my husband’s business,” Bridget continued. “After we lost Colby, Philip was overwhelmed by grief. He threw himself into the water company, drove himself like a demon building the new bottling plant, marketing the new flavors, growing the business. It became his life, his everything.”

  I realized she hadn’t lost just her son; she’d lost her husband, too.

  “But it’s given us the income we needed.” She caught my involuntary glance at the luxurious surroundings and quickly added, “Oh, not all this. I could live without the finer things. But it’s funded Cassie’s treatments. Much of it, especially the newer treatments and experimental trials, weren’t covered by insurance, so we needed a lot of money, and Beaumont Brothers provided. And so we stayed.” She leaned over to pat my knee. “But I’m glad you got out, dear. It would please Colby to know you’re happy.”

  Happy? It wasn’t the word I would’ve chosen.

  “I keep busy and stay out of mischief.”

  “Your mother tells me you’re studying to be a psychologist?”

  “Yeah, trying to. Although I’m not sure it’s what I want anymore.”

  “I imagine it’s a tough job, listening to everybody’s tragedies and problems.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “And you volunteered in Africa, she said?”

  “Yup. If you ever need to bottle-feed a baby cheetah, you know who to call.”

  I swallowed the last bitter sip of cold coffee and set my cup down on the table.

  “Would you like to say hi to Cassie?” her mother asked.

  Honestly? No.

  But it couldn’t be avoided. Trying not to venture too close to Domino, who was still whining plaintively, I followed Bridget up the sweeping staircase to the upper landing, which had a wall of photographs on one side and a bronze statue on a narrow table up against the railings on the other. The piece was arrestingly beautiful — heavy, yet elegant, a sweeping abstract form of two lovers merging into one, their exposed ribs blending into rough, arced sweeps, their faces devoid of features but tilted toward each other. This was the sort of thing normal people decorated their houses with — real art and photographs — not dream catchers and pictures of chakras.

  I rubbed a hand over the patina of a smooth curve. The statue made me think of Colby and me. Everything here did. The town was sinking its claws into me, dragging me back. As I turned to follow Bridget, I came face-to-face with a large, framed photograph of Colby. In an instant, I was back in the Bethel United Methodist church.

  16

  THEN

  Friday December 28, 2007

  I waited until the last minute before going inside. Keeping my back to the buffeting wind, I traced patterns in the snow with the tip of my boot while everyone else scurried inside.

  “Hey, stranger, how’re you doing?” Jessica had just arrived, along with her parents.

  She enfolded me in a tight hug while I stood, unmoving, as she murmured words intended to comfort me. I hadn’t seen her since the day of the search.

  I’d been standing behind the police cordon set up where they’d dragged Colby out of the pond, when Jessica ran up to me. My gaze travelled up and down the length of the body stretched out on the snowy bank, taking in the bleached, wrinkled hands, the split lip and bruised, scraped face, the swollen, broken nose, looking for some sign of Colby. But though the plaid shirt and jeans were his, though the hair was his exact shade and the height was right, there was nothing of the boy I loved in that pale, waxy figure. Instead of the presence of Colby, there was only a deep absence that echoed the cold emptiness inside of me.

  I still felt like that. Numb. Too frozen on the inside to return Jessica’s embrace.

  She let go of me and peered into my eyes. “Why haven’t you answered my texts or called me back?”

  I shrugged. How to explain?

  The sight of Jess, even the thought of her or any of the other kids from school, brought back the picnic at Flat Rock, parties under the pier, and sitting together at our school lunch table, laughing at my addiction to peanut butter, bacon and pickle sandwiches. And Colby was in each of those memories. Allowing them back was painful, like my heart and throat were being crushed. I didn’t want to remember any of it. Everything before now needed to be blank, as void of details as a layer of newly fallen snow.

  I’d spent the last week in my room, crying, desperate for the oblivion of sleep, waking from the horror of nightmares, my thoughts on an endless shuffle of what-ifs and if-onlys. Music — heavy metal, nothing that reminded me of Colby — played loudly through my earbuds had helped deafen the chaos inside my head and my parents’ entreaties to “talk.”

  A bunch of girls from our class arrived at the church and drifted over to Jess and me.

  “Hey, Garnet, sorry about Colby,” Ashleigh said awkwardly.

  “Yeah, sorry. It’s so bad,” Taylor added.

  An invisible line divided them from me. On their side was the world as it had been until a week ago, but minus Colby. I was in a whole other place and so separate from them, we might as well have been strangers. We were strangers. I was no longer who I’d been, and they didn’t know who I was now — I could see it in their eyes. I didn’t want to be with them. Not even Jess. Especially not Jess, who was so entangled in my memories of Colby.

  “How’s your hand?” she asked, taking my hand in her gloved one.

  I pulled it back. “Why don’t you go inside, where it’s warm? I’d rather be alone, right now.” My voice sounded flat and brusque.

  Jessica cast me a wounded look, but I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel much of anything.

  Nose dripping from the cold, I stayed outside, staring up at the blue sky slashed by contrails, listening to the melancholy notes of an organ drifting out of the church. Standing beside the open doors with a clipboard in hand, Jessica’s mother loudly asked each new arrival to sign up for a spot on her schedule of meals to be made for the Beaumont family.

  “We need to continue giving them our full support at this very difficult time,” she repeated between exclamations of delight at promised deliveries of baked lasagna and meatloaf. Doc Armstrong must have been inside, keeping warm.

  Eventually my father came out to fetch me. “They’re starting, Garnet.”

  I trudged up the steps, took the white rose handed to me by the usher at the door, and walked down the aisle. The rose stem was bare of thorns, which struck me as all wrong. They should have left the thorns and lopped off the bloom. Front and center on a table ahead, standing in a pool of the roses, was a large, framed photograph of Colby. He was smiling into the camera, his eyes alight with life and joy. He looked ready to grab hold of life by the feet, turn it upside down, and shake the riches out of it. Beside the photograph stood a small marble urn.

  My feet faltered. My breath wheezed out as if I’d been punched in the gut. So that was Colby? That small container of ashes was all that remained of him. He was gone. No more smiling eyes, no laughter. No hands around my waist or lips touching mine. No more dreams of righting wrongs, or persuading me to stay in Pitchford. Whatever he’d ever thought, hoped, felt or experienced was gone now, burned into nothingness. Smoke on the air.

  Never again, I vowed. I will never allow myself to be hurt like this again.

  My father’s hand
at my elbow urged me forward. I put a lid on my horror and desolation and pushed down hard to seal it inside of me. At the altar, I dropped the rose on the others scattered there. What were they for, what was it supposed to mean? And how could he have been cremated already? The whole scene felt surreal; Christmas decorations still hung from windows and pillars, and a festive red-and-green floral arrangement had been shoved into a corner to make way for the white funeral wreath.

  I turned my back on the ashes and petals and went to Colby’s family, who were seated in the front pew. Cassie, her shoulders shaking with her sobs, had her head in Vanessa’s lap. Sitting on the other side of Vanessa, Mrs. Beaumont cried silently. Tears leaked out of her eyes, trickled unchecked down her cheeks and dripped down to form wet patches on her gray dress. Vanessa, her own eyes red and puffy, wiped her mother’s tears with a tissue and stroked Cassie’s head. Colby’s father sat unmoving and expressionless beside his wife, staring straight ahead. In the row behind, Roger Beaumont leaned forward to lay a hand on his brother’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, as if transfusing strength into that shell of a man.

  I took Mrs. Beaumont’s hand — cold and limp — and murmured my condolences. My voice was toneless, my face felt wooden, my eyes were dry. I repeated a variation of the same inadequate words to each member of the family. Sorry, sorry, sorry. If you repeat a word enough times, it loses all meaning, becomes a mere collection of letters. Sorry.

  Mr. Beaumont nodded numbly, but the rest didn’t respond. Was I bringing back painful memories for them as Jessica had for me? I left them to their grief and went to sit with my parents.

  The minister greeted the congregation, prayed and asked us to rise for the singing of the first hymn. Despite my mother’s disapproving tuts, and my father’s reproachful look, I stayed seated and stonily silent. Amazing Grace? Nothing about Colby’s death was amazing, and there was no evidence of grace. After the hymn, the minister started talking. Odd phrases caught my ear — “so short a time” and “meet again in the hereafter” and “the comfort of God’s mercy and everlasting love.” All lies. Colby was gone, and he’d taken the best of me with him.

  I looked around the church while the minister droned on, recognizing the faces of the searchers — those who’d checked the streets, the yards, the woods and the pond until they’d gotten the result no one wanted. Mrs. Armstrong sat erect, perhaps ready to bolt for the door the minute the service ended to catch any delinquents who hadn’t yet volunteered offerings of tuna casserole. Beside her, Doc Armstrong had nodded off. Chief Turner sat in the row in front of us, sucking his teeth. Every few minutes he shook his head, as if again rejecting the reality of the tragedy that had happened in his little town, on his watch.

  It seemed like most of Pitchford High was here, including the principal and several of the teachers. Jessica sat near the back with the girls from earlier, while Judy Burns had her head on Pete Dillon’s shoulder and was weeping loudly. Pete, wearing an ugly tie that he’d surely borrowed from his father, tugged at the tight collar of his shirt. By the look on his face, he’d rather have been anywhere but at that service. Yeah, join the club, buddy. Vanessa’s boyfriend, Ryan Jackson, stood at the door, feet apart, hands behind his back. He was wearing his police uniform and surveying the assembly of town folk with a keen gaze.

  For the first time, I registered that not only was Colby dead — possibly murdered — but that someone in this very congregation might have killed him. Someone had beaten him badly, and they might even have held him under that cold black water until he drowned. I studied the faces around me — some crumpled in sadness, some impassive, a few frowning.

  Did you do it? Did you?

  I’d done it. Or, at least, I was the reason it had been done to him. Colby had left the Tuppenny Tavern at ten o’clock after having dinner there with his father and uncle, but he’d refused a ride home, saying he needed to have an important conversation with someone. That someone was me. He’d been headed to my house, and on the way, he’d died. Or been killed.

  I fiddled with the dressing covering the cut on my left palm, peeling it back, peering at the angry red gash beneath. I’d refused to let my dad take me to get stitches. Somehow this raw wound connected me to Colby’s wounds, and I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be with him.

  After another monotonous hymn, Colby’s father got up to do the eulogy. His face was white, his lips gray, and he looked gutted, like someone had taken a sharp spoon and hollowed out the heart of him. Sighing, he took his place behind the podium up front and lifted a piece of paper like it was the heaviest thing in the world.

  He cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming. Bridget and I …”

  His voice petered out as he stared out at us and then looked down at his notes in a puzzled way. He turned the paper around and upside down, seeming utterly bewildered.

  “I– Bridget and I…” he began again, and then stopped.

  Roger Beaumont made his way out of the pew and down the aisle, put an arm around his brother’s shoulder and led him back to his seat. He took Colby’s father’s place at the podium and began eulogizing his nephew as a fine man, lauding his sporting and academic accomplishments, and speculating about what a magnificent leader of the family business Colby would have made.

  It was my turn to be bewildered. Who was he talking about? Not the Colby I’d known and loved. He was talking about Colby’s achievements, but he should have been talking about Colby’s nature. His strong sense of justice. His kind and generous heart.

  One summer, when I was about eleven or twelve years old, I’d gone down to the pier at Plover Pond to swim. Colby Beaumont had been there with a group of other boys, doing dive-bombs off the end of the pier, dunking each other in the water while they yelled insults. They ignored me; I still lacked the budding boobs and curves which would one day draw their interest. Colby, hair slick and skin tanned the color of a glossy hazelnut shell, was performing graceful backflips off the pier. The way he balanced on the balls of his feet, heels off the edge, then rose up on his toes and paused for a moment, muscles tensed, before bending his knees and flinging himself backward in a flexed ball that cannoned into the water — I could’ve watched him all day.

  When I tried to get a turn at the end of the pier, the other boys jostled me aside.

  “Get lost, shrimp,” one said. The name stuck for years.

  But Colby, glistening wet with drops on the ends of his lashes, called them on it. “Let her have a turn.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. And then, because I would have regretted it if I hadn’t, I asked, “Will you teach me how to do a backflip?”

  “Sure, if you teach me how to dive. You know how to dive?”

  I nodded eagerly, glad I could teach him something, too.

  Later, of course, I realized that he was just being kind. Of course he knew how to dive. He just didn’t want me to feel he was doing an annoying girl a favor out of pity. That was Colby — kind, thoughtful, fair. I think it was on that day, repeatedly doing untidy, sprawling flips into the water and teaching Colby to dive when he already knew how, that I fell in love with him.

  In the church, Roger Beaumont was still going on about the other Colby. I became aware that my finger was stinging. I saw I’d bitten it down to beyond the start of the nail bed, exposing raw pink flesh. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand being inside that coffin of a church any longer. I stood up and walked out, past Mrs. Armstrong’s disapproving face, past Pete and Judy and Brandon, past Jessica, now whispering into Ashleigh’s ear. At the exit, Officer Jackson stepped aside to let me pass, and the door closed behind me with a faint creak.

  Outside, the air was brisk and smoky with the scent of log fires. I stretched my sleeves over my hands and folded my arms, tucking my hands under my armpits. I was staring at the distant ridge of blue mountains, debating whether to wait for my parents or to start walking home through the cold, when someone called my name. Blunt was standing in the lee of the stairs, smoking. I joined him and asked for a
drag.

  “Didn’t know you smoked,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  I drew in a deep breath, rejoicing in the almost-pain of the smoke inside my lungs, coughing out the white mist, visible proof that I was still alive, even though I felt dead.

  “Would you like something stronger?”

  “Dealing at Colby’s funeral, Blunt? Really?”

  He blinked his bloodshot eyes and frowned at me. “No, man. I wasn’t going to ask you to pay. I was offering you something to dull the pain. To, like, switch off feeling, you know?”

  “I think I’m capable of switching it off on my own, thanks,” I said.

  And right at that moment, I did.

  17

  NOW

  Tuesday December 19, 2017

  The photograph of Colby on the landing wall held me frozen, pulling me in, tugging me back. For so long I’d kept a lid on the past and a tight rein on the present. Keeping my distance, keeping my head. But it was all bubbling up and coming out now.

  My eyes slid to the collage of Beaumont family pictures beside and around it: the family gathered on the porch of their vacation home at Oak Bluffs, in Martha’s Vineyard, and another of them packing suitcases into a car outside the old house in town; pics of the kids — a gap-toothed Colby on his first day of school, Cassie dressed in a Princess Leia Halloween costume, Vanessa in graduation cap and gown; an old wedding photo of Philip and Bridget Beaumont, and one of them standing on either side of an adult Vanessa, who was cradling a red-faced baby in a lace christening gown.

  “Garnet?” Bridget was waiting outside a door at the end of the hallway.

  “Yeah, right with you.”

  Bridget opened the door and peeped inside. “Oh, good — you’re awake. There’s a visitor to see you, Cassie.” To me she added, “You two can visit together, while I go get the box of Colby’s things.”

  Knowing that I wouldn’t like what I was about to see, I hesitated a moment, then almost stumbled into the room. It felt like a hand on the base of my spine had urged me forward, but I’d surely imagined that.