The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

  The First Time I Fell

  Jo Macgregor

  Other books for adults by this author

  The First Time I Died

  The First Time I Hunted

  Dark Whispers

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  First published in 2019 by Jo Macgregor

  ISBN: 978-0-6398109-6-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-0-6398109-7-3 (eBook)

  Copyright 2019 Jo Macgregor

  The right of Joanne Macgregor, writing as Jo Macgregor, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters, institutions and events described in it are fictional and the products of the author’s imagination.

  Cover design by Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio.

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Table of Contents

  – 1 –

  – 2 –

  – 3 –

  – 4 –

  – 5 –

  – 6 –

  – 7 –

  – 8 –

  – 9 –

  – 10 –

  – 11 –

  – 12 –

  – 13 –

  – 14 –

  – 15 –

  – 16 –

  – 17 –

  – 18 –

  – 19 –

  – 20 –

  – 21 –

  – 22 –

  – 23 –

  – 24 –

  – 25 –

  – 26 –

  – 27 –

  – 28 –

  – 29 –

  – 30 –

  – 31 –

  – 32 –

  – 33 –

  – 34 –

  – 35 –

  – 36 –

  – 37 –

  – 38 –

  – 39 –

  – 40 –

  – 41 –

  – 42 –

  Epilogue

  Other books for adults by this author

  Acknowledgements

  “Birth in the physical is death in the spiritual. Death in the physical is birth in the spiritual.”

  — Edgar Cayce (1877 – 1945)

  – 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 sometim
e, 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 smell 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.

  Aware of disapproving looks shot my way, I sternly instructed Lizzie and Darcy to stop their barking and behave. They ignored me. I wasn’t even sure they’d heard me, given the racket coming from both the canine and avian factions. I dragged the dogs away from the park, and pausing at most of the trees along the way so the dogs could sniff and anoint trunks, we made our way through the chill afternoon air down the hill in the direction of the gatehouse.

  I paused outside the old Beaumont house. Five weeks ago, I’d come back to attend the funeral of Cassie Beaumont, the younger sister of my high-school boyfriend, Colby. The service was unspeakably sad. Mrs. Beaumont was so crushed by the grief of losing another child that it hurt to look at her. Vanessa, her only surviving offspring, had delivered the eulogy with tears streaming down her cheeks. When she spoke of Colby and Cassie now being together on the other side, it took all my self-restraint not to bolt from the church and keep running.

  It hadn’t been easy, coming face to face with the Beaumont family again. Back in December, I’d unearthed the truth about Colby’s murder ten years previously, when we’d both been high school seniors and desperately in love with each other. But my investigation had set in motion a chain of events which brought more grief, and legal woes aplenty, to the Beaumont family. Mrs. Beaumont had once been closer to me than my own mother, so it cut deep when, at the funeral, she was merely polite. Vanessa had glared at me coldly, then pulled me into a fierce hug and sobbed on my shoulder for long minutes before glaring at me again and storming off without a word.

  A realtor sign stuck out front proclaimed the house for sale. No doubt Mrs. Beaumont had no desire to rattle around alone inside its vast interior. According to my father, she was now living at the family’s old vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard and in the process of getting a divorce. She was probably learning, as I had, that when you leave town, the past doesn’t stay behind. It goes right along with you.

  “Come on, let’s go get those keys,” I said to the dogs.

  The guard on duty at the gatehouse was a muscle-bound guy with no neck and a loose-lipped smile.

  When I enquired about the keys, he said, “Sure, here you go,” and handed me a full bunch.

  “Why didn’t you give them to me when I signed in?”

  His face crinkled as he thought about that for a long minute. Then he said, “You didn’t ask.”

  “Slower than molasses on a cold day,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Thanks for these. C’mon, Darcy, Lizzie, let’s go.” I tugged on their leads, but both dogs were wantonly begging the guard for attention. Darcy licked the guy’s fingers, and Lizzie lay on her back, exposing her belly for a rub.

  “You staying here long? Can I come over and visit sometime?” the guard said, crouching down to tickle the dogs on the silky white fur of their chests. “The Andersens have ESPN, don’t they? We could hang out and watch a few hockey games.”

  “I already have a boyfriend.”

  Kind of. If I counted the presence that I sometimes thought I sensed by my side.

  “Hey, I don’t mind sharing,” the guar
d said.

  I yanked Lizzie and Darcy away and we walked back to the house where I unpacked my car and lugged my suitcase upstairs, tripping over the dogs on every other step. The guest bedroom’s décor had me sighing so hard that Lizzie tilted her head at me in concerned curiosity. The double bed was trimmed with a scalloped night frill, covered with a pink check comforter, and topped with white lace cushions. A vase of dried lavender flowers stood on the doily-topped bedside table, and three porcelain butterflies took flight across wallpaper patterned with tiny pink rosebuds.

  It was enough to induce a seizure in people with healthier brains than my own.

  There was nothing to be done about the floral drapes, but I grabbed the cushions, coverlet, doily and flowers, and stashed them in the main bedroom, which was decorated in the same fussy style, but in shades of baby blue.

  Downstairs, I checked the contents of the refrigerator and immediately forgave the Andersens their stylistic excesses because, judging by the bottle of pinot grigio sitting on the top shelf beside a covered plate of spaghetti and meat sauce, they clearly had good hearts. Filling a glass with ice cubes, I topped it up with wine and then sat down to read the list of instructions I’d found lying on the dining room table, weighted down by an ugly porcelain clown.

  The directions told me what — and when — to feed the dogs; listed emergency numbers; explained where I’d find the breaker box and extra blankets; gave detailed instructions about trash collection and thermostat operation; urged me to eat anything from the refrigerator or cupboards and, I was relieved to see, supplied the password for the wi-fi. Attached to the list was a copy of their itinerary with their contact information, plus a twelve-page-long list of rules and regulations for the Estate. I shoved it all into the mail tray on the hall dresser and stuck the clown into a neat row of figurines on a shelf in the living room.

  The dogs vacuumed up the kibble I poured into their bowls in less time than it took me to reheat my meal in the microwave, then they sat at my feet, staring up at me while I ate. Their pleading eyes followed every movement of my fork, and their pitiful whines finally induced me to feed each a few saucy strands of spaghetti, in clear violation of item seventeen on Mrs. Andersen’s list.