The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

  The woods were misty, silent and cold. Within minutes, I was freezing, my wet clothes no protection against the icy chill as I chased the patch of red moving always just ahead of me.

  Go back.

  Had Bethany shouted the words at me?

  Go back!

  No, they were inside my mind.

  “Bethany, Bethany! Stop!” I shouted.

  The figure ahead paused as though considering my words or waiting for me to catch up. But as I drew near, she took off again, darting between the trees.

  Where did she think she was going? It was too far, surely, for her to run all the way through the woods to the highway beyond. Or was it? It was too far for me — would have been so even without the sodden clothes that weighed me down and would ensure I died of exposure before I ever reached help. But Bethany was fit and strong and wearing dry all-weather gear. Only her wrists and hands might be wet. When drowning me in the tank had failed, she’d come up with a plan B — to lure me into the woods because she knew that here she could outwit, outlast and outlive me. We were in our very own game of Survivor, and I’d played right into her hands. Stupid!

  No doubt as soon as I was deep enough in the woods to lose any sense of direction, she’d pick up the pace and disappear from view, circle back to the office and wait until she was sure I’d frozen to death before summoning the cops with some cock-and-bull story about my car in the lot. Then again, she had my keys. She could simply drive my Honda somewhere else and abandon it there, distance herself from my disappearance. The strategy had worked for her before.

  Go back.

  The words were in my brain again, and this time, I understood. They were a warning — from Colby.

  Shivering uncontrollably, eyes and nose streaming from the cold, I turned on the spot, gazing desperately at the trees and gossamer mist that surrounded me on all sides. I could see no sign of the sugar works and had no idea which way to walk. I had an idea that we’d moved in a circular path through the woods and were now near the top of one of the many hills that studded the forest, so I needed to go downhill, but on which side of this knoll?

  My brain felt dull and slow with cold, like the wheels and cogs of my mind were freezing up and grinding to a standstill. My fingers ached, and my lungs — as I stood panting, doubled over with my hands on my knees — felt raw. I could taste blood.

  And I was just so tired. Tired of running and of thinking. What I needed more than anything was to rest, just for a minute or two. That would help me catch my breath and gather my wits. I slumped against a tree, slid down the trunk and sat on the soft mulch beneath. I yawned, and the juddering of my arms and legs subsided for a few precious seconds. There — I was feeling better already.

  Go back!

  “Sure. Just gimme a few minutes,” I told Colby.

  And then I closed my eyes.

  – 41 –

  The voice in my head wouldn’t shut up.

  Go back.

  “Gimme a break, Colby.”

  Gobackgobackgoback!

  “I don’t know which way, okay?”

  I struggled to open my eyes and look around, just in case the specter of Colby had appeared to guide me down to warmth and safety. The mist was closing in, clouding the trees in a shroud of white. Or was it my mind that was fading and blurring as it slid into the sleep that beckoned?

  Lines. Lines.

  I yawned deeply, then yawned again. “What lines?”

  Go back … lines!

  I snuggled into a ball against the base of the trunk, then shot up straight as the meaning of the words penetrated the confused fog of my mind. The lines. I could follow the lines of plastic tubing down the hill — they would all ultimately lead to the sugar shack.

  Using my last reserves of willpower, I forced myself to my knees. Then, hanging onto the tree trunk, I dragged myself up onto my feet. I staggered to the nearest length of tubing and began walking downhill beside it, holding the line and letting my hand ride over the forked iron supports.

  When my sore knee buckled beneath me, I tortured myself with pitiful images of my parents weeping over my frozen body. I couldn’t do that to them. When I tripped and fell face-first into a bank of snow and longed to stay there, I lured myself back to my feet with promises of hot coffee and log fires and steaming baths. And all the way down the slope, I talked to myself, aloud or inside my head, I hardly knew the difference by then.

  “Do you want Ryan Jackson to know how stupid you are? Well, do ya, punk? And Capshaw — think of how she’ll react.”

  I could imagine Capshaw shaking her head over my frosty corpse, muttering sagely about things being bound to end badly when kooky-ass amateurs stuck their noses into police business, and telling Ryan he’d been a fool ever to involve me.

  “Keep walking!” I told myself and added the promise of a giant Johnny Walker to the rewards that waited for me back at the sugar works.

  I imagined what that smoky imp of a reporter at The Bugle would write about my fate and whether they’d publish a photo of my body. By now, I probably resembled a Sasquatch what with all the bark, dead leaves, twigs and dirt that clung to my wet, sticky clothes. I kept plodding.

  “And Bethany, do you want her to get away with murder again? Think of lovely Laini. Do it for the Lanes.” I laughed, more than a little hysterical now.

  I pictured Darcy and Lizzie, hungry and alone, and took another step. And another.

  Strangely, what gave me the most motivation was the thought of Michelle Armstrong’s reaction. Until that very moment, half-dead and crazed with cold, bouncing off trees like a pinball off bumpers and cursing at the showers of snow that fell on top of me, I hadn’t realized how much I despised her. My faltering mind painted a hazy vision of Pitchford’s Town Clerk holding forth at my funeral, delivering a regretful address to the gathered handful of mourners, her face an appropriate mask of sadness, while on the inside her black, hypocritical heart danced a gleeful jig of triumph. She’d be able to get back to spin-doctoring the virtues of Pitchford without me inconveniently dredging up murders.

  Fury, I now discovered — as Bethany had ten days ago — could be the most powerful motivator of all. Over my dead body, literally, would I cede the field to the likes of Michelle Armstrong.

  But that was likely to happen unless I got to a shelter soon. Watching where I placed my feet and focusing on moving them faster, I walked headfirst into a bucket. Looking up, I saw I’d reached the pretty section of the forest that Bethany — or had it been Laini? — had set up for tourists. Beaded with dew, the pastel buckets and metal spiles glimmered in the dull light, and I could see the vague shadows of buildings hulking in the shifting mist beyond.

  Almost there. I was almost there.

  A thrashing in the undergrowth behind me made me spin around. Eyes mad with fury, Bethany Ford was racing toward me, one of the heavy rebar stakes in her grasp. I threw my arms up in front of my face as she raised her weapon to bring it down on my head and cried out in pain as the rod glanced off my arm and crashed into my shoulder.

  Hoisting the rod, Bethany came at me again. But I lunged forward and grabbed the bar with both hands. We wrestled for possession, twisting and tugging, grunting with exertion. Then Bethany wrenched it toward her, yanking me off-balance, before immediately thrusting it back at me, sending me sprawling backward. With my arms flung wide for balance, I slammed into the unyielding bulk of an enormous tree, the splayed fingers of my right hand landing on the steel spile lodged in the trunk.

  Bethany rushed at me, holding the rod like a spear she intended to drive through my chest, and pin me to the tree. I dodged sideways. My fingers closed around the metal tap. Twisted it free. Dropping my left shoulder, I turned and thrust the sharp end of the steel spile into the side of her neck.

  Her momentum carried her forward a few paces, then she folded, sagging to her knees, letting the rod fall from her hands. She reached a hand up to the left side of her neck, where a line of blood trickled out of the tap, s
tippling the snow beside her with flecks of red.

  “No, don’t!” I cried, reaching to bat away her hand, struggling to comprehend that it was me who’d stuck the thing into her. “If you pull it out, you’ll bleed to death.”

  She might well bleed to death anyway.

  “Wait!” I crouched down beside her, pulled off one of her gloves and with trembling fingers, stuffed a finger of leather into the spout, packing it closed as best I could. Then I placed her hand against the spile, pushing gently. “Hold it there. Keep the pressure.”

  I patted her pockets, found her phone and dialed 911. Bethany’s face drained of color as she swayed on her knees and then crumpled, slumping sideways into my lap, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly as her wide blue eyes stared up at me.

  – 42 –

  Bethany’s face, as she lay in the hospital bed, was bare of its usual makeup, and pale apart from the shadows — dark as plums — beneath her eyes. Once again, she was wearing Laini’s midnight-blue kimono. Her neck was bandaged and protected by a brace that prevented her from turning her neck. With a little luck, she’d still be able to move it once the brace came off.

  According to her attending physician, the spile had “penetrated the sternocleidomastoid muscle, posterior to both the jugular vein and carotid artery, missing the trachea, hyoid and larynx to the front and approaching but not impacting any of the cervical vertebrae or spinous processes toward the rear. Very neatly done,” he’d added, looking impressed at my handiwork.

  Ryan Jackson and Ronnie Capshaw had been considerably less impressed. Ryan, infuriated, had called me reckless, stupid and a danger to society before insisting I get myself checked out at the Randolph County Hospital ER. But he’d also hugged me tightly, and I could’ve sworn his eyes were moist when he threatened to murder me if I ever got myself killed. Capshaw had merely lifted one eyebrow, turned down one corner of her mouth, and directed a scathing look at me.

  “Message received,” I told her, punctuating my words with a smart salute. She didn’t smile.

  My parents hadn’t smiled either, even though I’d given them a highly edited version of my adventure, making it sound like I’d clumsily tumbled into a vat of sap and Bethany had accidentally obstructed my path to air before she and I had gone for a stroll in the pretty woods on a balmy day, during which, by sheer chance, she’d fallen onto a sharp object I’d happened to be holding.

  I’d said nothing — to anybody — about how Colby’s messages had saved my life. It would have thoroughly overexcited my mother, and Capshaw or the medical staff would’ve called for a psych consult. I wasn’t sure how Ryan would’ve reacted.

  “For God’s sake, kiddo, this has to stop!” my father said, when he and Mom came to get me from the ER. His hair was standing in different directions and his shirt was buttoned up wrong.

  “I did tell you,” was my mother’s reaction, after she’d squeezed me hard enough to make me wince, forced a gemstone into my hand — “Seraphinite, for healing!” — and slipped a bottle of homeopathic arnica into my pocket, glancing around nervously, like a dealer slipping me some weed.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Deceit, danger, enemies and expanding consciousness! The Moon card, remember?”

  We were back to the lobster of intuition.

  Now, two days after I’d confronted Bethany and stabbed her, the dust was settling. I’d given a brief preliminary statement to the police, Bethany’s surgery had gone well, The Bugle had published one article on her arrest which made zero mention of me, and another on the arrest of Ned Lipton which speculated pruriently about just what he’d seen and done as he lolled around in my attic, making it sound more like a sexy peep-show than a criminal violation.

  The impulse to visit Bethany that morning was motivated more from a desire to assuage my unwarranted guilt by checking she was okay, rather than an altruistic urge to delight her with my company. Still, I’d brought grapes.

  When I found Ryan and Ronnie Capshaw already in her room, I offered to return later, but Ryan said, “Stay. Maybe you can fill in some of the gaps.”

  Capshaw directed an incredulous look his way.

  He ignored it.

  I grinned.

  “So …” Ryan said, glancing down at his notebook. “Where were we?”

  “Laini was leaving,” Bethany said, her voice tired and resigned.

  She knew she was nailed. The cops had obtained search warrants for her house, business and technology, including any data stored in the cloud. It turned out that her Apple Watch would have been syncing regularly with an app on her phone and automatically updating to the cloud. So, basically, my swim in the sap and subsequent adventures in the woods had been entirely unnecessary.

  I hadn’t known, but cops are allowed to lie to suspects in order to get a confession, and they’d lied to Bethany. First, they’d told her that my phone’s recording of the conversation between her and me in the sugar shack had been updating to the cloud in real time, and that the recording still existed. Next, they’d told her that, using a new hi-tech method, forensics had succeeded in lifting her prints off the note. And finally they’d said that the lab in Burlington had confirmed the presence of her DNA on it, too. That last bit might still turn out to be true, but the results weren’t in yet. In any event, confronted with the “evidence,” Bethany had confessed.

  Of course, they also had her for the assault and attempted murder of me.

  “Leaving Pitchford? Or Vermont?” Ryan asked.

  “She was planning on buying the earliest ticket out of the States.”

  “Where to?”

  Again, I saw that image of olive groves glittering silver in the golden sun.

  “To Spain,” I said.

  Bethany flashed me a sharp glance.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess,” I said. “It was one of the places she’d marked on the globe in her office.”

  Bethany seemed satisfied by my explanation, but I was aware of Capshaw’s shrewd gaze fixed on me.

  “Laini said she’d had enough of fir trees and maple syrup and snow. She wanted sunshine, oranges and olives. It was laughable!” Bethany rolled her eyes and twisted her mouth in contempt. “She turns thirty-nine and immediately has a midlife crisis. So pathetically predictable. She wanted to chuck it all and do what — go eat, pray and love Spaniards?”

  “Such a cliché,” I murmured, remembering the words spoken at the top of the quarry in my vision.

  “Yes, a ridiculous cliché,” Bethany said, seeming surprised that I understood so well.

  “You tried to persuade her to stay?” Ryan asked.

  “Of course. I spent that night trying to reason with her, telling her she was being a fool, because despite her promises, I knew she wouldn’t come back. After Andalusia, she’d go on to Turkey or Thailand or Timbuktu. She never went back to any place she’d lived. She used to say that you can’t step in the same river twice. So, I begged her to reconsider, to sleep on it and we’d chat again the next day.”

  The machine beside me, which was connected to a pulse meter on Bethany’s finger, gave off a series of rapid beeps. I moved to the other side of the room, and it resumed normal functioning.

  “You were saying about asking Laini to reconsider,” I prompted Bethany.

  “Yes. Well, the next morning, she said that I was right. I was so relieved, so happy. I thought she meant I was right about choosing to stay, but she only meant that a night’s rest had done her good and helped her realize her decision to go was the right one. She’d book her ticket immediately and be out of my hair within a day. ‘Out of my hair’ — those were the actual words she used,” Bethany said, sounding like she still couldn’t believe it.

  “You suggested the two of you go for a drive early that morning?” Ryan said.

  “To town, for breakfast. She said it would be her treat.”

  “So that’s why she took her handbag,” I said. “And you encouraged her to cycle ba
ck?”

  “That was her idea. She wanted a last cycle to say goodbye to Vermont before she kicked it in the teeth.” Bethany’s face twisted into a sour grimace.

  “You took the note of apology she’d given you with the flowers. Rereading it, you realized it could work as a suicide note,” Ryan said.

  Bethany rubbed at her temple with a knuckle as if to ease away an inner ache. She was still wearing the pink nail polish I’d seen in my visions of the hand holding the blue paper. Laini, as Ryan had told me in my call to him on Tuesday, hadn’t been wearing any nail polish on the day of her death.

  “So, you folded the note, then folded it again and tucked it into the pocket of your black denims,” I said.

  In my visions, I’d seen a woman’s hand tucking the blue note into the pocket of black pants, and wrongly assumed it was Laini. But she, planning on cycling back to Bethany’s house, had been wearing black Lycra pants, with no pockets.

  Bethany frowned at me. “How do you know what I was wearing?”

  “And then you drove her to the quarry?” Ryan interjected quickly.

  “She drove.”

  “How did you persuade her to hike up to the top?”

  “For a look at the view. I told her she just had to see it before she left, because it was the best viewpoint in Pitchford. She’d never been, so she didn’t know any different.”

  “And on the way up, you asked to borrow her phone, saying you’d forgotten yours at home? You sent yourself and Carl those texts, making it look like Laini was buying time to decide whether she really wanted to die. But you were actually buying time for yourself, time to cycle home and provide a reason why you didn’t immediately alert anyone when Laini failed to return from a quick drive into town to buy donuts,” Ryan said. “You’d deliberately left your phone at home so that it looked like you were there if we checked cellphone tower records afterwards. After sending the texts, you put on your gloves, wiped your fingerprints off the phone and handed it back to her. And when you got home, you sent Laini a reply to ‘her’ text to you.”