*A quick note: Yes, this is Part 1. I anticipate posting this story in three parts, and it will have to do for the rest of the year’s short story challenge. It’s going to be a good one, at least. 😊 I’ll write more about why I’ve decided to post it this way next week, but for now, enjoy! And thank you for reading!*

Tragedy runs in my family. Or, I should say, my family runs Tragedy. We used to, anyway. Falls from grace, catastrophic accidents, self-fulfilling prophecies of doom and ruin – those run in my family, too. But I don’t think any of us anticipated this particular calamity.

I suppose, that’s the thing about murder.

It happened like this. The sun rose silent and peaceful over Tragedy, and, though no one knew it yet, over the corpse of the late Cassius Fugate, just recently deceased. In the warm orange light of a new day, with the dawn casting a rosy shadow on his sunken cheeks, it might have been easy to believe that he was sleeping, quiet and still, his head propped delicately on a mossy gray stone just inside the village green. But from this sleep, Cassius would never wake.

Or perhaps it happened like this. Cassius Fugate spent the last days of his life investigating the inner working of the Holder family, who’d long controlled the goings-on and the unpredictable financial fortunes of Tragedy, and who, in the last several months, had lost their beloved matriarch, Lorelai Robinette Holder. Exactly what Cassius thought he’d find, no one was quite sure. But Small Town America surely does love a villainous family, and Cassius had just taken over Tragedy’s local newspaper from his grandfather, a man who’d long since washed his hands of any real reporting and seemed to enjoy the more social aspects of journalism. Unlike the dogged and dauntless Cassius, Lucius was a man of fine tastes and pretty words.

The village’s adjustment to this abrupt and uncivil change of style was not exactly pleasant, and Cassius dealt with lots of accusations of “stirring the pot” and of “raking up mud” in the last days of his life. Just like me, he’d grown up in Tragedy, but the town seemed pretty ready to disown him, by the end. People can be vicious.

On his last day, Cassius caught up to me walking home from the coffee shop.

“The littlest Holder,” he called me.

“Hi, Cassius,” I answered. “You know we’re the same age. We graduated together.”

“I’m aware,” he said. “What’s got you out and about today?”

“Same thing as you,” I said. “Work, life, the inevitable need for caffeine and sustenance.”

“Ah,” he said, as if I’d given him an opening. “So it’s not the reading of your grandmother’s will?”

“That was yesterday.”

“And how did it go?”

“Well, Cassius,” I deadpanned, “about as you’d expect. Tears, dirges, a few outbursts from Uncle Sean. We’re broke, you know. I know you know.”

“Are you? I didn’t know,” he said.

Neither of us believed him.

“What are you after, Cassius?”

“Just a fine conversation with a pretty lady,” he said.

“Sure,” I answered. “Then you should probably move on.” Already, his face started to turn a delightful shade of bright pink. “What was it you used to call me? Ah, yes, I remember: ‘Moon-face Millie.’ And a few others, I think?”

Cassius was silent.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, Cassius. I got nothing for you.”

He sputtered out an apology and then added, “That was a long time ago, Millie. I’ve grown as a person since then.”

“Lucky for you,” I said, “so have I.”

And I left him there, on the corner of Schoolhouse Lane and River Road. It was the last I’d ever see of him alive, and the last public interaction he appears to have had.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

My family might.

To be continued…