Dillon fished out his keys and took the steps to the second floor two at a time. Thunder rumbled a warning as he stepped inside his two-story end unit. He gave himself a good shake, and water flew everywhere. It dappled the full-length mirror in the foyer, the side table holding piles of mail and magazines, the expensive Oriental carpet his ex-girlfriend had convinced him to buy. Unlacing his boots, he left them by the door, then peeled off damp socks and tossed them in the direction of the laundry room. Helena, his cleaning woman, would probably curse at him in Portuguese, but she’d get over it. He chuckled. She always did.
His stomach growled, and he made his way into the kitchen. Off came the polo shirt. Dillon draped it over the nearest chair. The lights flickered a little and he slowed.
If the power goes out before I get a shower…
He didn’t suspect his fridge held much in the way of food, but he stuck his head inside all the same. Two six-packs of beer, some cold cuts, a loaf of bread, and three or four take-out containers. Dillon grabbed a beer and left the rest. Unbuttoning his jeans, he checked the messages on his machine: one from J.J., one from his accountant, one from a woman he’d met in a bar last weekend. None important enough to call back tonight. He leaned against the counter and took a long swig. Then another. He headed for the master bath, where he turned on the shower and let the steam rise. Maybe if he got the water hot enough, it would scald the memories out of him once and for all.
Why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Maggie today, anyway? It was almost as if she’d ridden in on the tail of a lightning bolt and decided to stay for the duration of the storm.
*
“Is Mags all right?”
Dillon called the minute he heard about the operation. She hadn’t told him, of course. At nineteen and twenty-one, they no longer talked about things held close to the heart. It was only by chance, by calling home from a temporary job down in West Virginia, that he’d gotten the truth out of his stepmother.
“She didn’t want anyone to know,” Hillary explained.
“But I’m family. I’m her brother, for God’s sake.”
“I know…”
She didn’t know at all, that was the problem. As far as Dillon could figure out, Maggie hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with Sam, not even her mother. He was the only other person who knew that a few foggy hours on a spring night had changed everything in Mags’s life.
And God, it pained him every time he thought about that night. Tight-lipped and red-eyed, Maggie had wandered around the house for weeks like it was her fucking tomb. When she finally joined the land of the living again, she looked at Dillon like he was something she’d stepped in on the way home from school. He knew that she held him responsible, that she blamed him for Sam being in the house that night. Hell, he supposed in some way he held himself responsible too. He could have sworn Sam left. He would have put his hand on a Bible and affirmed it in court. But what could he change after the fact?
“She’ll be fine,” Hillary was saying. “They took out some lymph nodes and tested them. No sign of cancer there…” The thickness of tears filled her voice. “…so she won’t need chemo or radiation. Not right now, anyway. Thank God.”
Thank God.
He sent flowers that afternoon, and a card the next day. He called a few times, too, but by then Maggie had returned to college, and her silence told him everything he needed to know. Four years after it happened, she still thought he was her fallen knight in armor, the hero who looked the other way on the night she needed him most. She still thought Dillon should have been able to see through walls and read her mind.
And because he couldn’t, after awhile he gave up trying to make amends.
*
Dillon stepped into the shower and welcomed the steaming water.
I tried so many times
. He’d kept in touch with his stepmother for a while, even after his father died in the wreck. He sent her emails every so often, and called when he couldn’t get home for Christmas, but part-time landscaping jobs and an itch to travel kept him away most of the time. The chill that grew between him and Maggie didn’t help things either. She ignored him for the most part, the couple of times he did come back. Holidays became a game of who could fill the silence with the worst kind of joke, or who could leave soonest after all the gifts were opened. After she finished college, she found a place in Manhattan. He hadn’t seen her since.
Dillon scrubbed from ear to toe. Turning off the water, he reached for a towel and wrung water from his hair. He took his time drying off, savoring the clean feeling, and was reaching for his razor when the power went out. An explosion, an echoing boom, reverberated off the walls of the townhouse. Then everything fell silent.
“Shit.” He dropped the towel and, naked, made his way to the master bedroom, where he fumbled in his dresser for a pair of boxer shorts. From across the room, he stared out the enormous windows that normally looked onto a tree-lined avenue of upscale residences. Nothing. No glimmer of light as far as he could see.
“Transformer must-a blown.” He pulled open the drawer in his bedside table and felt around for the small flashlight he kept there. “Hope the batteries work.”
They did. Dillon followed the pencil-thin beam of light and wound his way back into the living room. A wall of windows should have framed the Boston skyline. Instead, they reflected back the edges of his own furniture, a mirror of black. If he looked hard enough, he could see a smear of white in the distance. Most of downtown, anyway, still had electricity. But from Dillon’s vantage point, it looked as though most of the eastern neighborhoods lay in total darkness.
Ten or twelve square blocks, at least
.
Gonna take the power company a while to tackle this one
.
He padded into the kitchen. He didn’t really mind. While the food at the Hotel Victoria would have been worth a few hours of his time, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over missing some drunken conversation with a few Boston bigwigs. A sandwich on the couch and a good long nap would fill up his evening hours just fine.
Looked like this year, Dillon wouldn’t be heading to the Deveau Ball after all.
8:00 p.m.
“I’m going to throw up,” Neve whispered, clutching Maggie’s arm.
“You are not.” She squeezed her friend’s elbow in reassurance.
Eden waved at someone in the crowd. “I’ll be right back. Promise.” She slipped through a side door and vanished.
Great,
Maggie thought.
How on earth do I tackle this? Which way first?
She took a deep breath and looked around. Chandeliers glowed above them. Music, provided by some kind of tuxedoed orchestra in the back corner, filled the cavernous ballroom. The murmur of polite greetings hummed around them. Maggie took it in slowly, one detail at a time. Men shook hands too hard. Women gushed and puckered their lips to peck at the air beside each other’s cheeks. Everyone looked perfect, gloriously beautiful, but behind their costumes they also seemed hollow, almost brittle, as if someone touched them they might shatter and reveal the everyday faces they wore.
Maggie squared her shoulders. “Come on. I need a drink.” She resisted the urge to begin knotting her hair into a ponytail. Instead she shook her head and let the full length of it fall down her back. Her shoes, the perfect height and not too dangerous after all, brushed the hem of her dress. As they moved through the door, a few men glanced her way. They eyed Maggie with approval before being yanked back to conversations by their wives. She ignored them all.
“Wow,” Neve said, glued to Maggie’s right arm. “I mean double-wow. I’m out of my element here.”
Maggie stopped in the middle of the dance floor, next to a couple trying to waltz and doing it badly. She took Neve by both arms. “You are
not
. You look terrific. You’re every bit as intelligent and witty and kind and attractive as anyone here. You’re better than they are, actually. You still have your soul.” She narrowed her eyes. “Most of these people probably sold theirs years ago, just so they could afford to be seen in a place like this.”
The smile pasted on Neve’s face relaxed a little.
“Let’s just worry about finding Dillon and then get the hell out of here.”
“What does he look like?”
Maggie tried to think how her stepbrother might have aged. She tried to imagine how the years might have cut wrinkles into his skin or stooped his shoulders. Had he chopped his hair short? Gotten gray around the temples? Followed through on his threat to cover both arms with tattoos? All she could conjure up was a skinny eighteen-year old with guilty eyes. She’d have to guess at the rest.
“Tall. Six-two or so. Squinty eyes, sort of hazel. Dirty blond hair. He used to wear it long, past his shoulders. I don’t know about now. If he still works out, then he’s muscular, really cut.”
Always did care about the way he looked in the mirror,
she thought.
He and Sam, regulars in the weight room after school
. The image of them together brought bile to the back of her throat.
Neve nodded. “Okay. I’ll start looking.”
“Ma’am?” A waiter slowed beside them. “Champagne?”
Maggie grabbed a glass. “Oh, yes.” Her heart hadn’t stopped its choppy rhythm since Eden handed over the keys to the valet guy. Sure, she’d attended one or two fancy charity events, back when she was working in New York. A thousand years ago. But in places like this, where every other woman wore skin-tight black and a half-pound of make-up, where they all voted Republican, joined the Junior League and pretended to love their husbands while they had affairs on the side, a redheaded single Democrat in a deep green dress flopped around like a tubby salmon on shore.
Maggie forced her nerves away and took two scallops wrapped in bacon as a waitress skimmed by. “You hungry?”
Neve shook her head. “Not really.”
Maggie looked around the room. Already, her head ached from the effort of smiling, of pretending not to stare at anyone who resembled her stepbrother, of rehearsing the words she’d say when she finally saw him again.
The music stopped for a minute as the band took a break. Conversation swelled. Cocktail forks clinked against fine china. Glasses rang as people toasted each other. A tape of jazz music took the place of the band, and despite her heavy heart, Maggie’s toes tapped inside her shoes. A tall man with shaggy hair brushed by them, and she studied the curve in his spine until she was sure it wasn’t Dillon.
Neve pulled on her arm. “Someone’s staring at you.”
“What? Where? Is it him?”
“I don’t think so.” Neve nudged her. “Over there.”
Maggie turned and looked, not sure if she wanted to see Dillon or not. She thought she was prepared. She thought she was ready. But whatever words might have come out of her mouth fell away. She stopped breathing. Something jumped inside her chest.
“It’s not him,” she whispered. Yet she couldn’t stop staring.
“Well then, who is it, and why does he keep looking over here? He’s cute, and he’s been watching you for the last five minutes.”
He would have stayed with you forever, you know.
It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give him what he wanted…
Maggie tore her gaze away. She’d made a mistake, that was all. Her eyes had mixed up her brain and spliced in a photograph of a long-gone love, and though she’d thought for a moment that she recognized the man, she knew she was wrong. She had to be. Because if Jack Major were standing in the Hotel Victoria ballroom, if the one man she’d given her heart to had somehow reappeared on this rainy evening, she might as well find a place to hide right this minute. She couldn’t do it again, not tonight of all nights. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t talk to him without remembering the last time they’d touched and she’d felt herself break into a million little pieces at their goodbye.
Memories tangled inside Maggie’s head. For the first time all day, thoughts of Dillon vanished. A decade of heartache and sad, slow mending filled the space of a few seconds slipping into place. Against her will, she looked again. She watched him and saw the struggle on his face that she imagined mirrored hers. Then Jack walked toward her, and she searched for the right kind of smile. She searched for the lie that would say she’d forgotten about him, about them, about what she’d hoped for all those years ago and what she’d finally learned to live without.
Jack crossed the room almost before he realized what his feet were up to. As if a string stretched from his heart to the woman in the green dress twenty feet away. She stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost. He had no idea what he’d say. Wasn’t even sure, for a brief minute, if it was her at all, except for the shock in her eyes that probably looked a lot like his own. The crowd surged around them, and for a minute he lost her.
“Jack! Hey, good to see you here.” A rough arm pounded him on the back, and he turned, annoyed. Armand Stevenson, one of the vice-presidents heading up to the New Hampshire office, offered a hand. The scent of whiskey panted close to Jack’s face as the guy leaned in for the shake. “Quite a night, huh? What a place! Gina kept telling me I‘d be impressed, but I never…”
Jack tried to meet Armand’s piggy-eyed gaze, tried to listen to him chatter on about mergers. But his eyes kept going back to the place where he’d seen her. “Listen, let me catch up with you later on,” Jack said. “Buy you a drink, take Gina for a spin around the dance floor.” He tipped his head and moved away, leaving the guy to spew whiskey breath behind him.
For a brief moment he couldn’t find her, and all he saw was black.
Where is she? Tell me I didn’t imagine it. Tell me she didn’t leave. Tell me—
The crowd by the door moved a little, and a flash of emerald satin nearly blinded him.
Mags. Wow. After all these years.
A few more steps and he was there, standing beside her. He breathed in the scent that made him a little dizzy and wondered how he could have forgotten the color of her hair. “Maggie Doyle.” Her name, rich on his tongue, were the only words he could manage. Still they sounded like they belonged to someone else because he hadn’t said them anywhere except inside his head for nearly a decade.
Her mouth fell open, as if she hadn’t expected him to say anything, hadn’t expected it to be him at all. He knew how she felt.
“This is a surprise.”
That’s it, casual and easy
. He fought the emotions tumbling inside him.
She said nothing. After a long moment, she actually began to back away, and Jack thought she might run from the room. The young woman standing beside her stared. Her gaze moved from Jack to Maggie and back again. “You two know each other?”
He took advantage of the moment to regain his composure. “Hi. Jack Major. Maggie and I went to college together.” Pause. “A long time ago.”
“Neve Weatherby.” The woman smiled and nudged Maggie. She shook the hand Jack offered her.
Maggie, however, continued to gape at him until Jack thought maybe he’d left some marinara sauce on his chin or forgotten to shave. He felt himself redden.
“What—how—” Her cheeks flamed. A look he couldn’t read crossed her face. “What the hell are you doing here?” She raised her hands to her hair, and for a moment he wondered if she’d wind all those curls up on top of her head, the way she used to when emotions got the better of her.
“I—it’s a big charity event,” he said, confused. Wasn’t that why she stood here too? “You work in the city, you pretty much get an invitation.” He paused again. “I could ask you the same thing. Didn’t even know you lived in Boston.”
“I don’t.” She wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress and cleared her throat.
Silence fell between them, heavy and awkward.
“So you were just in the neighborhood and decided to stop by?” He tried a joke.
She dropped a glance at her watch. “I guess you could say that.”
Jack hunched up his shoulders. Who the hell was this woman? Not the lover who used to curl up naked next to him and count stars through his dormitory window. Not the coed who used to dare him to climb out on the library balcony, or race the cops, or make snow angels in Central Park after a storm. That Maggie had life and light; she walked the razor-thin edge between should and shouldn’t and teased him with a grin he could never resist. Now she stood before him looking like all the rest of them. Missing something. Frightened of something. God, he wanted to grab hold of her, shake her, embrace her, drive that empty look from her eyes.
“Listen, can I get you a drink? We could grab a seat, catch up for a few minutes.”
An eternity passed before she answered. “Jack, I’m sorry. I—I came here to see someone else. I can’t socialize. I’m not—I don’t have time. It‘s good to see you, but...” Her gaze roved over his face, beyond his shoulder, searching the room.
“Maggie, wait.”
She didn’t even register that she’d heard him. With a hand on her friend’s elbow, she turned, and he guessed she would have left until a sweep of blonde moved between them. Jack took a step back as he recognized the face.
Eden Fife. Jesus, I should have guessed.
She wrapped her arm around Maggie’s waist and shot him a glance that read as half-surprise, half-warning.
“Jack Major! How long has it been?” Leaning over, she kissed the air next to his cheek. “I might have imagined you’d be on the guest list.”
“Nice to see you again, Eden.”
Feels like a damn college reunion
.
And not in a good way
. Uncomfortable, he stuffed both hands into his pockets. Behind them, the band settled into place and struck up a lively rendition of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”
Eden pulled Maggie aside, leaned in, and whispered something. They both cut a glance his way, and Jack was reminded of the two of them back in school. Doubles, Eden and Maggie, twins from another time, the way they shared secrets, threw parties until dawn, studied together, ate together, broke hearts together.
Maggie Doyle
. He couldn’t believe it. After Vegas, he’d lost track of her, though it hadn’t been for lack of trying. He’d always imagined that she’d moved somewhere far away, across the country or maybe to the other side of the globe.
First he gave her time. Silence. Space. Then he tried to call her after he went away to England and he thought enough weeks had passed. But she never returned his messages. He tried email. Cards. Didn’t hear a thing. After awhile, he gave up and moved on, burying the relationship and telling himself it was better in the past. Only problem was, it had a nasty habit of not wanting to stay there. The last few hours had shown him that, plain as day. Jack thought of Paige and winced, guilty.
“So you and Maggie went to NYU?” Neve asked.
He nodded. “I was two years ahead of her, but it’s not that big a school. You get to know most people after awhile.”
Neve gave him a curious smile. “What was she like, back then?”
A corner of his mouth curved up. The question stirred all kinds of memories. Maggie dancing half-naked under a full moon. Maggie trying in vain to resist his advances as they studied together for finals. Maggie daring him to fly to Las Vegas on a moment’s notice to celebrate his upcoming graduation. Maggie weeping and telling him that the best thing for them both was to forget it ever happened.
Jack pulled at his tie and wondered how to answer. “Pretty crazy, to tell you the truth. One of a kind. So you two are friends?”