5:00 a.m.
Jack pressed down on the gas and managed to close the gap between the Navigator and the ambulances carrying Maggie and Neve. Pink light skated across the horizon. Almost dawn, and his exhaustion had disappeared. He shook his head, trying to roll his neck and pop out the kinks. A few hours ago, the idea of socializing with half of Boston until dawn had turned his stomach. He would have given anything to be hitting the sheets before midnight. But now? Power, panic, excitement and terror all shuttled around his brain, tag-teaming each other and gaining speed as they went. He felt as though he could stay awake for a week.
How amazing, Jack thought, to peel back the layers and realize you still loved someone beyond all comprehension. How amazing to admit you still ached down deep. And how amazing that you could spend so many years denying it to yourself and find a way to keep on living despite the hole inside you.
Like an oyster piling sand upon a sore,
he mused,
you try to hide the irritation until one day it’s too big to ignore and you look down to realize it’s taken over you, something brilliant and blinding and rare as hell.
Jack squeaked the truck through a narrow spot in the street. Okay, so Mags had told him some things he hadn’t expected, some things he’d never guessed about her. Maybe she wasn’t the same person he remembered. Maybe she had a sorrowful side and glimmers of darkness. Maybe she held other secrets too. Jack pulled at his bottom lip. Didn’t they all? Wasn’t that part of working through relationships? Taking hold of the hard parts, examining them from every side, and fitting them into the puzzle all the same?
He hadn’t been willing to do it with Paige. He hadn’t been willing to work that hard.
I wanted to, at first. God help me, I thought we matched up in all the right ways. We were both making names for ourselves and seeking the right connections. We both appreciated a baseball game at the end of the day, a good bottle of wine, each other’s bite and backbone. I thought good sex and financial success meant a solid life. I thought after a while love would come along with that. Not the kind of love I felt for Mags, of course, but a different kind. A safer kind. I thought Mags was a fling I would outgrow.
How startling to find out he’d never been more wrong.
Jack slammed on his brakes as traffic bottlenecked at a flashing light. The ambulances slowed and waited for the cars to part. After a minute, they made their way around the corner and disappeared.
“C’mon,” he muttered to the cars crowding the road. “Get out of the way.”
He laid on the horn, tailgated a pick-up, knocked over two orange cones, and finally worked his way through. On the next street, traffic had pulled over. He swept by it all. Maybe five more minutes to the hospital, he guessed, though he hadn’t been down there in years.
Since Mom’s last chemo session
, he thought, and then was sorry for the memory. For a few minutes back at the accident scene, he’d felt that same helplessness that had cloaked his mother’s last days, that agony of staring at her shrunken body and knowing there was nothing he could do to save her.
Jack gunned the truck through a red light. He cut off a cab driver, who let loose a string of curse words out his open window. Jack didn’t care. He needed to be with Maggie when she woke up. He’d sit by her bedside until she did. He didn’t care if it took two hours or two days. Everything else—the mess with Paige, Taz’s memorial, work itself—could wait.
Work. Jack frowned. Bullieston. The acquisition of the Hart’s Falls’ house. Or rather, the acquisition of Maggie’s house. For a moment, practicality chased romance from his brain. How the hell was he going to handle the Hart’s Falls’ deal now? He couldn’t very well call up the board members and tell them he’d fallen in love with the owner. He couldn’t suggest they find another property to buy, not after his speech to the VPs at yesterday’s meeting. You didn’t sabotage a multi-million dollar deal in the name of passion.
But how was he supposed to tell Maggie that she might not have a home after leaving the hospital? How was he supposed to explain that if she didn’t agree to sell to his company, Bullieston would buy it at auction for a fraction of what it was worth? How could he keep watch beside her broken body while his mind whirled with figures and phone calls he was expected to make? How could he split himself in two like that?
I am the biggest traitor in the world
. Jack tried to swallow past the knob of guilt in his throat. He should probably call someone else to be there with her. Her mother, maybe. Or her stepfather? Maggie had never seemed very close to the guy, but still. There was a sibling, he recalled, a brother, but Jack had never met him. He picked up his cell phone and put it down again. Someone else needed to know about the accident. Someone who could hold Maggie’s heart while he tried to reconcile Jack the CEO with Jack the man with the splintered soul.
Eden, he decided after a minute. That woman knew how to give comfort like a warm thick blanket, tucked in tight around you. Maggie would want to see her gap-toothed grin upon waking. Plus, if anyone had a link to the past, if anyone knew where to find her mother, it would be Maggie’s best friend.
Jack thought of the first time he’d met Hillary, the summer between his junior and senior years of college. He’d seen the resemblance between mother and daughter immediately: the carefree smile, the tousled red hair. The way they both watched you during a conversation as if filing away data, all the little bits and bytes that made you up.
It was July, he remembered, after the holiday weekend. They’d just spent a few days at Taz‘s place in Westchester, and Mags wanted to drive up to see her mom…
*
“That’s it, the brown house at the end of the block.”
Jack pulled up to the curb and cut the engine. “Cute place.” Tucked away on a side street, the houses mirrored each other but for the shade of paint and color of flowers on the porches.
“It’s not Wellesley.”
He glanced over, surprised at the chill in Mags’ voice. “I came here to meet your parents, not talk stocks with the neighbors. You gonna introduce me, or should we just sit in the car all afternoon?”
Maggie stuck out her tongue as she jumped from the silver BMW. “Come on, then.” She danced ahead of him up the sidewalk, dodging his kisses and worming away from the hand that tried to slip itself around her waist.
Jack laughed out loud and finally scooped her up and tossed all one hundred pounds of her over his shoulder. She squealed and a woman dragging a garbage can to the curb looked over at them.
“Put me down,” Maggie said as they neared number two-sixty. Her feet dragged a little as the sidewalk cracked and split, and her mood sobered once they neared the front steps. By the time she rapped on the door and pushed it open, she’d stopped smiling altogether.
“Mom? Hello?”
He heard rustling down the hallway, and then a mirror version of Maggie burst out of the kitchen. “What are you doing here? You didn’t call—I had no idea you were coming!” The woman flung her arms around Maggie and kissed her on the cheek. “Why didn’t you let me know? I would have planned something for dinner.” She glanced down at the turquoise hospital scrubs she wore. The laces of one rubbery white shoe hung open. “I haven’t even showered. I only got home a few minutes ago.” For the first time, she looked away from her daughter, taking in Jack.
“Hi.” He reached out a hand. “Jack Major.”
“Hillary Doyle-Murphy. It’s a pleasure. Maggie’s told me a lot about you.”
She has? Good
.
“I’m afraid my husband won’t be home for a few hours.” She turned back to Maggie. “Are you staying overnight?”
Maggie shook her head, and a cloud settled across her face. Jack let his arm fall across her shoulders, protecting her from a discomfort he sensed and couldn’t understand.
“No, we have a long drive back. We just wanted to stop in, have a drink, say hello.”
Hillary’s smile faded. “Oh. All right. Well, come on back to the porch. I just brewed some iced tea.”
“Sounds good,” Jack said. He glanced at a family photo hanging on the wall. “Do I get the grand tour?”
“Do you really want one?’
“Sure.” Didn’t Mags get it? He wanted to know everything about her: where she came from, what she pined for, how she’d come to be this amazing woman who turned his world upside down. He knew only pieces of her, gathered up in the six months they’d been dating, but he wanted to know so much more. These walls, her mother’s laugh, the scent of lemon polish that lingered in the air, the slant of the stairs, the little-girl pictures on the walls—he drank it all in, hints of the Maggie she’d been and the Maggie she might someday grow to be.
“Bedroom, bedroom, bathroom, living room on the other side of the stairs. Kitchen at the end of the hall.” Maggie stopped, her arms at her sides.
“What’s upstairs?”
“My mom and step-dad’s room, and another bathroom. And an office.” Her voice was flat.
“This your old room?” Jack pushed open a door sitting ajar. He guessed it must have been. Yellow walls matched a yellow and pink comforter. Fluffy pink pillows sat against the wall. A scarred desk in the corner. A tall dresser with a jewelry box on top. Different movie posters on the walls.
“Don’t tell me. You had a crush on Brad Pitt.”
Maggie grinned, though she remained in the doorway. “Yup. Still do,
actually. Sorry.”
Jack sighed. “I guess I’ll get over it.” He backed out into the hall. “Who had the other bedroom down here?” He paused in the open door and glanced at an old computer on a metal desk and a twin bed covered with a brown spread. Two pairs of worn work boots lay tossed in the corner.
“My stepbrother.”
Jack turned, surprised. “You never told me you had a brother.”
“Stepbrother,” she corrected. “Dillon. I haven’t talked to him in a long time.”
“Why not?”
Maggie’s eyes changed and the light in them disappeared. “Long story.”
Jack wanted to ask, wanted to know more, but something in her face stopped him.
What the hell happened here?
he wondered. The tension stretched across Mags’ cheekbones startled him. She’d never so much as mentioned a stepbrother in all the time he’d known her. Wasn’t that odd? He knew plenty of mixed families, and it wasn’t any surprise that sometimes the kids lost touch after leaving home, but this seemed different somehow. Maybe they just didn’t get along. Maybe Dillon was a lot older, or younger, and they didn’t have anything in common
.
Jack shook his head and followed Maggie to the porch, putting it out of his mind. In the next year and a-half, neither one of them mentioned it again.
*
A switch flipped over in Jack’s mind. That name. The one he hadn’t recognized earlier, because he’d been half out of his wits at seeing Maggie again.
Dillon.
That was it. Mags had come to Boston and the Deveau Ball looking for her stepbrother. She’d been almost frantic in her search, glancing over shoulders every time someone new walked into the room. But why? From all Jack knew, there had never been any close relationship between the two. It didn’t make sense.
Up ahead, the sign for Boston’s largest hospital came into view. As the ambulance drove toward the Emergency Room, he pulled into the first parking garage he could find, a half-block up the street. Grabbing his cell phone, he thumbed through the saved numbers. Thank God Eden had insisted on giving it to him before he left the ball.
Just in case, Jack
, she’d drawled, and he’d humored her, letting her punch the numbers into his phone with maddening precision. He found her name after a few seconds of fumbling and recalled the last time he and Mags and Eden had all been together.
Las Vegas, of course: twenty-four hours of thrill and heartache, all wrapped up into a neat little day framed on either end by a plane ride. Start at ground zero, in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, and end up the next morning with your heart handed to you on a platter. Wrap up and take home, or discard on the way out. But for the change in calendar year, the scenario seemed frighteningly familiar.
Jack set his jaw.
Not happening again, Mags, I can promise you that. You’re not leaving me again, not before I get a chance to say my piece. You’re not getting off that easy this time.
6:00 a.m.
For a while, Maggie felt nothing. It was as if she’d fallen into some kind of ocean, buoyed by gentle waves. She couldn’t feel her arms or her legs, but that didn’t worry her. She had a sense that the hum she could hear in the distance kept her afloat, and though she tried a couple of times to swim toward it, strange hands pushed her back. After a while, she gave up struggling and stayed where she was.
Once she thought she opened her eyes and saw a massive clock face above her, except this clock had four hands instead of two, and they spun around faster than they should have. She tried to count the seconds, but they ticked off in erratic beats, and just when she thought she’d gotten the hang of it, a new pattern began.
I’m dreaming
. She had a vague recollection of a car accident, of her legs pinned beneath the dashboard and a collar around her neck. Had she driven off the road? Smashed head-on into someone else? She couldn’t piece together the details. She thought maybe Jack had been there too, but she couldn’t remember for sure, and that frightened her. She tried to ask for him, but no one seemed to be listening.
The clock spoke to her from its mouthless face.
You’re out of time
, it said.
No more choices. No more solutions. Out of time.
Maggie wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure she could find her hands.
So what else is new?
she challenged the voice.
Time has always been my enemy. I’ve never had enough of it, and when I need it most, when I need it to slow down or spin back or change, it never listens to me.
Her thoughts crystallized for a minute, and everything came back to her. The house. The bank. The foreclosure. Dillon. Jack.
She whimpered and tried to sit up. She had so much to take care of.
At once, she felt a prick in her arm, and after a minute or two, warmth washed over her belly and slid down to her toes. She relaxed. Really, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. Time never stopped, and it certainly never went in reverse. No use wishing and hoping for things that would never come to be. Blackness came again, and this time Maggie embraced it, because diving down deep into it was the only way she could wash away memory once and for all.
*
Jack flipped his cell phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. He ran the words through his mind and hoped Maggie would listen to what he had to say. She wouldn’t have much of a choice, but he’d try and break it to her as gently as he could. Pulling off the tuxedo jacket he still wore, he tossed it into the backseat of the Navigator and headed for the hospital’s main lobby. Two nurses on break stood a few feet away. A reddish-blue haze from the sign above them colored their faces like a bruise. They puffed on cigarettes and cut him a glance as he walked inside.
Jack found the reception desk. “Excuse me.”
The woman with the graying bun ignored him as she wrote something on a clipboard. Crow’s feet lined her eyes, and her mouth pulled down into a frown.
“Excuse me?”
“Just a minute.” She didn’t look up.
Jack watched thirty-two seconds click by on the clock behind her. He grabbed a stray paperclip lying on the desk and twisted it until it broke in his fingers. Another twenty seconds. Still the woman continued to write. Jack turned in a slow circle, keeping both hands inside his pockets so he wouldn’t reach over the desk and yank the clipboard out of her hands.
Finally she raised her eyes. “May I help you?”
He let a breath puff out before answering.
Isn’t this the hospital? Isn’t this where people come when they’re bleeding or dying or holding a limb together with a shirt sleeve? Shouldn’t you be showing me some concern?
Because somewhere inside, Jack was pretty sure he was bleeding too.
He rubbed his knuckles against his jawline, rough with morning stubble. “A friend of mine was brought in a little while ago. From a car accident. Maggie Doyle.”
The woman’s face changed slightly. She slid her rolling chair across the carpet and tapped the keys of her computer.
“Well, I don’t have any information right now. You know, I can’t tell you anything, anyway, unless you’re family. Or unless the patient allows it. You’ll have to take a seat and wait for a doctor or a family member.”
A family member?
Jack didn’t think any would be coming, and was about to say so when the telephone rang and she picked it up. Swiveling away from him, she chirped something into the receiver. He took a few steps back and checked out the room while he considered his next move. A ruddy-cheeked man with a crooked toupee sat in one corner, staring at an infomercial on the television. Two seats over, a little girl with tangled hair crouched at the feet of a harried-looking woman. The woman flipped through a magazine, and one heel jiggled against the floor. Her leg knocked the little girl in the chin every so often. Neither one seemed to notice or care.
Jack looked at his watch and took a drink of water from the fountain in the corner. Warm. Gross. He paced the length of the room twice and thought again about his plan. He wondered if he’d considered all the details. He didn’t have Suzi or Carl or anyone from the office running reports and comparing data. No one to bounce ideas off, no time for lunch with a colleague to consider the possibilities. All he had was a hunch gathered after a sleepless night.
Just make the call
, he told himself on his third trip past Ms. Jiggle-Foot and her kid.
Make the call, and then tell Maggie
. He’d worked through every possible solution to the predicament he faced. None was ideal. All would have difficult consequences. But one he could work with. He just needed to make the phone call fast, before his office opened for the morning. With the expansion project running behind deadline, he’d ordered a skeleton staff to work on Saturdays. Now he could have cursed himself for the decision. The fewer people who were involved with this, the better.
Jack slid his phone out again and ran one thumb over the keys.
God, he didn’t want to do this to Mags. He didn’t want her to find out like this. But it was the only way he could think of…
He dialed the number he knew by heart. One ring. Two.
C’mon. I know you’re up. I know you left the ball before eleven. I know you’ve already run four miles and are probably on your second bowl of oatmeal. Just answer your goddamned cell.
“Carl Anderson.”
“Carl, it’s Jack.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Listen, I need you to run some numbers for me, get some paperwork together as soon as you can. It’s regarding the Hart’s Falls house.”
*
Maggie struggled to open her eyes. Where was she? Rough, thin cotton rubbed underneath her fingertips.
Satin
, she thought.
My dress is supposed to be satin.
She tried to sit up, but someone put a hand on her shoulder.
“Take it easy.”
Maggie rolled her head to one side. A jolly-faced nurse, all double chins, cheeks, and teeth, smiled down at her. “Welcome back.”
Back from where? Then Maggie remembered. The ball. The storm. The accident. She tried to swallow, but her mouth tasted funny. Her insides seemed wobbly. Really, she felt as though she’d been wrapped in stuffing and stored in a cardboard box, just recently let out for air with no idea which end was up.
“What time is it?”
“’Bout quarter to seven in the morning.” The nurse fastened a blood pressure cuff around Maggie’s arm. “Why? You got a hot date?”
I wish
. Maggie stared at the nurse’s badge. Blue capital letters swam around for a moment before spelling out “Bella”. She wondered if that was the woman’s real name or a nickname. Was it short for Isabella? Annabelle? Elizabeth? Had someone she loved, a boy perhaps, given it to her?
Only three people had ever called her Mags. Dillon, then Jack. And Eden, after a while. No one else since. Funny things, nicknames. Most times you’d never pick them for yourself, but they sounded just right coming off someone else’s tongue.
“How long have I been here?”
Bella pulled a pen from her pocket and wrote something on a clipboard. “You were brought in a little over an hour ago. Checked in through Emergency and then moved up here.” A beeping sound started in the room next door. “If you need anything, press the button beside you. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Wait.” This time Maggie did sit up, ignoring the pain in her lower back. “Please. My friend was in the car with me. Neve Weatherby. Do you know where she is? Is she okay?”
The nurse paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I don’t have that information. And even if I did, I couldn’t release it to you.”
“But I have to know. If you’re not allowed to tell me, then—” Maggie threw off the covers and swung her feet over the side of the bed.
Then I’ll just go find out myself
. Dizziness swept over her and she grabbed at the edge of the mattress to steady herself.
Bella marched back over and lay firm hands on Maggie’s shoulders. “Honey, you were involved in a serious car accident. You’re lucky to only have a few minor injuries. The doctor wants you to stay here for observation a few more hours, so just lie down and try to relax.” She helped Maggie back into the bed and rearranged the covers. “I’ll see what I can find out about your friend.”
Maggie didn’t answer. Glumness settled into her limbs as the nurse pulled the door shut. Her hair felt greasy. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything in the last twelve hours besides a handful of appetizers. In one corner of the room, she spied a pile of green satin folded on a chair. That’s where her dress had ended up. She wondered if the doctors cut it off her and figured they probably did.
Ruined
, she thought,
just like me. Just like the whole night
.
Closing her eyes, Maggie stared at the red speckles on the insides of her eyelids. All she’d wanted to do was find a way to come up with the money she owed. She hadn’t wanted to skip down Memory Lane. She hadn’t intended to ruin anyone else’s evening. She certainly hadn’t meant to end up inside the walls of a city hospital. But that’s exactly what had happened, after all.
She traced circles on the sheets and wondered where she would go tomorrow or the next day. Her attorney said she might continue to live in her house while the foreclosure proceedings unfolded, but for how long? Fresh pain seared a strip behind Maggie’s eyes as she recalled the telephone message from Bullieston. The tumbling of Jack’s business cards into the street with the same name inscribed upon them. The moment of realization, the sad sealing of an inevitable deal.
…our company is planning an expansion into Hart’s Falls, and we’ve been looking at several homes in the north neighborhoods down there. I understand that you might be open to discussion…
Open to discussion. She supposed that was one way to look at it. She flopped one arm over her face. She guessed she could sell the house to them. That way, at least she could keep the business
.
But selling to Jack’s company meant seeing Jack again. It meant talking to him, signing papers with him, straining to carry on a conversation while trying not to dissolve into a puddle at his feet.
How could she possibly deal with that?
What other choice did she have?