One Night in Boston

by Allie Boniface

  Neve shook her head. She couldn’t afford such a favor. “I probably have an old bridesmaid’s dress at home. I could check.”

  The color came back into Maggie’s face. “Does that mean you’ll go?”

  Neve nodded, tickled about the prospect of a road trip, even if it was for such a serious reason. “I’ll go.”

  “Then I’ll run over to Bev’s right now.” Maggie looked at her watch again, and her lips moved as if she were counting seconds and forming a plan. “I’ll have to call Eden back, let her know what we’re doing. Why don’t you head home, find something to wear, and meet me back here? If we leave by four-thirty, we should make it up to Boston before six.”

  “Okay.” Neve patted her hands together in excitement. She couldn’t wait to go home and look through her closet. She knew she shouldn’t be happy, shouldn’t be celebrating Maggie’s dilemma, but she couldn’t help it. A fancy ball and a night out in the big city — wait until she told Andrew!

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, but Maggie was already out the door.

  *

  Normally, Maggie could reach the other side of Hart’s Falls in under ten minutes, but with the rain pouring down, it took her double that. She turned her wipers to high and did her best to avoid the water streaming from the ditches and puddling in the low spots. She wondered if the storm would let up before evening. The clouds overhead, heavy and ominous, didn’t promise much. Her mood turned blacker.

  What am I doing? Am I really going to some ball on the off chance I might run into Dillon? And on the off chance he might actually agree to loan me almost sixteen thousand dollars? Tears welled in her eyes. Apparently that’s exactly what she was doing, because she’d run out of options. She’d lied to the bank. She’d stopped paying her loyal employee. She’d even begged Elmhurst House for an extension on her mother’s monthly rent. It might be crazy, but the Deveau Ball was Maggie’s last chance to save her home and her business.

  As she approached the town’s main intersection, the lights of Hart’s Falls Medical Center pierced the gray afternoon. She slowed as an ambulance careened into its parking lot. Two nurses ran out into the rain. The building, only a few years old, boasted some of the most up-to-date facilities in the state. It had even recruited top doctors from hospitals up in Boston. But Maggie had never set foot inside, with the exception of one visit with her mother last fall, and she had no intention of ever returning on her own. Even the flu that kept her bedridden for nearly a month last winter, even the ten pounds she lost and the blood she threw up, couldn’t convince her to visit a doctor.

  Hospitals, doctors, nurses—they only meant one thing to Maggie. Sam. That night. And all that happened after.

  *

  “How come I never see you at school?” Sam leaned closer to Maggie and pressed one elbow into the pink and yellow pillows on her bed. He’d knocked on her door a few minutes ago, sexy and smiling and smelling like Polo.

  She let her eyelids flutter downward a little, the way the popular girls at school did when they talked to their boyfriends. “Well, we take different classes, for one.”

  “Mmm.” He ran the back of his hand along her bare leg. Maggie shivered, enjoying his touch even though it frightened her a little. She still couldn’t believe it. This was Sam Knight, Mr. Drop-Dead Gorgeous himself, sitting in her bedroom on a school night. Smiling at her. Touching her. The entire cheer squad would have given their perfect complexions to trade places with her and she knew it.

  “That’s too bad,” he whispered. “’Cause you’re amazing.”

  She smelled alcohol on his breath, and something else—weed, she guessed— as he bent down and kissed her.

  Maggie’s toes pushed into the comforter and one palm pressed against the stuffed bear that she’d wedged into the corner between bed and wall. Sam’s tongue met hers and they darted and twisted around each other. So this is what Sherry and Daria mean when they say that a guy who knows how to kiss can practically make you forget your own name…

  Sam raised a hand and pushed her hair from her face. His thumb rubbed her cheekbone so softly she could swear he left the mark of each fingerprint whorl against her skin. Sherry and Daria vanished.

  “Maggie…” Sam’s hands were all over her then, beneath her t-shirt and in her hair and at the small of her back. She felt her nipples grow tight, felt his fingers on them, and wasn’t sure the pleasure or the panic swelled faster inside her chest.

  “Sam, wait.” Suddenly, she didn’t know if she was ready for this: his desire, his masculinity, his overwhelming presence in her room and in her bed. It scared her. It thrilled her. She wanted to run away from him. She wanted to dive under the covers with him. She wanted someone to explain what was happening. From nowhere, this want had welled up inside her, from a place she never even knew existed. Maggie pulled away. She had only kissed two other boys, after all, and had only gone to second base with Lenny Wilkins, one night last summer.

  Sam Knight was nothing like Lenny.

  “What’s wrong?” His voice, heavy and breathless, whispered close to her ear.

  “I just—” Maggie wished suddenly that Dillon was awake, that he was paying attention and could hear her heartbeat through the walls. She wished he could sense she was in over her head.

  “Maggie, I won’t do anything you don’t want to do.” Sam’s voice was kind and comforting, even as he eased her shirt away from her shoulder and made little sucking noises along her collarbone.

  She believed him for a while, until the hours slipped away, and by the time morning poked inside the windows, it was too late to undo what had happened.

  *

  The steering wheel spun out of control in Maggie’s fingers, and only the blaring horn of the truck behind her startled her back to the present.

  Goddammit. She steadied the wheel and clutched the tan vinyl bumps so tightly she thought all ten fingers might break. She hadn’t relived that night in years. She hadn’t let herself. Looking back only woke the monsters up again. But now the stress of the day, the idea of seeing Dillon again, the image of nurses in a rainstorm, had sent her tumbling back through time. Back to her childhood. Back to the nightmare.

  Forget it, Maggie ordered herself. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into, not until it was too late. Sam was drunk and stoned and a seventeen-year-old jerk. He only wanted one thing. You just made a mistake.

  But Dillon…there was the heartbreak. Because Dillon had been a seventeen-year-old jerk too, drunk and stoned and sleeping across the hall. He should have known better. He should have waited for Sam to leave. He should have locked the door behind his friend. He should have stayed to watch over her. That was what older brothers did, right?

  Hers hadn’t. Somehow, it didn’t matter that Dillon had beaten Sam within an inch of his life the next day. It didn’t matter that Sam went to prom two months later with a scar under one eye and a noticeable limp. Sitting in that chilly doctor’s office in Manhattan four years later, scarred by a disease that would eventually take the one thing that made her a woman, Maggie had needed someone to blame. She’d only been with one guy, ever. Sam. The disease was his fault. The operation could be traced back to him. Back to that single night, when her stepbrother’s best friend stepped across the threshold of her bedroom.

  But since Sam had drowned at the local swimming hole the night of his high school graduation, and since Maggie couldn’t bear to look in the mirror and blame herself, the only person left to blame was Dillon. So she did.

  *

  “What about this one?” Maggie stumbled out of the dressing room, poured into a black dress so tight she could barely breathe.

  Beverly DuPree, owner of the only upscale clothing boutique in Hart’s Falls, shook her head. Willowy, square-jawed, somewhere between forty and sixty-five, the woman wore flared black pants and a matching turtleneck sweater. Three thick gold chains hung around her neck.

  Maggie glanced into the three-way mirror. “
Too tight, right? I look like the hooker who’s supposed to jump out of the cake.” She tugged at the strapless bodice, trying to find an ounce of space in which to draw a breath. “What else do you have? Anything that might have the comfort of a sweatshirt? Or a pair of pajamas?”

  Maggie tripped back into the cubicle and grunted as she did her best to squirm her way out of the black sheath. She recalled the only other time she’d gone to a black-tie event. Right after college, when I was living in New York and working for Delilah’s Design Factory. She’d agreed to a blind date with Delilah’s nephew, an up-and-coming broker from the East side, thinking it might be fun to mingle with the rich and famous. Instead, she’d ended up spending most of the night standing by the hors d’oeuvres and watching her date flirt with the bartender. The male bartender, by the way. The pomposity and pretension of the entire evening had sent shivers clear through her and she’d sworn never to waste her time like that again. She couldn’t believe she was about to sell her soul and do it again.

  She slung the sequined dress onto its hanger and pulled on her tank top and jeans. Barefoot, she headed back into the showroom and made her way to an aisle they hadn’t yet tried. She pawed through the size 2’s, hope fading as slinky black dress after slinky black dress passed through her fingers. If these were her only choices, she might as well wear the turquoise monstrosity left over from her second cousin’s wedding.

  “What about this one?” From the far corner of the dress shop, Bev beckoned.

  Maggie stood on tiptoe and peered around a mannequin. The shop owner pointed to a swatch of deep green poking from between the blacks and navies on the rack. “This one. It’s perfect for you. I should have thought of it before.”

  Crossing two fingers in her mind, Maggie walked over. She parted the dresses, pushed the others away, and took a look. Wide, sleeveless straps slid to a vee-neck that was neither offensive nor prudish. At the waist, darts of fabric gathered and puckered, then smoothed to a long skirt that swayed just a little at the bottom. And the color! Emerald satin rustled in her hands, a dark green like the forest after a rainstorm or pine trees at dusk. The material caught the light and deepened as she moved the dress this way and that.

  Oh, I really hope it fits, Maggie thought a minute later, as she pulled it over her head in the dressing room and drew up the side zipper. For a minute she didn’t open her eyes, didn’t want to know. And then she did.

  Amazing how something inside her could still feel like a little-girl-princess every so often when the right dress or the right guy came along. Not that I’ve met anything close to the right guy in years. She turned toward the mirror. To be honest, she hadn’t had time for romance since she opened her business. Nor had she really had the heart, not when every guy she met reminded her of the one she’d given away. And who could match up with a memory?

  “Wow.” Even with the messy bun atop her head and the familiar, freckled road map along her bare arms, Maggie almost didn’t recognize herself. On the hanger, the dress was beautiful. On her, draped to her toes and fitting in all the right places, it became something breathtaking. Maybe Cinderella will make an appearance tonight after all.

  Bev appeared behind her, and the look on her face matched Maggie’s thoughts. “It’s perfect.”

  And it was.

  “I’ll be the only one there in green,” she hedged as she smoothed the fabric with calloused hands.

  “So?” The woman curled a lip, as if black were out of vogue this season.

  “Okay, then, this is it. Thanks, Bev.”

  “It’s my pleasure. I owe you, anyway. My profits went up fifty percent after your redesign last summer.”

  Fifteen minutes later, with the dress over one arm and a brand new pair of three-inch heels in the crook of the other, Maggie headed back out into the rain. This time, she vowed to take a different route home, to avoid the medical center and any lingering memories it might call up. Hopping into her Honda, she turned on the radio and searched for a good, loud rock song to drown out the chatter inside her head.

  Thick white plastic in the backseat, hiding a gown. A fuzzy memory of a stepbrother she’d once adored. A heavy heart, squeezed tight with nerves and anticipation. Her world now seemed to focus on those three things and nothing more. Maggie swallowed and fought back growing fear. Never before had the ticking of the clock held quite as much meaning, quite as much power, to change the rest of her life.

  4:00 p.m.

  Jack’s cell phone buzzed, and he raised a finger to stop Suzie, who was in the middle of giving him the latest calendar updates.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, big bro. You busy?”

  Taz. Jack smiled and spun in his chair. “Always.” He eyed the stacks of paper on his desk and the file folders in his secretary’s lap. “It’s okay, though. I can take a minute. So you’re back in town? Where are you staying?”

  “At the house.”

  Jack nodded. He avoided his childhood home in Wellesley as much as he could, but then he had other places to sleep at night, places that didn’t conjure up memories of loss and sadness. Taz didn’t, unless you counted that jalopy he drove around. Jack didn’t. Taz might.

  “How was Honduras?” He stared at the rain.

  “Rough. Lotta people need a lotta help down there. I’m going back in the fall.”

  Jack wasn’t surprised. The bleeding heart of the family, Taz had a way of seeking out the strays, the weak, and the sick. He and Mom had that in common. Drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, Jack wondered what Taz was up to in the meantime. Why the midday telephone call? The four brothers usually only contacted each other around the holidays, after downing too many glasses of eggnog. Never in the summer. Never at work. He set his teeth and waited.

  “So, listen,” Taz went on. “I’m setting up a memorial for next week. At the house. Just a few people, plus family. Dad hasn’t committed yet, but I figure he’ll agree to it if you and I push hard enough.”

  Memorial? What the hell are you talking about?

  Suddenly all the memories came crashing back. Jack cleared his throat to choke back a lump of emotion he didn’t have time for. He didn’t need to look at the calendar to know that sometime next week, the month would slip from June into July. July second, to be exact. Today’s rain would clear by then, because sticky summer heat and unforgiving sunshine always accompanied the anniversary of their mother’s death. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe it’s here again. He shook his head. Most times, he just tried to work through the day, with a visit to the cemetery and a phone call to his father, where they both muttered the usual meaningless sympathies.

  “Jack? You still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “We talked about putting a special garden in the backyard, remember? Thought this might be the year for it.”

  A garden? Yeah, he remembered something about that. “Why now?” Jack heard the sound of his office door closing and glanced up. Well. Sometimes Suzie did display tact, after all.

  Taz didn’t answer Jack’s question for a minute, and silence hung between them, darkness colored with question marks. “It’s been five years.”

  Jack’s knee jounced up and jarred his desk. A paper cup of cold coffee tumbled to the rug, and sticky brown liquid curled into a wet spot under his chair. Five years? When the hell had that happened? Couldn’t be. Impossible. It was only two years ago, three at the most, that he’d stood at Mom’s bedside and wrapped her fingers inside his.

  “It hasn’t been five years.”

  “Of course it has.”

  Jack tossed the cup into the trash and rubbed at the wet stain with one toe of his wingtip shoe.

  “You’d just taken that VP job at Bullieston,” his brother went on. “You’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask Paige out, after spending way too much time moping around over—”

  “Okay. Yeah. I remember.” Jack didn’t want to hear his brother say her name. That name. The one from college. The one from Vegas. The one fr
om forever ago that had resurfaced more in the last three hours than the last three years.

  “So you’ll be there?” Taz asked again.

  Jack rolled his head from side to side. Neck joints popped. Shoulders too. Do I have a choice? “All right. Just let me know when. Did you call Will and Aaron?”

  “Not yet.”

  He nodded, anxious to get off the phone. Thinking about Mom…well, all it did was remind him of the person he’d once been. The adolescent trying to figure himself out, while she baked him fresh cookies. The college graduate trying to mend a broken heart, while she rubbed the back of his neck and told him one day he’d feel whole again. The corporate whiz boasting about his promotion, while she narrowed her eyes with a warning to keep both feet on the ground. At every turn, a memory of his mother, and with it a memory of the man he used to be. Since she’d left, he’d turned into someone else. Someone different. Someone he didn’t always like to see in the mirror. Jack muttered a goodbye and stuffed the phone into his pocket.

  Pressing the intercom, he barked, “Suzie, get in here.” Back to work, he told himself. The rigor of a daily routine was the best cure for any kind of ailment. Sadness and tears were weakness, and emotion betrayed you. Say what you would about Jack Major, he wasn’t a weak man. He wasn’t soft. He wasn’t easily swayed.

  Not anymore.

  *

  Dillon locked the office door behind him and climbed into his pick-up. With messages returned, bills paid, and a call to the dry cleaner to see that his tux was ready, he had no reason to spend any more time at the office. Rain doesn’t look like it’s letting up, he mused. He peered through the windshield. Might as well beat rush-hour traffic home. On Friday evenings especially, the gridlock in and around Boston turned nasty early on. Though the townhouse he’d bought last year was a mere twelve miles away, at the wrong time it could take him up to an hour to reach it. Not today, I hope. Waiting for a break in traffic, he found J.J.’s number on his cell and gave his partner the lowdown on the Casterline plans.