One Night in Boston Read Online Free PDF

with my parents about the landscaping?”
    He tried to nod. He meant to answer. But as his gaze fell upon her, he couldn’t speak at all. Dillon Murphy, never at a loss for words, jammed both hands into his pockets and stared at the girl. Eighteen, maybe twenty at the most, she stood there blushing in the morning light. One hand rested on her hip as she dropped her eyes and flirted without saying a word. He’d seen the smile and the pose a hundred times on a hundred different women in and around the city. It wasn’t the flirting that struck Dillon speechless.
    It was her hair.
    Red spiral curls framed eyes the shade of the ocean at dawn. She’d stuck most of it into a bun atop her head, but stray curls fell down across her forehead and neck. That hair… He’d only known one other girl with hair like that, fire-engine red, dangerous-when-you-got-too-close hair. In another life. In another place. Something heavy struck at Dillon’s heart, and a fist reached into his stomach and threatened to bring up his breakfast.
    Maggie Doyle.
    Maggie.
    Mags.
    Oh, God.
    In his mind’s eye, the out-of-control curls framed another face, this one damp with tears. Damn him if her last words didn’t come back to him too angry, sorrow-laden, old beyond her years. He tried to close his ears against them and failed. One fist opened and closed, and his fingernails scraped at the clipboard he still held.
    He hadn’t talked to his stepsister in almost six years. He hadn’t seen her in longer than that. Didn’t mean he’d forgotten about her; Jesus Christ, far from it. He’d just tried to respect the space she wanted after… well, after the operation.
    Dillon let out a long breath. After spending most of his adult life trying to atone for a teenage mistake—and failing—he’d put everything about Maggie out of his mind for good.
    Today, it looked like she wasn’t going to stay there.

Noon

    Clutching her purse, Maggie climbed the steps leading to Elmhurst House. Flowers and shrubs along the sidewalk and chintz curtains on the windows and doors did their best to give the place a cheerful air. Still, the brick looked shabby in places, and weeds jabbed their unwelcome fingers through the asphalt parking lot. The sign above the door needed a new coat of paint. A vacant-eyed man sat in one of the porch chairs. He nodded as Maggie passed, but whether it was a greeting or simply the accent to a beat inside his head, she couldn’t be sure.
    She signed in at the front desk and took a visitor’s pass. Then she made her way to the back parlor, her mother’s favorite room in the spacious residence. A nurse Maggie didn’t recognize stood near the door, head bent close to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Maggie scanned the space, taking in the wing-backed chairs, the dusty piano in the corner, and the prints of beaches and birds that hung on the walls. The air, heavy with perfume and the smell of stale medicine, made her throat close up. She took her time, letting her gaze fall on the details of the room though she knew them by heart.
    Hillary Doyle sat in the far corner of the parlor, facing the window. Maggie deliberately took the long way around the room and tried to work up her courage. She patted her sides and smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her clothes. Halfway there, she stopped to rescue a vase teetering too close to a table edge. Still, she arrived at her mother’s side too soon.
    “Hi, Ma.”
    The thin woman with bobbed auburn hair didn’t answer. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking. Lips moved with little pats and puffs as she chewed on words without letting them out. Bare feet poked from beneath a wrinkled denim dress. Every fingernail on one hand was painted in pale pink polish. The other five fingers remained bare, with nails chewed down to skin and cuticles stained with dried blood.
    Oh, God. Please let her know who I am. Today of all days, I need that. I need her.
    “Ma? It’s Maggie.” She laid a hand on her mother’s