Page 10 of What Happens at Nightfall

Adam let out a deep breath. “I’m not winning any ‘dad of the year’ awards tonight, am I?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never had one.” Jess wished the words back as soon as they were out. She waved her phone maniacally in the air. “It’s all good! I’m all the way up to—five percent already! Don’t worry about it. If you can just point me toward the nearest subway . . .”

Automatically, Jess reached into the tiny pocket of her bag where she kept her OMNY card. And felt nothing. No plastic rectangle.

She rooted in her bag, groping along the bottom for the familiar shape, feeling the panic grow. It had to be in there, stuck to the bottom of a flip-flop or jumbled together with a bunch of ancient business cards, caught in folds of the Green-Wood map, anywhere.

But it wasn’t.

“Is something wrong?” Adam came up behind her as she dumped her bag on one of the kitchen chairs.

“I can’t find my OMNY card.” Jess dug out a handful of defunct receipts, a frayed postcard advertising a 2017 display of sculptures at her mother’s gallery, an emergency granola bar that had gone from bar back to granola. A stub from one of the Trolls movies. A notebook covered with inspirational sentiments, a gift from Kimmy, meant to be used for recording her deepest thoughts and feelings.

Jess flipped through the empty pages, just in case. No OMNY card.

“It must have fallen out when the boys knocked my bag off my shoulder. I’d thought I’d found everything, but— Oh well. Never mind.” Jess abruptly straightened, almost bumping into Adam, who was standing right behind her. “Not a big deal. Someone told me that now you can just tap your credit card against the machine.”

She hoped. She’d never tried it before. She really didn’t want to start a career of crime by turnstile jumping.

“What do you mean, when the boys knocked your bag off your shoulder?” Adam turned to stare at his son. “Ben? Is there something else you forgot to tell me?”

“It was an accident.”

“It’s okay,” Jess lied. “No harm done. I just need to remember to call the company and get my card discontinued in case someone else tries to use it.”

How high a bill could someone rack up on an OMNY card? Jess didn’t want to find out. Nine months of no income had made alarmingly clear to her how quickly the money could flow out, not on extravagances, but just on basic expenses. Rent, groceries, student loans. Her mom’s gallery, a place of joy and light—or a cash-guzzling money suck, depending on how one preferred to look at it.

Adam took a deep breath. “We can fix this. If you come with me, we can see if we can find your OMNY card. The grounds are closed for the night, so unless a squirrel took it, it should still be there. If you can’t find it, I can walk you to the subway and swipe you through. It’s the least I can do after we screwed up your evening.”

He gave his son a pointed look.

Ben stared at the ground.

“Here.” Melinda had come back, holding out a beige rectangle with the name of a law firm on it in green letters.

Jess reached for it, and then hesitated. “If you’re sure you don’t mind my borrowing it.”

Melinda set it down on the kitchen table. “It’s fine. It’s just a charger.”

It was very clearly not just a charger.

But there was no way to refuse it now without making it worse. “Thanks,” said Jess.

“Shall we?” said the arborist, shrugging into a large and very worn fleece.

Never mind, Jess wanted to say. I’ll just tap my credit card. No worries. But she knew that was cowardly. It was just walkways and plants and decomposing corpses. Nothing to be afraid of out there. Nothing but the wind and her imagination and decades of social conditioning.

Jess knew it was ridiculous, but she really, really didn’t want to go back out there.

The arborist took a flashlight from the corner of the counter. It was the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps. It made any other flashlight Jess had ever seen look puny and weak.

“That’s some flashlight.”

“It’s dark out there,” he said.

Chapter Four

“Watch your step.” Adam trained the flashlight on the front stairs so their unexpected guest could see where she was going.