Page 105 of What Happens at Nightfall

Her mother followed her to the linen closet. “Jess? Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine.” Jess plunged into the piles of sheets and towels, pulling out the single set of twin sheets she kept for the air mattress.

She’d spent her life making sure it was fine, or, if it wasn’t fine, that she didn’t bother anyone other than herself. She’d put on her own Neosporin and packed her own lunches for camp. She’d always tried to make herself as small as possible, trying not to take up any more room in her mother’s life than she already did.

But her mother had told Kimmy that having Jess had changed her life for the better, not for worse.

Not that you do need me, her mother had said just now. Like she wanted Jess to need her.

Jess turned, clutching the sheets to her chest. “Actually, yes. A lot is wrong.”

“I thought so.” Her mother took the sheets from her and put them down on the couch. “Why don’t I wash my hands—and do you have a kettle we can put on?—and you can tell me about it.”

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Jess said, and fled to the kitchen.

By the time she came out with two mugs—chamomile for her mother, coffee for Jess—she found her mother standing in front of the bookcase, the paper clip angel in her hand. “Do you remember when you were little and you used to see angels?”

“You mean when I thought I saw angels. And it was just one. One angel.” The same angel she produced again and again in her doodlings and the odd bits of sculpture she created out of paper clips. “A lot of kids think they see angels.”

“Maybe they think that because they do,” said her mother.

That was the sort of comment from her mother that had always driven Jess crazy. She didn’t want to explore infinite possibilities and alternate universes; she’d wanted a firm, maternal don’t be silly. She’d wanted to be told it was a trick of the light or an accident of shadow.

“Mom?” Jess asked tentatively. “Do you think we have some sort of—I don’t know—extrasensory powers?”

Her mother didn’t seem to find the question strange at all. “I’ve always heard and seen things that aren’t there.”

“What sort of things?”

Her mother put the angel down. “Do you know how some people hear colors? I forget the name of it. That’s not what I have,” she added hastily. “But once I was old enough to think about it—and to know that what I was hearing and seeing wasn’t normal—I always figured it must be a bit like that. I was just wired differently from other people. I knew your Pop didn’t appreciate it, so I just didn’t talk about it with him.”

Jess plunked down with her coffee. “Yeah, I don’t see Pop appreciating that.”

You’re sensible like me, Pop had told her.

Her mother peered closely at Jess, in a way that suggested she might need to see the eye doctor sooner rather than later. Her eyes were the faded blue of someone who spent a lot of time staring out at the sun on the water. Or someone who saw things that weren’t there. “Why, sweetheart? Are you seeing things?”

I see ghosts, Jess wanted to say. I see ghosts and a demon calls me by my name and says he knows me.

“There have been strange things going on. I think it might be related to Grandma Jan and her family.” Jess took a gulp of her coffee and tried to think of the best way to ease into the topic. “A friend showed me an article about Grandma Jan’s death. In Green-Wood Cemetery.”

“I saw the same article. Your Pop had it in his files.” Her mother rested a hand on top of the leather album. Jess noticed, with a pang, that the spots on her mother’s hands she remembered as freckles were now the brown splotches of age. “There was a lot in Pop’s files that he never told me about.”

“My friend—the one who showed me the article—” She hadn’t even said his name but Jess could feel herself blushing, like a teen with a crush. “He thinks that we have some sort of hereditary demon-fighting power.”

It was the angels all over again. Jess was waiting for her mother to tell her it was nonsense, they were just a normal family like any other family.

Instead, her mother said, “You have to know that I wasn’t aware of any of this. When Pop died—I just stuck all his boxes in the attic.”

Jess’s mouth felt very dry. “What was in those boxes, Mom?”

Her mother hefted the album onto her lap. “This must have been my mother’s. When she died, Pop just put her things in boxes.”

“But he wouldn’t throw them out.” Pop saved string. It was one of the few ways Jess could think of in which her mother and grandfather were alike; her mother reused and repurposed everything.

“I looked through on the plane. There are a bunch of pictures of my mother—I’d never seen any of them before.” Jess’s mother blinked rapidly and cleared her throat. “And some that go much farther back, but those are mostly loose, in that box.”

Jess took the album from her mother and opened it at random. There were sepia photos, held by those little triangles. There was a teenage Grandma Jan in an old-timey bathing suit, grinning at the camera. Grandma Jan in a pillbox hat and a jaunty jacket, arm in arm with someone who might have been her mother—or an aunt? Jess wondered if the pictures were labeled, but she was afraid to dislodge the ancient glue.