Page 107 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Could he be playing hooky with friends?” Not that Jess would know. She’d never so much as skipped class. But she knew from teen movies that it was a thing other people did.

“I sent a message to the class-five group text. No one knows where he is. He told the school he was at the dentist. He’s not at the dentist.”

“Where else?”

“Allison—the head of public programming—she said she saw Ben here earlier. Or someone saw Ben here earlier. He could be on the grounds somewhere. Nightfall’s started already and it’s madness here. We’ve got jugglers and dancers and hundreds of visitors. The tombs are open. He could be anywhere.”

In one of the tombs. Like last time. A stray thought teased at Jess’s brain but was derailed by her mother mouthing, “What’s going on?”

Jess made a shushing gesture at her. “Can I help? Or would you rather I stay out of the way?”

“Help,” said Adam raggedly. “Please. I’m sorry to mess up our evening . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jess looked behind her, where her mother was perched on the couch. “Is it okay if I bring my mom?”

Her mother followed her without question, maneuvering her long skirt down the steps and through the turnstile at the Fifty-Seventh Street subway station. They squeezed into two orange seats on the R.

“So,” her mother said gamely, “where are we going?”

For the first time ever, Jess blessed her mother’s go-with-the-flow personality. “Green-Wood. That friend I told you about—Adam—he’s the arborist there. I was supposed to go with him to an event there tonight—it’s this thing they do, Nightfall—but . . .”

“But I showed up?”

“Well, yes. Also his son has gone missing. Ben. He’s eleven.” Jess rubbed her face with her hands. It briefly occurred to her that goodness knew what could be on them after she’d been touching banisters and subway poles, but who cared? “That’s how I met him. Adam. I found his son hiding under a tree. Anyway. Long story.”

“You know I like a good story,” said her mother. “Was tonight a date?”

“Maybe? I don’t know.” As my date, Adam had said very clearly. He wanted to have brunch with her and watch Netflix with her and lick sprinkles off her lips. “We’ve been dealing with some strange stuff together. He thinks—he thinks I’m more magical than I am.”

“He should think you’re magical,” said her mom a little too enthusiastically, as if she were praising a toddler’s lumpy stick figure drawing.

Jess gave her mother a sideways look. “No, I mean like actually magical. He thinks light comes out of my hands.”

“If you can see angels, why shouldn’t light come out of your hands? And why shouldn’t this boy like you?”

“The boy is forty,” said Jess drily. She was doing it again, she realized. Deflecting. Keeping her mother at arm’s length. “I’m worried he thinks I’m more than I am. And—I’m not sure I really know how to be with anyone. I’ve always felt safer solo.”

If you didn’t open up, you couldn’t get hurt.

Her mother was quiet for a moment. Then she looked at Jess, shaking her long blond hair away from her face. “I didn’t give you much of a model of family life, did I?”

Jess opened her mouth and then closed it again. “It was our family life. I didn’t have any other.”

“I wanted to do better for you. I wanted to be the kind of mother for you that I hadn’t had. When I was pregnant with you, I watched sitcoms to try to get an idea of what mothers were supposed to be like.”

“I take it that didn’t go well?” said Jess. There was something very poignant about the image of her mother, pregnant and alone, taking notes on Happy Days.

“Nope. They were either domestic goddesses in aprons or they were just foils for their husbands. Or, if it was a Disney movie, they were dead.” Her mother shook her head, making her long earrings jangle. “Dead was the one thing I had an example for, but I wasn’t ready to die as a catalyst for your heroine’s journey. Besides, when my mother died, I had Pop. You had only me.”

What about my dad? Jess wanted to ask, but she held her tongue. She’d never heard her mother speak like this before. Guiltily, Jess wondered if her mother had wanted to, if she’d tried, and Jess just hadn’t let her.

“There was some idiot mom in your class in high school who gushed to me about how much fun it must be being just the two of us. Like sisters! But I didn’t know how to be a sister to you any more than I knew how to be a mother to you. I’d never had a sister. Also, I was twenty-nine when I had you, not eighteen. I was a grown-up. Or as grown up as I was going to get.” Jess’s mother cocked her head. “I was always glad you had Kimmy.”

Her mother had always adored Kimmy. “Because she was all the things I wasn’t?”

“No,” said her mother, giving Jess a startled look. “Why would you think that? It was because when you were over there, you had the kind of family I couldn’t give you. Her brothers—her parents—those big family dinners. It was good for you. I knew I couldn’t pretend any of that. I’d never had any of that myself.”

Jess didn’t know what to say, so, instead, she tentatively put her hand on her mother’s. After a moment, she felt her mother’s hand close around hers.