Page 11 of What Happens at Nightfall

Light shone through the fence from Fort Hamilton Parkway, but there were no lights inside Green-Wood at night. Only the lights from the windows of the house. Ben’s light was on, Adam noticed. Not that that meant anything. Ben’s light had been on before dinner too.

The woman paused at the bottom of the steps, waiting for him. Adam noticed her shiver. The sweater she was wearing was one of those large, floaty things, somewhere between a sweater and a shawl, but thin.

“Are you okay? Do you need a sweatshirt, er, Jenny?”

The woman hugged her bag closer to her. “It’s Jess. I’m all set. Let’s just go.”

Adam bounded down to her, holding out the flashlight to illuminate the path. “Sorry, I’m used to being out with the kids. Just be grateful I didn’t ask you if you needed to go to the potty. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

“I’m fine. But thanks for the offer. And the charger.” Adam could see Jess taking in the monuments around the side of the house, including a very tall angel who appeared to be busy reading and didn’t want to be interrupted.

The Librarian, Melinda called her. Angel of the Bibliography.

It’s not as weird as it looks, Adam wanted to say. Some people had garden gnomes. They had tombstones.

Okay, maybe it was just as weird as it looked.

“Chargers, bathrooms, phoenix feathers, you name it. It’s the least I could do,” Adam said heartily. “I’m just grateful to you for bringing Ben home.”

“It was more that he brought me. He knew the way. I didn’t.” The light from Adam’s flashlight picked up the gold in Jess’s eyelashes and her hair, making her glimmer. “I think he just needed to not be alone.”

The words hit Adam in the gut.

There were nights when Adam got the kids to bed—well, to their rooms, which was as close to bed as he could get them—and he’d look at the empty couch and feel an ache like a hole in his chest, wanting, so badly, just to sit there with someone, talk to someone, be with someone. Another grown-up. Someone who would get it. Or, even if they didn’t get it, would just be there.

He thought he’d done a decent job of keeping that from the kids. He thought he’d made them feel like a family still. Apple picking and pumpkin carving and chicken, chicken, and more chicken. . . .

Alone.

“The rhododendron is this way,” Adam croaked, gesturing with the flashlight. “It’s a pretty easy walk down Vine and then things get twisty.”

Jess nodded and fell into step beside him, her arms tucked close to her sides, making herself as compact as possible. Adam caught a faint whiff of roses, although he wasn’t sure whether that was from her shampoo or an offering on one of the nearby graves. People did that sometimes, bring flowers. Some of the tombs went back centuries, but others were more recent, holding grandparents or parents.

I’m not really a terrible parent, Adam wanted to say.

Except maybe he was. If you had to say you weren’t a terrible parent, didn’t that mean you were a terrible parent? A non-terrible parent would have known his kid wasn’t in his room, instead of bopping merrily to Green Day and cooking free-range chicken while his child was roaming the night knocking down innocent passersby.

Remembering that scene in the kitchen, Adam wanted to crawl under the nearest rhododendron. He’d lost his son and then he’d lost it at his son. Double win. Ten points for the perfect parenting fail.

He hated himself even more for caring about parenting fails when he should just be thinking about Ben.

You’re the worst kind of perfectionist, Kate had accused him once, when he’d reproached her for stressing too much about whether they were feeding the kids the right things, reading the kids the right things, sending them to the right classes, putting them on track for Yale, or, heaven help them, Harvard. You’re a perfectionist who pretends you aren’t.

It wasn’t true. Mostly. It was a running joke that Adam’s parents had given their kids A names—Abigail, Amanda, and Adam—because they wouldn’t accept a lesser letter. It was one of those jokes that wasn’t a joke: Abigail was a law firm partner; Amanda was a Superior Court judge in San Francisco. Adam was the family disappointment, not because he hadn’t exceled—he had—but because he’d thrown it all away to play with plants (direct quote from his mother).

Back when Melinda was still a nameless bump, Adam had made a conscious decision that he wasn’t going to go that route. Adam didn’t need his kids to be perfect. He just needed them to be safe. And relatively sane. And not break into crypts by dead of night. Or by dusk. Did it make it better that Ben had staged his escapade at early evening instead of midnight?

Adam could just hear himself testifying before an imaginary parenting judge. Yes, Your Honor, my child snuck out and broke into the family crypt, but he did it before bedtime, so that makes it okay, right?

“Ben hasn’t ever done anything like that before.” Adam hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but there it was, his misery out there, jagged and awkward, like a chunk of uneven gravel on the path. “Sneak out, I mean.”

“My best friend has three brothers. I’m pretty sure all of them snuck out at one point or another.”

The wind whistled around them, not as strong as before, but with a bite to it. It felt like someone was poking him, trying to get his attention. “Ben knew he wasn’t supposed to take the crypt key.”

“Is that—oh. Statue.” Jess did a double take at the looming figure of a man on top of a mausoleum. Adam had forgotten how weird it could be if you weren’t used to it, all the people who weren’t people. “I’ve never been a teenage boy but I knew a bunch of them. Not one of them could have resisted an unattended crypt key.”

“Hmm,” said Adam. If this woman hadn’t found Ben, what would have happened? Would he still be under the rhododendron? Would they be sending out search parties?