Page 12 of What Happens at Nightfall

Or, even worse, would he just have come home and Adam would never have known?

It terrified him, the things about his children he might not know.

“When I was that age,” he murmured, “I firmly believed that what my parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.”

“Did it? Hurt them?” Jess cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder, picking up her pace.

“Not that I recall.” His transgressions had been so small. Or maybe it was only that he’d thought they were small. Maybe they’d loomed larger to his parents. He didn’t know. He’d never asked them. “Did yours?”

“I had a very limited social life,” said Jess.

It felt like a polite shutdown. Adam glanced at the top of Jess’s head. He could just make out a bit of brow and the slope of her nose. It was hard to read a mood from a nose. But she had started walking faster, or as fast as the uneven terrain and limited range of the flashlight would allow.

Point taken. They weren’t out here to socialize. They were here because his son had knocked this woman over and ruined her evening and made her drop her OMNY card.

“Do you know where you were when Ben knocked you over?”

“He didn’t knock me over. He just bumped into me. It really was an accident.” Jess tripped on a bit of uneven ground. Adam put out a hand to steady her, but she waved him off. “We were near the tomb of someone who died as a teenager.”

“Charlotte Canda.” A standard stop on all the tours. “She was seventeen. Seventeen roses, seventeen candles . . .”

Jess’s head jerked toward him. “You can’t fool me. That’s the movie with Molly Ringwald.”

“You’re one candle off.” Adam had two older sisters. He knew these things. “That was Sixteen Candles.”

“I just remember Jake Ryan,” said Jess reminiscently.

“Was he the one who stole the panties?”

“Don’t ruin it! No. Jake Ryan was the strong, silent type who shows up with a birthday cake at the end when she thinks everyone has forgotten.”

Adam had never understood the female fascination with mute men. “So Mr. Rochester with cake.”

“Didn’t Mr. Rochester have a wife in the attic?” she asked skeptically.

“Maybe Jake Ryan did too.”

“He had a girlfriend he didn’t break up with until pretty late in the movie. So maybe you’re not entirely wrong.” She tensed, turning slightly. “Did you hear something?”

All Adam heard was the sound of the leaves skittering around their feet. It was too early to have this many leaves down. That had been quite a windstorm earlier. He made a mental note to check on the weeping beech tomorrow. “What?”

“I thought I heard someone saying something.”

Adam smelled roses, stronger now. “I hope not. The gates are locked.” He swung his flashlight around, just in case, stopping at the sight of something lying across Sassafras Avenue. “Whoa. What happened here? Hold on just a second.”

A tall monument had fallen, the long column blocking the path, the finial with its Byzantine arches lolling on a patch of grass, broken clean off.

“I heard that blow over. When Ben was bringing me to your house.”

“It blew over?” Statues didn’t just blow over. The base was still standing in its accustomed spot, squat and bare.

“As my best friend’s youngest kid likes to say, it fell down, went boom.”

The column was fluted, but the impression of delicacy was misleading. It was as thick around as Adam and probably weighed more than two men could lift. As for the finial—if that hit anyone, they would be a goner.

It made Adam feel sick just thinking about it. “I’m glad it didn’t fall down go boom on you or Ben.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jess leaned forward, squinting at something just out of the range of the flashlight. “Is that a face?”