Page 21 of What Happens at Nightfall

Back in the house, Adam found the kitchen lit by only the over-the-stove light, reflecting off the plexiglass lid of the Calphalon pan that had been one of their wedding presents. He put the flashlight down on the counter and washed his hands, drying them on the fancy dish towel that one of Kate’s friends had given them, now fraying around the edges, the bright toile faded by a thousand washings.

He wondered what this looked like through a stranger’s eyes, and if Jess was getting home okay on the subway, and if, by tomorrow, all of this would have faded into one of those weird stories, the time I got locked into the cemetery and the arborist had to let me out again.

The living room was dark but a light shone from the landing upstairs. Technically, Ben’s bedtime was nine and Melinda’s ten, but Adam had never been particularly good about enforcing that sort of thing. After Kate died, Adam spent a lot of nights curled up on the edge of Ben’s twin bed, staggering out aching-backed in the wee hours of the morning.

His daughter was in bed, reading on her Kindle, a giant stuffed rainbow narwhal snuggled up next to her.

When Adam cracked the door open, she raised a brow at him. “Late night.”

“It wasn’t like I was out partying. I was closing up the crypt your brother opened.”

Even though—Adam didn’t like to admit it to himself—he’d enjoyed himself more than he should have.

Adam perched on the edge of his daughter’s bed. “Mel, has your brother said anything about Mom?”

She carefully lowered the Kindle to the coverlet. “No.”

“Did he say anything over dinner?”

“Only about Minecraft.”

“Are you okay?” Adam had missed the signs—whatever the signs were—with Ben. What might he have missed with Melinda?

“I’m fine, Dad.”

But was she? Was she really? “You’d tell me if anything was bothering you? I know I’m not your mom, but . . .”

“That’s what I have friends for, Dad.” His daughter looked at him with the tolerant pity only a teenager could muster, before adding, “I think it was harder for Ben. He spent more time with Mom.”

It was true. Before the pandemic, when Melinda was little, Kate was always away somewhere. It was just the nature of her job; they all understood that. Adam, with his flexible schedule, had been the one to go to the mommy-and-me classes. He’d been the dad in the kindergarten pickup line.

But then had come lockdown. And suddenly, all the flights were grounded, all the conferences were canceled, all the depositions and hearings went online. Kate had gone from the clack of heels and the whirr of the wheels on a rollaboard to a figure in yoga pants squinting at a computer screen, here, at home, with meetings interrupted by shrill cries of “Mommy!” There was no school, no babysitter, no buffer. And there were grounds that still needed to be tended with a staff that had shrunk.

If anything, his work had increased. With playgrounds closed, and so few open spaces New Yorkers could walk, foot traffic in the cemetery had gone up dramatically. And while most visitors were respectful, some weren’t, picking flowers, carving initials in trees, breaking off branches. Adam could hear the trees calling out to him, crying for help.

They’d fought about it. About whose job mattered more, whose turn it was to take care of the kids. They’d fought about everything in those first months of lockdown. Whether it was okay to let the kids play games on their brand-new bought-for-Zooming-into-school iPads. What to put in the grocery order. Whether Ben’s brain would be warped if he subsisted purely on a diet of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

It was because they were afraid, of course. Everyone had been afraid. It was hard to remember now, when PTA meetings were back in person and the kids went to actual school and didn’t have to wear masks to do it, but there had been a time when they’d washed their groceries and watched footage of the emergency hospital tents being set up in Central Park as the ambulances screamed past on Fort Hamilton Parkway.

They’d only just started to relax into themselves again when Kate had died. They’d begun to find ways to compromise, to share the burden more—to not think of it as a burden but as an opportunity. At least, that’s the way Adam liked to remember it.

Sometimes, Adam wondered what their lives would be if that car hadn’t come careening through a stop sign.

But there was one thing Adam was sure of. He reached out and squeezed his daughter’s hand. “Mom loved you. She loved both of you.”

“I know,” said Melinda.

“And I love you, you know that, right?”

“Yes, Dad.” Her features were her mother’s but her eyes were like his. “Your love is like a grilled, grilled chicken.”

“I should never have let you read Robert Burns.” Adam pushed himself up. “Also, it was sautéed, not grilled.”

“It wasn’t bad, actually. There’s some left if you’re hungry. I covered the pan, but I didn’t put it away.” Melinda sounded so adult, but there she was, cuddling her rainbow narwhal. So big and yet so little. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d be.”

“Thanks, Mel.” Automatically, he checked to make sure her alarm was on, even though she did that herself now and had for years. “Get some rest.”

“Good night, Dad.”