Page 5 of What Happens at Nightfall

Jess felt like an idiot. She’d given herself the creeps. That was all.

Through an open window, she could smell onions frying. She defied any ghosts to live in a house with frying onions. Or Green Day’s Greatest Hits.

Jess leaned hard on the doorbell.

Chapter Two

“Sometimes I give myself the creeps . . .” Adam dumped a handful of onions in the pan and sniffed happily as they sizzled.

It had been a good day. Adam had turned on all the under-the-cabinet lights and the kitchen had that warm glow that came from early fall evenings and a recent cleaning team visit. His arms were pleasantly sore from the sold-out pruning workshop he’d hosted earlier in the day. He loved all the elements of his job as director of horticulture at Green-Wood—thinking strategically about the future of Green-Wood’s green space, liaising with horticulturalists around the world, trying out cutting-edge technologies to monitor the health of their trees and plants—but it felt good to get back to basics, with a pair of pruning shears in his hands, explaining the differences between sanitary, reduction, and developmental pruning to a crowd of eager amateur gardeners. Adam had shown them how to use not just the standard pruning shears but also loppers and pole pruners.

Watching his students staggering around with the pole pruners was always strangely endearing. They never could resist the pole pruners.

It had been a gorgeous day for it too, one of those September days that felt like summer. Bees from Green-Wood’s own hives (Sweet Hereafter honey, twenty-two dollars for a nine-ounce jar) had buzzed lazily past as Adam’s students laboriously practiced on specially designated shrubs. Brilliant orange and yellow butterflies had drifted by from the butterfly garden in section 157 to see what all the fuss was about, setting up a string of oohs and aahs as perspiring students took the excuse to lean on their tools for a moment—and got a kindly lecture about not leaning on their tools.

Adam could still feel the lingering warmth in his cheeks and that bit of his neck where he’d forgotten to put on sunscreen. But for the sun setting early, it might have been August, or even July, one of those days you wanted to encase in crystal and store away for winter, as perfectly golden as a jar of Sweet Hereafter honey.

But the weather seemed to have turned. One of the old sash windows rattled in a sudden wind, propelling a gust of October-scented air into the kitchen, bringing with it a faint smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. Through the window, Adam could see the weeping willow by the gate going wild, shaking its fronds like the lead singer of an eighties hair band.

Adam yanked the window shut, snapping the catch into place. There hadn’t been high winds or a sudden drop of temperature in the forecast, but that was September for you, July one moment, October the next. It was September 18 already, Adam reminded himself. The kids had been back in school for two weeks.

In a week or two, it would be time to put the pumpkins out on the porch.

First the pumpkins, then gourds, then greenery. . . . Kate might be gone, but Adam had made sure, from that very first autumn on, that there were still pumpkins on the porch come October. The pumpkins had been Kate’s thing, her big project with the kids. It was the one way she was artistic, she’d always said. Couldn’t draw a straight line but she could carve a damn fine pumpkin.

The first autumn without her, eleven-year-old Melinda had refused to participate entirely, seven-year-old Ben had lost it sobbing over a lopsided smiley face, and Adam had felt like a monster—and also furious at Kate. For going running that misty May morning. For not seeing the car in the fog.

Last year Melinda had carved equations into her pumpkin and Ben had carved a poop emoji into his, which had made him laugh so hard he cried. Adam had cried too, and tried to pretend it was laughter.

It had been four years now, and Adam was beginning to think, cautiously, that they’d come out the far end. Not that a world without Kate would ever be anything but a world without Kate. But they’d learned to live in it. And possibly, even, be happy in it. For a while, they’d felt like a table missing one leg, tipping at the slightest pressure, dumping everything in a jumbled mess on the floor. Now they were more like a three-legged stool, small but sturdy.

Mostly sturdy.

Adam scooped up cubes of raw chicken, tossing them into the pan after the onions. Holding the wooden spoon up to his mouth like a microphone, Adam belted out, “Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me . . .”

“Please don’t tell me it’s chicken again.” Melinda materialized in the kitchen door, dropping her backpack to the floor with a thunk. Her black T-shirt bore the legend “KEEP CALM AND BUILD A ROBOT.”

Adam hastily switched the spoon from microphone back to implement of food stirring. “It’s not just any chicken. It’s Dr. Frank chicken!” His colleague at Cornell was generous with the chickens he bred on his upstate farm. Adam wasn’t sure if it was because Frank really wanted his feedback (“still tastes like chicken!”) or because he was afraid that otherwise Adam and the kids would live on processed bread and Cheez Whiz. “You can’t get this kind of chicken at the supermarket.”

Melinda drifted over to the sink and began scrubbing her hands. “Can Dr. Frank moonlight with sheep? I miss lamb chops.”

“That would be woolly, woolly difficult,” said Adam seriously.

Melinda rolled her eyes at him. With love. Mostly with love. “We’re all about to turn into chickens.”

Adam made a mental note to put in a FreshDirect order. Kale. They all needed more kale. That’d learn them to appreciate their chicken. “There are worse things than turning into poultry. Did you know chickens are surprisingly intelligent?”

“I like having opposable thumbs,” said his daughter.

“Fair.” Adam loved that girl so much it hurt. “Do you have preferences for sides? Noodles . . . rice . . .” He did a mental inventory of the pantry. “Noodles?”

“So my choices are noodles or noodles?”

“Have a seaweed snack.” The box of seaweed snacks had been sitting in the pantry for the past eight years, ever since Kate had bought them in a moment of toddler-music-class-fueled insecurity. It had become less a food source and more a family joke.

“I’ll cut some melon,” Melinda said, and reached beneath the sink for a cutting board.

It still astounded Adam that he had children old enough to wield kitchen implements. If he closed his eyes, Melinda was six again, in a highly synthetic Peppa Pig nightgown, and Ben was two, all round cheeks and sagging Pull-Up. But here he was, living with two lanky adolescents who cut their own melon and sometimes—when sufficiently nagged—remembered to put their own plates in the dishwasher.