Page 64 of What Happens at Nightfall

“What?” said Adam.

“Nothing.” When the going got tough, Kimmy got loopy. Jess shoved the fragment under Adam’s nose. “Adam—does this look familiar to you? Wait, I think I still have those pictures on my phone . . .”

She started to reach for her phone and then remembered the stickiness on her fingers. “Hands first,” said Adam, as if she were one of his kids.

It felt like second nature now, heading down the hall to the door to the kitchen in the back. Kimmy was asking intelligent questions about architecture, to which Adam was responding, mostly with different variants of “I don’t know” and “you’d have to ask my friend Cal.” Jess mostly tried to keep her teeth from chattering and to turn off the soundtrack in her head that kept repeating, over and over, “oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, that almost fell on you.”

What do I have to do? Hit you on the head with the truth?

Adam led her to the kitchen sink, washing the sap off her hands for her, gently cleaning the scratches with a washcloth. She was angry at him, Jess remembered, although now that the rush of adrenaline had faded, it was increasingly hard to muster up the proper indignation. There was something very luxurious about being fussed over, even if she knew it was only what he’d do for anyone. Even as a kid, Jess had sprayed Bactine on her own bruises.

“So,” Jess said belligerently, as Adam patted her hands dry, “do you still think I set this up with speakers and mirrors?”

Adam concentrated on applying a thin layer of Neosporin. “I think,” he said carefully, “that there’s something very strange going on.”

Jess looked down at his bowed head. All she could see was dark curls, bits of silver glinting here and there like hidden treasure. “That’s not an answer.”

Adam straightened, setting the tube of Neosporin down by the side of the sink. “You want to know whether I think it’s supernatural strange or people strange? I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be explained—Jacinta.”

“I didn’t lie about my name,” said Jess irritably. “I just never use it. You try spelling your name for people fifteen times. Or answering questions about where it comes from.”

“Where does it come from?”

“It’s a family name.” Jess could picture that board in the Vanderwilt Dressing Room. Jacinta Piatti. Seamstress. “My mother told me it means hyacinth.”

“We almost named my daughter Hyacinth after Jess,” Kimmy chimed in. “But that old Brit com with the social-climbing Bucket woman made us rethink. So she’s Petunia instead. We figured one flower name was as good as another.”

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; . . . Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, / Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed.” Adam spoke softly, but there was something in his voice and his gaze that held Jess transfixed. It was as if they were in that meadow, by twilight, her hair wet around her face, her arms full of hyacinths, drowning in the scent of them. “I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, / Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“T. S. Eliot! The Waste Land!” exclaimed Kimmy, like a contestant in a game show.

Jess blinked hard. Of course it was a quotation. Of course.

“I was considering majoring in English before I discovered forestry,” Adam said apologetically. “But then I took Local Flora second term freshman year and that was that. It was forestry and environmental studies for me. But I took a bunch of English classes for fun.”

“He just gets hotter and hotter,” said Kimmy.

“Kimmy!” Jess protested. Not looking at Adam, she mumbled, “Thanks for cleaning up my hands.”

The coffee machine hissed and steamed. Adam held the cup out to Jess, a peace offering. “I’m sorry for pushing you into a shrub.”

“It was better than the alternative,” said Jess brusquely.

She leaned over the cup, breathing in the bitter scent of the black coffee. He didn’t trust her, not really. She wasn’t going to fall into the same trap as last time, where he’d been all charming and she’d thought he liked her. He was probably just charming with everyone. Some people were like that. They couldn’t help themselves. They cleaned cuts and recited poetry.

“There’s creamer in the fridge,” he said.

“I’m fine.” Jess very deliberately took a gulp of the scalding espresso and wished she hadn’t. She set the cup down and wiggled her phone out of her pocket. Five percent.

What was with her phone and Green-Wood?

She wasn’t going to ask to use his charger again. That would be as bad as drinking his creamer. Or kissing him back.

Ignoring the low-battery warning, Jess scrolled through her recent photos. The only pictures on her phone were of Kimmy’s kids or screenshots of things she wanted to remember for later. The picture she wanted was near the front, one of the many she had taken of the pictures on Ingrid’s walls.

Jess held out her phone to Adam. “Does this look familiar to you?”

He frowned at her phone. “You’re almost out of battery again.”