Page 77 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Was your mother’s family in New York for a while?”

“I think? I don’t really know. You know, when your Pop left he made a clean break. All we took with us was—”

“Two suitcases and our name,” Jess finished for her. It was the one family story they had.

“Does it matter?” There was the clink of a spoon against ceramic as her mother fished the tea bag out of the mug. “What matters isn’t where we’re from but what we make of ourselves.”

Classic Mom commentary. Anytime Jess had asked about her dad—well, not her dad but the man who had fathered her; there was, as her mother liked to point out, a difference—that was the sort of response she got. Jess had learned to stop asking.

Jess glanced at the door that separated her from the living room. Ingrid was suspiciously quiet out there. “Did Pop ever say anything to you about her family? Like why he wanted to get you so far away from them?”

Or any details of her ancestry, like whether there were any Piattis in the family tree.

“He was grieving,” said her mother, after a moment. “Grieving makes people do all sorts of things.”

“Yes, but he must have said something.” Unless Jess was chasing after something that wasn’t there. Sometimes a coincidence was just a coincidence.

“I don’t really know that much.” Jess could hear the groan of the springs as her mother settled down in her favorite spot on the old couch where they’d spent so many nights watching age-inappropriate movies and eating popcorn with too much butter. “It was a different era and your Pop—he was old even for his time. Very Leave It to Beaver. Or do I mean Happy Days? We were very much a ‘because I said so’ sort of household.”

In other words, the opposite of Jess’s upbringing. Her mother had treated her less as a child and more as a very short roommate.

“I know you loved your Pop. I mean, I was glad you two had your own thing. You needed some structure in your life—and your Pop was nothing if not structured. You two and your lists and your spreadsheets.”

And lunch at the dot of noon. Jess had loved visiting Pop in his home for senior citizens. His apartment had been so well organized, everything filed as soon as he got it, everything labeled, the carpet vacuumed daily, meals eaten at regular times, at a table, with cloth napkins in napkin rings.

He’d had a number of pictures of Jess on his windowsill—her mother sent them to him—but only one of Jess’s grandmother that she could remember, a formal wedding portrait that might have been anyone, Jess’s grandmother half hidden behind a giant bouquet of flowers.

“So he never talked about Grandma?”

“He loved her. I know that,” her mother said quickly. “But he was also angry with her for dying and leaving him with me. He wasn’t a man who took happily to being a single dad.”

Jess thought about Adam, torturing his children with chicken. He made it look easy, although she knew it couldn’t be.

As if her mother had read Jess’s thoughts, she said, “It’s not easy being a single parent. But when I had you—I always knew it was going to be just us. I made a choice. Your Pop—it wasn’t what he expected. It all happened so suddenly.”

“Was it an illness? Was she sick?”

“Nothing like that.” There was a long pause. “She went for a walk and never came back.”

“You mean—she left you?”

“No!” Jess heard the couch creak. “At least, not on purpose. It was one of those freak things. A statue fell on her.”

“A statue?” The urn. Falling. For a moment, Jess couldn’t breathe. The fingers holding the phone felt numb.

“Crazy, right? When you first moved to New York, I used to worry that you’d get crushed by a falling air conditioner,” her mother confided cozily.

But Cornelia Vanderwilt didn’t throw air conditioners. She threw statuary. Maybe Jess wasn’t the first Jacinta Cornelia had tried to crush. Not tried. Succeeded. Her grandmother Jan. Another Jacinta. Jacinta and Cornelia, locked in an epic struggle across the generations.

“Mom?” Jess croaked, cutting off a monologue about the dangers of the city. “Do you know where this happened?”

“In Brooklyn,” said her mother. “That was where they lived.”

Jess swallowed hard. “Yes, but where in Brooklyn?”

“You know . . .” Her mother took a long swig of tea. “You’re going to think I’m making this up, but I think I heard Pop say it was in a cemetery. She was crushed beneath the statue of an angel.”

Chapter Twenty-Two