Page 78 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Those broken pieces you gave me—you were right,” said Cal. “That really was the missing urn from the McAlpin monument.”

“You realize it’s seven a.m., right?” Adam flipped a pancake, his cell wedged uncomfortably underneath his ear.

“Oh, did I wake you up?”

Adam looked at his children, both of whom had to be at school unconscionably early. When they were little, he’d had ideals about cooked breakfast at the table. After Kate, it had seemed particularly important to make sure he held the line. Now he was wondering if cereal in front of the TV was really such a bad idea.

“No,” he said sadly. “You didn’t wake me up.”

“You don’t have any idea how it broke, do you? The urn?”

Adam could see it, plummeting down at Jess, the horrible sound of stone meeting stone, the feel of Jess underneath him in that shrub as marble exploded around them.

Grease splattered. Adam jerked his hand back as a burning drop landed on his arm. He turned down the heat under the pancakes.

“No,” he said shortly.

“It’s a mystery,” said Cal. “Oh, hey. Speaking of mysteries, I think I have a new lead on Gottschalk’s angel.”

“You always think you have a lead on Gottschalk’s angel.” Adam slid the last pancake onto the serving plate and turned off the burner. He plunked the platter down on the table and made a “just a minute” gesture to the kids.

“Hi, Uncle Cal!” caroled Melinda, ignoring the pancakes and going to the fridge for a yogurt.

“Was that Melinda?” Cal didn’t wait for an answer. “Our volunteers were going through the memorandum files of our archives, and what did they find in there? The missing Gottschalk file stuck in the wrong envelope! Wait, let me read this to you: ‘Gottschalk, lot 19851, angel figure down, vandalism, between ten p.m. 7-28-59 and eight a.m. 7-29-59.’ So now we know when the angel came down.”

“Wow. Great.” Adam shoved a glass of orange juice in front of Melinda.

Darn. He’d forgotten the syrup. There was always something. “Cal—”

“But there’s something even stranger.” Cal barreled on, oblivious. “There are some pictures in the file and a clipping from a local paper, and it’s not just the angel there on the ground . . .”

“Syrup?” Adam mouthed, waving the bottle in Ben’s direction, as Cal went on and on.

Ben nodded, mouth already full of pancake, and Adam splashed syrup on for him. Ben was putting away pancakes with the normal appetite of a healthy eleven-year-old boy, which was to say, like a python swallowing an elephant.

Both kids looked good, thought Adam. Mostly. Ben was a little hollow under the eyes—he was looking a little Byronic with that swoop of dark hair—but that wasn’t surprising. His new school believed in homework and Ben believed in spending every possible minute playing Roblox, so between the homework and the exploding toilets, Ben was cutting it close on sleep.

No one was puking frogs—that was the important thing.

“—and then there was a note from 1969, saying, ‘the marble angel was badly damaged in 1959 and soon after interred in the lot,’ but it doesn’t say where in the lot. But at least now we know it was buried somewhere on the grounds, so if I can hire an expert with ground-penetrating radar . . .”

Melinda rinsed out her yogurt cup, made an elaborate show of putting it in the recycle bin, motioned to the clock on the wall, and pointed at the door. Great. Now they were communicating in mime.

Adam mimed back being stuck in a box.

“Cal.” Adam broke into his friend’s monologue. “Cal. I have to get the kids to school. Talk later?”

“Sure. Let’s get drinks soon. I’ll email you that article and those pictures I found of our killer angel.”

“Great,” said Adam, whose interest in missing statuary was about as profound as Cal’s in spongy moth caterpillars. “Talk soon.”

Before he could hit the end call button, Cal added, “Oh, and I wanted to ask you, how would you feel about opening up the Vanderwilt tomb for Nightfall next week?”

“Eh . . .” Adam looked helplessly at Melinda and Ben.

Melinda heaved her backpack up on her shoulder, blew an exaggerated kiss, and let the door slam shut behind her.

Ben speared the last pancake.