Page 79 of What Happens at Nightfall

“We’re going to have a Renaissance madrigal group in the Whitney mausoleum and a cellist at the Canda monument. There’s going to be a dance troupe on top of the Johnston mausoleum and a team of acrobats performing in front of the fire monument. We’ve never included the Vanderwilt tomb before. We could backlight that stained glass window so Cornelia Vanderwilt really glows. I was thinking, we could have someone on a harp. Or maybe a theremin . . .”

“Can I think about it and get back to you?”

“Sure, but don’t think too long. We still have to print the programs.”

Nightfall was Green-Wood’s signature fall event, a celebration of death in the midst of life or life in the midst of death or something like that, conducted in near total darkness, the paths outlined with thousands of candles. As a civilian, Adam loved Nightfall, which was Halloween-y without being Halloween-y. It was the macabre for grown-ups, a delicate flirtation with death.

As the custodian of Green-Wood’s plant life, Adam dreaded Nightfall. There was always someone who blundered off a path or tried to climb a tree or didn’t bother to find the port-a-potties and just let loose on the beech trees. And then there was the risk of fire. The candles might be plastic, but all it took was one idiot with a joint and they could lose trees that had taken centuries to grow. Adam could practically feel the trees’ leaves curling with tension. He had enough to deal with without adding the Vanderwilt tomb to the mix.

On the other hand, maybe opening it would demystify it. Maybe if he’d opened it before, Ben wouldn’t have felt the need to break in.

“I’ll call you,” Adam said, and stuck the phone in his pocket before Cal could keep going. He loved Cal like a brother. Just not before nine a.m.

Having eaten every available comestible, Ben was pushing his chair back from the table.

“Hey, Ben,” Adam called after him as Ben started toward the stairs. “Would you be okay with opening the Vanderwilt tomb to visitors for Nightfall?”

Ben hunched his shoulders. “Why ask me?”

“They’re your ancestors,” said Adam mildly. He didn’t bring up Ben’s unauthorized foray into the family tomb. He didn’t have to. They were both thinking it. “I thought you might have an opinion.”

“It’s not like Mom’s in there.” For a moment, Ben met Adam’s eyes. It was like looking into a dark vortex, a black hole into places Adam didn’t want to go. “It’s not like Mom’s anywhere.”

“She’s in our thoughts,” said Adam awkwardly. “She’s always with us as long as you’re thinking of her.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Ben didn’t look at him. “I have to get my backpack.”

They’d scattered Kate’s ashes in Maine. It was what Adam had thought she would have wanted, living free and in the wild, as Ben’s favorite show liked to say. His in-laws had demanded Kate be buried in the family crypt, like the Vanderwilt she was, not the Chervinsky she’d married. Adam had almost given in. They’d opened up the crypt—and then closed it back up again. One look at those blank marble slabs had been enough to convince Adam that this was all wrong. He couldn’t stick Kate in a box for eternity. Not Kate, who hated to be confined, who loved to run and sail and ski, always in motion, out among the elements.

But now Adam wondered if he’d done his kids a disservice. Not Melinda. She’d advocated strongly for ash scattering. But Ben, who had been so attached to Kate. It might have been good for Ben to have someplace to go to be with her, even if it was just a slab in a crypt.

Or maybe that would have made it worse. Adam just didn’t know.

Ben came clattering down the stairs with his backpack on his shoulders.

“All set?” Adam asked with false brightness.

There were pumpkins out in windows already. The temperature had dropped; Adam could feel the nip of it, the first hint of winter to come. In his JanSport backpack and khakis, Ben looked like something out of an ad for Back to School. He’d even brushed his hair for once.

Adam missed the crazy mop of hair that stuck out any which way. He missed the old Ben, with the gaps in his smile, chattering on at him about Wild Kratts.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, just to have something to say. Ben’s polo shirt was short-sleeved, but the heat practically glowed off him, like a shimmer in the air.

“I’m fine.” The walk from Green-Wood to St. Boniface’s took them down the west side of Prospect Park. Leaves rustled underfoot, almost blotting out Ben’s hesitant “Dad?”

“Yes?”

Ben stuck his hands in his pockets, concentrating on the pavement. “If you need help setting up for Nightfall . . . I could help out.”

“It’s really mostly the public programming people,” said Adam, touched. When Ben was little, he’d loved tagging along after Adam, particularly to the service yard. But it had been a while since he’d shown any interest in anything to do with Green-Wood. Except for breaking into the family tomb. “They do the bulk of the setup. I’m just there as backup and to make sure they don’t hurt my trees.”

“Don’t you—I don’t know—help them figure out which path to take and where to put, like, the port-a-potties and stuff?”

“That’s really more Allison’s thing.” Allison was director of public programming, and coordinated with the organizations that provided the performances for Nightfall. “But if you want to be more involved here, there’s other stuff I’m working on you could help me out with.”

Ben shrugged. “I just thought it might be cool to do something with Nightfall. We always hear about it, but we never see it.”

Technically, the event was limited to those twenty-one and up. But since Ben lived on the grounds . . .