Page 84 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies,” said Jess. “I’m not sure how good his judgment was.”

“Let’s say we take this all as given. The memories, the ghost, the voices. Let’s discard, for the moment, the possibility that we’re all delusional. What does that give us?”

“Ancestral memory? An angry Gilded Age ghost? A massive headache?” Jess drained her drink. “Actually, I’ll go with option D, all of the above. Always the wisest choice.”

Adam pointed at her glass. “Do you want another one?”

Definitely not the wisest choice. “Sure. Why not?”

Adam twisted in his chair to signal the waitress.

Jess turned her snifter around in her hands. “I keep thinking about Jacinta Piatti and that picture you all think looks like me.”

“That’s because it does look like you,” said Adam.

Jess decided to ignore that. “I know not all women named Jacinta are related to me. But what if this one was? I did the math. Jacinta Piatti would have been the right age to be my grandmother’s grandmother.”

Adam nodded solemnly. He had the owl-eyed look of a man who was trying very hard to pretend to be sober when he wasn’t. “Okay. With you so far.”

“What if Ingrid was wrong? What if Jacinta was more than a link between Cornelia Vanderwilt and the sculptor? What if my grandmother got messed up in this too?” She shivered. “The same way I did.”

Adam shifted in his chair. “When you say messed up—it makes it sound inadvertent. What if she was there on purpose?” His legs brushed against Jess’s beneath the table. “Let’s say your original Jacinta—the seamstress—let’s say she had something to do with imprisoning our toad-loving friend.”

“Toad-loving?”

“Toad-abusing. Toad adjacent. Whatever. I was just trying to think of something to call him that wasn’t his name,” Adam said with dignity, as the waitress whisked away their old glasses and set the new ones in front of them. “What if keeping him penned up is a responsibility passed down from mother to daughter. What if they’re . . . the Guardians of Green-Wood?”

Jess scrunched up her nose. “Guardians of Green-Wood?”

“Yeah, it sounded better in my head,” said Adam. “Marvel will never go for it. Ignore the catchy title. Focus on the idea.”

“So you think the women in my family have some sort of trust handed down from mother to daughter.”

“Or—some sort of power.” Adam looked at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to spin straw into gold.

Jess’s mouth felt very gummy. “My mother has a talent for inspiring people. They come into her studio mediocre and they come out famous. It’s almost like magic.”

Almost. Some people were just good at spotting potential. It didn’t mean anything.

Adam looked at her closely. “Have you ever thought you might have . . . special talents?”

Jess could feel something like panic in her chest. “You mean like levitating tissue boxes and reading minds? No. I mean, if I have a talent, it’s guessing well on standardized tests. I’m really very ordinary. I am!”

“No, you’re not,” said Adam, leaning his elbows on the table and looking at her closely. “You might pretend to be—but you’re not ordinary at all.”

She’d wanted so badly to be ordinary. To have a normal family with a mom who went to an office, a dad who nagged her about homework, dinners at the kitchen table, and fights about curfews. It had always felt unfair that everyone else had been born into that, while she— Yes, her mom was amazing, and talented, and different, but she didn’t want to be different. She’d spent her life studying how other people behaved, trying to act like them, to fit in.

Clearly, she hadn’t managed it.

“Is it my second head that gave me away?” Jess said bitterly. “Or my prehensile tail?”

“Hey.” Adam’s elbows slid out from under him. He caught himself just in time. “I meant it as a compliment. Does it count as a compliment when you’re just saying something that’s true? But I mean it. You’re better than ordinary. You’re you.”

Jess’s head was swimming. “That sounds like a consolation prize. Like telling someone they’re interesting.”

“What’s wrong with interesting? I like interesting. You know what I think? I don’t think there is such a thing as ordinary. We’re all just weird in different ways. Anyone who claims otherwise is just better at pretending—or in denial. Or really boring.” Adam smiled crookedly. “Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself to make myself feel better.”

“But you’re so normal,” Jess said stupidly.