Nadia remembered Mom laughing about the “home front.” It had been one of her favorite jokes. “I thought she was, too.”

He shook his head. “I was a fool. I should’ve known that couldn’t work forever.”

“It worked fine. Everything was absolutely fine until one day, Mom—it was like she checked out.” How else could she even say it? Nadia had known before Mom left that something was wrong, but only for a couple of weeks—a couple of weeks during which Mom had hardly seemed to notice they were even around. “You didn’t do anything.”

“I don’t know. Guess we don’t get to know.” He sighed and thumped the back of his head once, softly, against the counters, then looked at the kitchen with something like his usual good humor. “Tonight’s another pizza night, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it.”

“You order, and I’ll clean up.”

“Okay,” she said, even though she was sure this meant she’d find lost rigatoni noodles lying around the kitchen for another day or two to come.

“And—we should take a break sometime soon. As a family. Maybe take a weekend away. Go down to New York, maybe. Keep our city-dweller cred current, you know?”

Dad’s attempt to talk like a teenager was embarrassing, but not so much that Nadia missed the opportunity. “Can we? Please? We should go soon. Halloween weekend, definitely.”

“Halloween? But there’s some big carnival here in town, with a haunted house and everything.”

“It’s supposed to be incredibly lame.” Nadia thought fast. “Last year a kid around Cole’s age cut his hand open in the haunted house. I heard he needed a dozen stitches. It’s really unsafe.”

Dad frowned. “Huh. Well, I wouldn’t want Cole running around in something like that.”

“You should get the tickets to New York tonight. I bet there’s tons of fun stuff to do in Manhattan on Halloween. And Cole misses the ‘L’ so much, probably he’ll want to ride the subway the whole time.” Little boys had a thing about trains.

“You know what? I think it’s a good idea.” Dad nodded, satisfied with himself. “This is going to be good for us. I’ll get online after dinner tonight.”

An incredible tension that had been gripping her heart seemed to release in an instant. Whatever happened on Halloween night, Dad and Cole would be far away. Nadia could come up with an excuse not to go at the last minute—a school project, something like that. Knowing they were safe would let her concentrate. That was one less thing Elizabeth could do to her, one less weapon Elizabeth would have against them. No matter what happened to Nadia, the rest of her family would be okay.

When Dad hugged her before standing up, she hugged him back for a really long time. He seemed to need it.

Reasons to Visit My Parents’ Graves Soon

1. Have to know if that hag Elizabeth killed them or not.

2. Should probably take flowers or something because I’ve never taken anything there and maybe that’s kind of awful, and I am somehow being the worst daughter ever to people who aren’t even alive.