They snuggled for a moment, and after just the right amount of stillness, he said, “But if Petar has a funeral? I’m busy.” The shock and poor taste of it made her laugh the way only Rook could, making the unsayable funny because it wasn’t unthinkable.
Then her brow darkened. He knew what that was about. She didn’t need to say anything. “I know it’s disheartening. You solve this huge case only to have it lead to another dead end. We’ll find out what’s behind this. Just not now.”
“But suppose what both Petar and Bart Callan said is true, that something big is coming that needs to be stopped?”
“At this point, I don’t know where to go with that. And from what you said about Agent Callan, the feds don’t either. Obviously Tyler Wynn is the key. It’s all about whoever he’s working for now. What did my friend Anatoly say that night in Paris? That it’s a new era and that when spies turn it’s not for other governments but-what did he call them-’other entities’?”
She rubbed her face in her palms. “It all feels bigger than me right now.”
“Nikki? That’s all right.” Rook put a hand on each of her shoulders and turned her to him. “You don’t have to be the one-person crime task force. You’ve already done a great job. Right now you could plant the flag, declare victory, and move on. Nobody would fault you.” And then he added, “I’ll be with you, either way.”
Everything rolled up in that sentence warmed her to the core, and Nikki said, “That helps, thanks.” She set her unfinished drink on the coffee table. “Would you be terribly offended if I took that bath and just spent some alone time here tonight?”
“You want to cocoon?”
“Desperately. I need it.”
“You’ve got it.”
Rook packed up his laptop and notes into his backpack, and after they kissed at the door, he said, “Think about this tonight in your jammies.”
“OK.”
“One thing that’s made this worth the trip: At least you learned your mother wasn’t having an affair. And she wasn’t a traitor. In fact, your mom was a hero.”
“Yeah, you know what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, though. ‘Show me a hero…’”
”’… I’ll write you a tragedy.’”
“Plus,” she said, “noble cause or not, I still feel pissed that she shut me out of so much of her life. Intellectually, I can say I want to forgive her, but the truth is, I don’t feel it. Not yet.”
“I understand,” said Rook. “Listen, I’m no shrink, but if I were, what I’d suggest is that maybe the best you can do in the meantime is find some way to connect with her and see where that goes.”
She floated in the indulgent warmth of lavender-scented water until the next track loaded on her boom box: Mary J. Blige, testifying to “No More Drama.” Nikki sang along at first, belting it out, but then became an audience of one receiving the message of the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul about standing for yourself, ending the pain and the game. Nikki had heard the song many times, but-like the answering machine recording that documented her mother’s stabbing-that day, it came to new ears. Especially the part about not knowing where the story ended, only where it began.
Sitting cross-legged on the couch with a hot cup of chamomile and wet hair dampening the terry shoulders of her robe, Nikki traced her mother’s life story into her own. She tried not to dwell on the blemishes Cynthia Heat’s secret life had created. Of course there were the absences that bred longings and fears, but more impactful were the learned traits that Nikki had so elegantly carried into her own life and selectively employed: caution, secretiveness, isolation. These could be her never-ending story, if she allowed it. The shrink had cautioned her to accept that her mother was dead, but Nikki knew her mother’s story would live on through her and that her mother still resided in her heart, as she always would.
Still, Nikki sought the beginning of a story. One that fastened itself to the many good things received from her mother that so outweighed the rest. Or, at least, they would, if she chose no drama.
In her living room in the solitude of the night she owned, Heat’s choice was to reflect on virtues and gifts. On the independence she’d gained from the upbringing her mother gave her. The sense of wonder, of imagination, of standards, and character, the value of hard work, of goodness itself, and the power of love. The new story she began went on like that, a tale of glasses that grew from half-full to brimming the more she composed it. It told her that laughter transcended, forgiveness healed, and music enkindled the coldest of hearts.
Music.
Nikki stared at the piano across the room.
Her mother had played it beautifully and shared its wonder with her. Why had it gained so much power in silence?
A flutter rose in her breast as she recalled Rook’s parting words about finding some way to connect with her again. The flutter became dread, but she chose courage and stood anyway. As she crossed the rug to the baby grand, her dread melted away and became something that buoyed her as she lifted the bench’s seat to take out the top booklet of sheet music. Mozart for Young Hands.
It was the first time in ten years she had opened that bench; even longer since she had held that book. Nikki was certain it had been lost.
She had been nineteen when she last lifted the cover on the Steinway. Nikki hesitated, not to falter but to mark the new passage.
The hinges on the cover creaked as she opened it and exposed the keys. Her fingers trembled with the anticipation of every one of her childhood recitals as Nikki sat, opened the music book to the first page, pumped the pedals for feel, and then began to play.
For the first time in a decade, music from that cherished instrument filled the apartment, and it came out of Nikki by way of Cynthia. Music is sense memory; however, it’s muscle memory, too, so she misstruck a few keys, but that only made her smile as she began Mozart’s Sonata Number Fifteen. Her play, which felt so rote and halting at first, slowly became more fluid and graceful. She fumbled, though, when she got to the bottom of the page and had trouble coordinating the turn with her fingering. Or maybe it was the tears that had clouded her vision. She wiped them away and prepared to resume, but stopped.
Nikki frowned and looked at the sheet music, confused. She leaned forward to the booklet on the stand and saw strange pencil marks in her mother’s handwriting between the notes.
Her mom had always told her that Mozart considered the space between the notes music, too, but these were not music notations that she recognized, but something else.
But what?
Heat snapped the light up one more notch and held the music book under its brightness to study the marks. To her eye, they appeared to be some sort of code.
She began to rock slightly on the bench and the floor felt like it shook. Nikki thought she was experiencing another aftershock. But then she looked around her.
The rest of the room sat perfectly still.