She swiveled her knees to the coffee table and traced her fingers around the edges of a photo album. “It’s hard to say why. People encouraged me to move, back then. But leaving here felt like I would be leaving her. Maybe I will want to move out sometime. But it’s always seemed right to be here. This was always home; this is our connection.” She sat up straight and clapped her hands twice to bring a mood change. “Ready to look at some boring pictures?”
They began slowly at first, turning pages that led off with her parents’ individual grammar and high school portraits along with serious and goofy poses with family, mostly elderly. Her dad’s college photos from George Washington University included a few action shots of him playing basketball for the Colonials and cradling his business school diploma at commencement on the DC Capitol Mall. There were numerous pictures of her mother at the New England Conservatory, mostly at a Steinway or standing in front of one. There was even a picture of Professor Shimizu handing her a bouquet and a trophy, but no chamber duo shots, except for one with Leonard Frick. No glimpses of BFF Nicole Bernardin. When Nikki closed the back cover on the first album, Rook said, “It’s like a mash-up Syfy Channel meets Lifetime movie where a rip in the space-time continuum removes all traces of the best friend.”
She stared at him and said flatly, “That’s right. That’s exactly what it’s like.”
But that did coax a smile out of her, and he said, “Know what we should do? No-brainer. Ask your father.”
“No.”
“But of all people, wouldn’t your dad—”
“Not going to happen, OK? So drop it.”
Her sharpness left him nothing to say but “Moving on?”
The second album of the pair chronicled the courtship of Jeff and Cynthia Heat, a young trophy couple about Europe, including Paris, but still without Nicole. When Rook asked if she might be in the wedding party, Nikki told him there hadn’t been one. Products of the seventies, her mom and dad had succumbed to a bout of post-hippie rebellion and eloped. The ensuing series of photographs were taken of baby Nikki in New York, including a hilarious snapshot of her when she was barely walking, holding on to the wrought iron bars of Gramercy Park, peering through them angrily at the lens. “I’ve seen that expression from most of the prisoners you put in the holding cell.” She laughed at that but then closed the album. “That’s it? Come on, it’s just getting to the good stuff.”
“We’re done. The rest is mostly me at my gawky worst and we’re not doing this for your entertainment or my humiliation. I got enough of that in seventh grade. I know for a fact there’s no sign of Nicole in these.”
“I have another crazy thought.”
“You, Rook? Imagine that,” she said, refilling their glasses.
“Actually, it’s not so out there. Has it occurred to you since we found out her name this morning that you might actually be Nicole’s namesake?” He watched the impact of that play across her brow. “Ah, not so crazy now, is it?”
She tossed it around and said, “Except my legal name isn’t Nicole.”
“So? Nikki, Nicole. Not so far off. Makes sense, especially if they were such close friends…. Although, from this,” he said, indicating the photo albums, “Nicole’s looking more like she turned into an imaginary friend.”
Nikki went to her desk in the second bedroom to make her cell phone and e-mail rounds on the case progress, and when she returned, she found Rook cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Being incorrigible, what else? It’s my job.” He pressed the play button on the old VHS player and the TV screen resolved into a video recording of Nikki, seated beside her mother at the piano. The date stamp read: “16 July 1985.”
“OK, Rook, that’s fine, you can turn it off.”
“How old were you then?”
“Five. We’ve seen enough. We’re good.”
A man’s deep voice came from off camera. “What are you going to play, Nikki?”