“Ah, once again, Nikki, so much like your mother. Both dutiful and beautiful.” He took a sip of wine. “Remember what one of our philosophers once said, ‘In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.’”
Lysette seemed newly invigorated by her mission and hurried back into the room carrying a keepsake container about the size of a shoebox covered in burgundy and white toile fabric with matching burgundy ribbon ties done into bows. “I can see I’ve been gone too long. Emile’s quoting maxims again.” She stood before Nikki’s chair and said, “In this box are old photos I kept of Cynthia from her times with Nicole and also of your mother’s travels. Cindy was a wonderful correspondent. If you please, I am not going to look through them with you now. I don’t think I am able to endure seeing them at the moment.” Then she offered the box. “Here.”
Nikki reached out hesitantly and cradled it in both her hands. “Thank you, Mme. Bernardin. I’ll be careful with them and return them tomorrow.”
“No, Nikki, these are yours to keep. I have my memories in here.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Yours are in there yet to be discovered. I hope they bring you closer to your mother.”
It was a struggle. Even for the self-proclaimed queen of delayed gratification, who so wanted to rip the lid off the keepsake box in the taxi back to the hotel. But she held firm. Her fear of losing a single photo trumped her aching curiosity.
Rook gave Heat some space. He set out to find a zinc bar to serve him a stand-up double espresso to supply a much-needed caffeine bounce at the far reaches of the afternoon; she stayed in the room and pored over the unexpected treasure from the Bernardins. He returned to the hotel a half hour later with an icy can of her favorite San Pellegrino Orange and found Nikki cross-legged on their bed with rows of neatly arranged snapshots and postcards radiating out from her like beams from the sun. “Finding anything useful?”
“Useful?” she asked. “Hard to know what’s useful. Interesting? Absolutely. Check out this one. She was so cute.” Nikki held up a shot of her mom, striking a ditzy, laughing pose while she squeezed the bicep of a gondolier under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. “Turn it over, she wrote on the back.”
Rook flipped the snapshot and read it aloud. “Dear Lysette, Sigh!”
“My mom was a babe, wasn’t she?”
He handed it back. “I’m too smart to answer a question like that about your mother. At least until we appear on Jerry Springer.”
“I think you did just answer.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to upset her sorting. “What’s your take from all this?”