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.
