Work Text:
The studio smelled faintly of chemicals and old wood, the kind of place that still carried shadows in its corners even in daylight. Therese sat behind the counter with a book open in her lap, the silence broken only by the hum of the heater and the occasional groan of pipes.
She hadn’t planned to be here. Friday afternoons were supposed to be her own. It’s her first day off after 2 weeks of straight working. It is her time to breathe after deadlines at The Times , maybe wander the city, maybe not. But her friend from work had leaned across her desk at noon with wide eyes and a grin.
Please, Therese, just this once. Cover for me. It’s only a few hours, you’ll barely see anyone come through. I’ve got a date. A real date. Friday night!
There had been more begging, then pleading, then the promise of dinner anywhere she liked, and finally Therese had sighed and said yes.
So here she was, marooned in a photography studio that wasn’t hers, waiting out the clock in the kind of quiet that made the city outside feel like another world. She turned a page in her book, though her eyes had drifted off paragraphs ago.
Her friend’s laughter still echoed faintly in her ears as she’d darted out the door, perfume trailing, calling back over her shoulder: Don’t worry, Therese, you’ll survive. It’s just one afternoon. One quiet Friday.
And it had been quiet. Almost too quiet. Only a trickle of customers had stopped by, none of them lingering.
Now the afternoon stretched before her, heavy, uneventful.
Until the bell above the door chimed.
Two girls stepped inside, their laughter spilling in with the cold air. Teenagers, still soft around the edges, their school bags slung carelessly over their shoulders. One of them walked to the counter first, brown hair loose, a folded slip clutched in her hand.
Therese lifted her head, automatic smile forming, ready to greet whoever had come in.
She froze.
And Therese’s breath caught.
The hair was quite wrong, but the rest. The eyes, blue-gray and unflinching, the curve of her cheekbones, the straight line of her nose, the mouth that looked one second from curling into a smirk… it was all Carol.
For a moment, it was as if the years collapsed, as if Carol herself had just stepped into the studio. Therese’s chest tightened painfully.
Therese’s heart gave a violent kick, her breath catching in her chest. Was it Rindy? She couldn’t be sure. Too many years had passed. The girl was older now, thirteen perhaps, and the hair was wrong. But the face… the face was hers.
Therese gripped the counter until her knuckles whitened.
It had been years since she last saw Carol. Years since that night when Carol’s voice had been low and certain: I love you. Years since Therese had gone to the Oakroom but she was too late, heart pounding, rehearsed words dying in her mouth, only to find a full dining room but no sign of Carol. She’d been too late.
She’d told herself it was for the best. That she had made her choice, and Carol had made hers. And yet.
She never really moved on.
She worked, oh yes, steadily at The Times . Her life filled with assignments, deadlines, bylines that should have felt like victories. She went on dates now and then. Let men, and even women, buy her drinks, let herself be kissed in the dark corners of bars. But none of them stuck. None of them compared. Always, there was Carol. Impossibly distant, unbearably present in her mind.
Therese often wondered if Carol thought of her at all. Did her name ever rise unbidden, the way Carol’s still did for her? Did Carol ever hear a song, smell a winter coat, catch a phrase in a conversation and think of her?
Sometimes, walking along Madison Avenue, Therese would slow her steps, glancing up at the facades. Which building was hers? Which window lit Carol’s nights? She never knew, and yet she always looked.
More often than she admitted, her heart stuttered wildly when she caught sight of a blonde head in the crowd. Sometimes crossing the street or brushing past her in a hurry or eating alone at a diner, or smoking on the curb outside a bar. Always that split second when she thought… her.
And always, the heartbreaking letdown.
Now here stood this girl. And whether she was Rindy or not, it didn’t matter. The resemblance was enough to split Therese open all over again.
She forced her voice steady. “Hi there. Do you have an appointment, or are you just walking in?”
The girl smiled politely. No recognition. No clue.
Therese’s hands curled into fists against the counter to keep them from trembling.
“Uhm. Appointment. It’s under her name,” the girl slid a folded slip across the counter, her friend hovering behind her with a shy grin.
Therese smoothed it open, reading the letterhead, the neat handwriting. The appointment was under the friend’s name. Ordinary, nothing to betray who the girl was.
“Right on time,” she said, her voice steady though her pulse had quickened. “We’ll get you set up.”
The studio lights buzzed overhead as she adjusted the backdrop. She stole a glance at the girl. If this girl is really Rindy, she is definitely grown up now, taller, hair pulled back, a little coltish in her limbs. Something about the tilt of her chin, the sharp way she looked around.
Therese’s throat went dry.
“Stand here. Shoulder back. Chin up,” she instructed, gesturing toward the taped marks on the floor.
The girls giggled, bumping each other as they shuffled into place. They whispered in the shorthand of teenagers, tossing nicknames back and forth. Nothing clear enough to catch. Therese tilted her head, hoping, waiting for something more. But no full names, nothing to anchor her suspicion.
The camera was cool in her hands. She lifted it, peered through the viewfinder, and the breath caught in her chest. Those eyes. Blue-gray, luminous under the studio lights. The laugh that followed, it was unguarded and free, pulled her somewhere she hadn’t been in years: a diner in winter, Carol’s hand brushing hers, Carol’s laughter sinking deep into her ribs.
Don’t, she told herself. Don’t assume. It might not be her.
“Alright, hold still,” Therese murmured, though her hands weren’t steady. The shutter clicked, once, twice.
A few more frames, and it was done. She lowered the camera. “That should do it. You can check with me on your way out.”
The girls giggled again, gathering their bags. The one with the blue-gray eyes rolled her own, mock-exasperated at something her friend said.
Therese’s chest tightened. It was such a familiar gesture.
Back at the counter, Therese slid the clipboard toward them. “I’ll just need a signature on the claim slip.” Her tone was light, professional, though her fingers tightened around the edge as if the paper itself mattered more than it should.
The brown-haired girl took the pen easily, head bent, hair slipping forward across her cheek. Therese leaned in, pulse hammering as she tried to catch the curve of the letters. One second more, and she’d know… she’d know what exactly? For what?
But the name was already written, and the girl simply copied it. Her friend’s name, the one listed on the appointment. Smooth, practiced, unquestioning.
No correction. No hesitation.
Therese blinked, disoriented. She had expected… what? A confession? An absentminded scrawl that revealed something truer? But teenagers were private creatures, protective of their own names, keeping them close like small secrets.
She tried anyway, her voice careful, almost coaxing. “And your name is…?”
The girl looked up then, meeting her gaze with polite distance. She smiled, a small, courteous smile that gave nothing away, and handed the pen back.
“It’s fine. You can keep it under hers. She and her mom will claim it.”
That was all. Nothing more.
Therese closed her hand around the clipboard, pressing the paper flat against the desk to hide the tremor that ran through her fingers. She glanced up again, searching the girl’s face. Those eyes. That mouth. The profile when she turned, the stubborn set of her chin…Iit hollowed Therese out.
All Carol.
But the truth sat locked away, behind a borrowed name, behind teenage secrecy.
Her chest ached with the weight of it, the yearning that had never dulled. This girl, Rindy or not Rindy, stood before her like a ghost she could almost touch, and still she had no proof. Only the ache of recognition, and the gnawing question that refused to answer itself.
The name stayed hidden.
The girl slipped the pen back onto the counter. For a moment she lingered, as though weighing something, then she asked, her tone polite but practiced casual, “Is it cool if we stay here for a bit? My mom’s picking us up. She’s just… running late.”
Therese’s heart clenched at the word. Mom.
She forced her voice even. “Of course. You can stay as long as you like.”
The girls grinned in unison, dragging their bags toward the reception chairs. They sprawled across them carelessly, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum, tugging at old magazines left behind by other customers. Their heads bent close together, whispering in bursts, laughter bubbling out at things only they understood. Nicknames tossed back and forth, muffled conspiracies that locked Therese out.
Therese sat behind the counter, book open in front of her, but the words had blurred hours ago. Every now and then she let her eyes flick up. The girl leaned back against the chair, legs stretched long, one shoe slipping halfway off. Her face tilted toward her friend in a grin, her eyes catching the late light pouring through the window.
It was Carol. Every line, every flicker of expression was Carol transposed onto someone younger, someone who didn’t know her.
Therese lowered her gaze quickly, fingers tightening around her book. Her chest ached, raw, as though time had folded in on itself. All those years of trying to move on, of filling her life with work , with bylines and photographs and fleeting dates that never stayed. No one had stuck. No one ever compared.
And now, here in this quiet studio on a Friday afternoon, she found herself holding her breath, waiting… And waiting for what? She didn’t know.
Waiting for the girl’s mother to arrive. Waiting for the past to walk through the door.
Then: two short bursts of a car horn outside.
The girls leapt to their feet, scrambling for their things. “There’s my mom,” the girl said quickly, but her friend was already halfway to the door.
“Thanks!” she called back to Therese, bright and careless, and then she was gone.
Therese followed them to the threshold, stopping just shy of the door. Through the glass she saw them clamber into the car idling at the curb. For an instant, just an instant, Therese caught the shimmer of blonde hair through the driver’s side window, caught the low timbre of a voice as it bent toward the girls.
Her heart clenched.
She craned her neck, trying to see more, trying to be sure but, alas, the girls pulled the doors shut, and the car eased forward, then quickened, vanishing into the traffic.
Therese stood frozen in the doorway, the bell above her head swaying gently in the draft. She stared down the street long after the car was gone, her reflection faint in the glass, as though she’d dreamed it all.
It might not have been Carol.
It might not have been Rindy.
She would never know.
And yet, her pulse was still racing, as if the past had brushed against her in the span of a breath before disappearing again.