The Scent Keeper(11)

Beside me, Cleo trembled with excitement. I kept my hand firmly on the back of her neck, trying to calm both of us, but with a quick shake of her head she broke away and capered down the beach toward the man.

“Daisy!” he said, and opened his arms. Cleo ran to him, and my eyes widened as the man knelt down, rubbing the top of her head.

“Look at you,” he said to Cleo. “Such a big girl now. They must be feeding you well.”

Cleo bleated happily and the man rubbed the top of her head a little harder. “Hush now,” he said. “There’s a bear swimming out in the big water. We don’t want to let it know you’re here.”

The man’s eyes scanned the perimeter of the beach, searching for something. Me, I thought. He’s looking for me. I froze in place, becoming part of the trees. Then the man seemed to hear something from behind him; he glanced back at the channel. It was starting to move again, the first ripples showing on its surface. He stood.

“I gotta get going,” he said to Cleo. “Tide’s changing.” He went to the boat and pulled something out. His back was to me so I couldn’t see what it was, but I could tell by the slope of his shoulders that it wasn’t light.

I watched as he carried his load up to just above the high-tide mark, where the seaweed lay in crazy strands. He straightened and gave one more scan of the beach. With a sigh, he turned and gave Cleo a pat on the rump.

“Head on home now,” he said. He untied and started his boat, then headed into the just-frothing water of the channel.

I waited until I couldn’t hear the motor anymore before coming out of the trees. Cleo ran up and nuzzled my hand, but I didn’t pet her. I just stood, staring at the high-tide mark. At the black plastic box, nestled amidst the seaweed.

It made no sense. The man was no mermaid. There had been no party. I didn’t understand.

But then suddenly I did—and just like that, everything was different.





THE LIE


I wonder sometimes how I could have ever believed in mermaids. I never would have accepted something like the Easter bunny—I knew too much about chickens and who they let take their eggs away. But I had seen flowers bloom into fruit, like straw turned into gold. I’d seen the way sea anemones seemed to die and be born again with every shift of the tide. I’d found seashells that spiraled into themselves, and my father had told me that those elegant shapes once housed animals. In such a world, mermaids did not seem impossible.

There was another thing, too. For good or ill, my father and I lived close to the earth. My childhood was suffused with wonder—along with the stone-hard knowledge that our lives depended upon what we could make or find or grow. For me, those mermaid boxes were about more than just food. They gave me the feeling that someone magical knew we were there and was taking care of us. Someone beyond my father, bigger than the island. I very much needed to believe in that. I think we all do.

But all I knew that day on the beach was that my father had told me a lie. I didn’t stop to ask whether that lie was for me or him or both of us. Whether his stories were to make reality go away or bring it closer. All I knew was that if mermaids didn’t exist, then everything else must be up for grabs, too. I turned and headed for the cabin, my feet slamming against the dirt.



* * *



“You lied, Papa.”

My father had been facing the stove. He whipped around at the sound of my voice, his eyes red.

“Where were you?” he asked. “I looked everywhere. I thought I’d lost you.”

I was shaking with outrage. “There are no mermaids,” I said.

He looked at me, the shock on his face pure and clean.

“You went to the beach.” His words fell onto the floor and cracked open. Even with everything that was happening, everything else that had changed, his trust in me had been so complete he hadn’t even thought of it.

The realization knocked me sideways. I stood, stunned at the pain on his face. I had been heading in a single, retaliatory direction, but now everything inside me was a jumble. It was like being caught in the channel midtide. I was furious at my father’s deception, but I burned with shame at the depth of my own betrayal, too.

He had done a terrible thing. I had done a terrible thing.

It was impossible to hold both those thoughts inside me. I was too grown-up in some ways, but still a child in too many others. I didn’t want to think about what I had done. I just wanted the purity of my anger, the way it had felt when I came stamping up the trail to the cabin, a flaming torch of righteousness.

“Is that why you didn’t want me to go?” I snapped. “Because I might see the truth?”

“No,” my father said quietly. I waited for more, but there was nothing. Just the soft and broken smell of sadness, coming off him in waves from an ocean deeper than I had thought possible.

I needed to get away. I needed room for my thoughts to settle. I started to go outside to put Cleo in her shed for the night.

“No,” my father said, putting a hand on my arm. “Stay inside.”

I didn’t want to, but the shame held me tight as lies. My father went out the door. I could hear him murmuring softly to Cleo, and then the click of the shed latch. When he came back in, I was up in my loft.

“Dinner?” he asked, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t know who to be mad at anymore. I listened as he rustled about the kitchen, but in the end I never smelled any food, just the flame of a candle when it got dark, and then nothing.