The Scent Keeper(40)

I looked back at Fisher’s mother as he tugged me away, but her eyes were on her husband.



* * *



We stood in the driveway, Fisher fiddling with a flashlight, trying to make it work. The air had turned chill while we were inside, and the sky was dark with clouds.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not,” Fisher said.

From the dining room came the sound of a plate dropping on the floor.

“We should go,” he said. He gave the flashlight a hard knock and it flared to life.

We walked down the road in silence. The trees loomed on either side, thick and dark. I would have walked right by the trailhead, but Fisher turned down it without needing to look. Within three feet we were in total darkness, and Fisher reached the flashlight behind him so it illuminated the trail for me.

“Don’t you need it to see?” I asked.

“I’m okay,” he said.

I let the words hang in the trees for a moment, white lies tangling in the branches.

“Are you?” I asked.

“Yes. No.”

“What was that back there?”

“That was my father.”

The pieces were falling into place now, so much later than they should have. Fisher’s long sleeves, his absences from school, his flares of anger. “But can’t you do anything? What about the police?”

He pushed a branch out of the way. “She’ll never take a stand against him, Emmeline.”

“But…”

“Let’s just get you home,” he said.

The longing hidden in that last word broke my heart.

We walked in silence, my mind whirling. I’d made Fisher go out on the boat with Henry and me; I hadn’t listened to what he was trying to tell me. Then I’d come to his house because I needed him. By thinking only of myself, I’d set a match to a pile of tinder I hadn’t known existed.

And yet, I had known. That was the thing. I’d been raised on fairy tales, stories about fathers who left their children in the woods, and evil stepmothers who talked to mirrors. All the pieces were there. But even with everything I’d seen since I’d left the island, I hadn’t had the imagination to let those characters walk off the pages into real life. I hadn’t wanted to know.

“Here you are.”

Fisher’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked up to see him gazing down at the cove. All the lights were on in Henry and Colette’s house. The clouds had disappeared while we were in the woods, and the moon lit the ripples of the water. A full moon, I realized suddenly. I could almost feel the pull of the tide.

Come find me.

Fisher turned to go up the hill. I couldn’t let him go back to that house. I knew now what waited for him.

My fault.

“Don’t go back,” I said.

“Where else can I go?” His voice was cold, ironic. Grown-up.

And then suddenly I knew.

“The island,” I said. The words came out fast, unthinking, as if speed could carry them past logic or consequences.

“What?”

“We can go together,” I said. “We can take care of ourselves. I know how.”

He paused. I could see him thinking, saw the yearning start in him. He looked at the moon, and his eyes widened.

“The channel…” he said.

The hope in his words pushed me forward. “We could do it, Fisher.”

“But what about a boat?”

That stopped me. I hadn’t thought that far. But I couldn’t turn back now. I took a deep breath.

“We’ll take Henry’s,” I said. “He only uses it for deliveries, and we just did them.”

Had it only been two days ago? The world had changed so utterly since then. For a moment I thought of that other life, out on the boat with Henry. The way he’d shown me my island, given it back to me.

“You’d do that?” Fisher asked. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Take the boat?”

He wasn’t asking me to choose, but it was a choice all the same. No, I thought. I can’t do that to Henry. But I nodded.

“Okay,” Fisher said. His feet were set, solid. “I have to go back first, though. I have to tell my mother.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t have time.” I needed to keep moving forward or I knew I’d back out.

“I’ll hurry,” he said, and set off running up the hill.





RUNAWAY


I watched until Fisher disappeared into the woods, and then turned back to the lights of the house, my heart sinking. What was I doing? For almost five years now, Colette and Henry had taken care of me. They’d sheltered me when I was terrified, cared for me without words when affection was all I could hear.

I thought of Colette, picking me up every day after school. Henry, teaching me about the world through paintbrushes and hammers. I was about to betray them, and I’d seen the consequences of that before. I’d sworn I’d never do it again—but I had to protect Fisher.

My brain went into rationalization mode. My father had had only me, I told myself; my betrayal had left him alone. Henry and Colette had each other. They would be okay. They might even understand—once upon a time, Colette had been a traveler, and Henry had run away once, too, searching for peace and safety. They would be okay. I said it like a mantra.