The Scent Keeper(44)

This place will heal you if you let it.

There was a chance Henry would understand why I’d come here. He might be able to convince Colette to give us some time.

I didn’t even want to think about Fisher’s father.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” I said.

We were quiet for a while, Fisher continuing to survey the cabin. “You really lived here?” he said finally, marveling.

I nodded.

“What’re all those for?” he asked, pointing at the drawers. The open curiosity on his face made me want to tell him, but I couldn’t. I remembered my father, opening a drawer, bringing down a bottle, showing me a new world. Then I remembered the clink of those bottles in my foraging bag as I climbed down the ladder, heading for the bluff.

“It’s getting late,” I said. “We shouldn’t be here. This is the first place they’ll look.”



* * *



We went and hid within earshot of the clearing, crouching in the underbrush. My nose scanned the air, searching for a scent of gasoline, while our ears strained for the sound of a motor. Time passed. The woods darkened. The noises around us grew huge, but in the end, they were never more than the cracklings of birds and squirrels in the bushes. My legs started to fall asleep and I settled on the ground, feeling the damp work its way through my pants. Fisher sat next to me, our shoulders touching. We waited.

“Why’d you come to my house yesterday?” Fisher asked quietly.

I thought of myself, bumbling into his home, setting so many things in motion.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said. I shifted position and felt the cool air slip between our shoulders.

“Was that all?”

I should have known he could read me. He read everyone.

“I found something,” I said, and as the light disappeared almost entirely, I told him about the article and Dylan and running away from school.

“You kneed Dylan in the nuts?” I could hear his smile in the darkness.

“Yeah.”

“Good for you.” He started to laugh, but stifled the sound. “So what do you think? About the article?”

“It’s my father,” I said. “I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it means yet.”

All I knew was that nothing was the same. The last time my vision of my father had shifted so dramatically, when I’d learned about the mermaids, he’d still been there—to yell at, to hold back the whole truth, but to be there nonetheless, sleeping in the bed below my loft.

Now all I had was words on a piece of paper and memories to test them against. And those memories were shifting under my feet.

Fisher and I sat in silence. I could smell the trees hushing into sleep, the island giving itself over to the rustle of night wings. I waited, listening for Henry and Martin. Listening for my father.

The air grew colder. Fisher and I moved closer and closer toward each other, until he put his arms around me and I burrowed close, grateful for his warmth. My breath found its way into the curve of his neck and his into the curls of my hair. We fell asleep like that, and woke with the first light of day. The woods were still.

“They’re not coming,” Fisher whispered.





THE ISLAND


It was almost too much to take in—the relief that Martin hadn’t found us, followed by the realization that we were now responsible for keeping ourselves alive for at least a month, and maybe a winter. We went back to the cabin and faced the twelve empty shelves of the pantry. I tried to forget the last time I’d seen them this way.

“What do we do?” Fisher asked, his jubilation sobering.

Aside from the limited supplies I’d packed, and some packets of yeast, sugar, and matches that Fisher’s mother had stuffed in his pockets, we were starting from scratch. There was everything to do. Clams and mussels and seaweed and berries to harvest. The woodpile to sort through, and more to cut. Trails to clear.

Even though it was daunting, these were tasks I understood—things you could do with your hands, your muscles. Given the option of facing Fisher’s father, or school, or this, the choice was clear. I picked up a gathering basket from the corner by the woodstove and handed it to Fisher.

“Here,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

I shoved the memories into the back of my mind, grabbed the other basket, and we set out.



* * *



I had spent all that time in school hiding what I could do with my nose. Now I stopped worrying about being teased and followed its lead. I used my skills to find us mushrooms and patches of huckleberries; I got us back to the cabin when we lost our way on an overgrown trail. I sniffed out the dryness of the usable logs in the woodpile, the damp and slippery scent of rot in the others. For the past five years, each inhalation had been tinged with the fear of being caught. On the island, I was beginning to feel like myself again. In those moments, my nose tucked into the bark of a tree or lifted to the sky, I was with my father in a way that was clean and easy. The best of me. The best of him. It made the man in the article go away.

“You’re different here,” Fisher said.

He was, too. I watched as the constant vigilance fell away from him. It left his eyes first, turning them alive and wondering. His mouth relaxed. His stride loosened. When he hefted the ax to split logs, the muscles in his arms released a pent-up energy that seemed to shimmer in the air. He had always smelled like trees, but now it was the smell of new growth, those green tips that came in the spring.