The Scent Keeper(46)

Tell him, I thought.

“There was a bear,” I said instead.



* * *



As our minds followed our stories toward each other, our bodies followed suit. His hand found the small of my back as I stood making tea. My fingers reached into the waves of his red hair to pull out a twig. That evening I smelled his scent on my fingertips, the way it met mine and made a fragrance that felt whole.

I was the one who threw the bottles in the water, I wanted to tell him. Everything fell apart because of me. But then he took my face in his hands and kissed me.

Tell him, I said to myself. It’s not right unless you tell him.

But I was seventeen years old, alone on an island with a boy I had loved since the first time he sat down at the desk next to mine. So I closed my eyes and kissed him back, and then we both went up to the loft.





THE BLUFF


I woke in the morning, our scents tangled in the sheets, our legs wound together like tree roots. I knew that as soon as I moved, this new smell of us would find its way out of the blankets and disperse into the ordinary life of the cabin. So I stayed still, cocooned in the covers. The walls of drawers rose above me, and I wished for my father’s machine, so I could make a scent-paper of this moment while it was still pure and only us.

Fisher stirred, opening his eyes with a smile.



* * *



In so many ways it was the fairy tale I’d always wanted—two children in the woods, taking care of one another. We spent our days filling the pantry, contented, ignoring any thought that in the end we might not need the stores we were collecting. Food seemed to fly into our foraging baskets. We found a downed tree, already dry and perfect for chopping. Over time, the sky turned cloudy, heading into fall. We couldn’t see the moon, and we didn’t care. No moon meant no light. We had to go to bed early—to save the candles, we would say, reaching for one another. When Fisher was sleeping next to me, my mind calmed, let go. I could forget the article, and those last weeks on this island with my father. I was creating new memories, all my own. I lost track of time, happily and willfully.



* * *



“Hey, Em!” Fisher said, coming into the cabin one afternoon. “I found something.”

“What?”

“It’s a surprise. I have to show you.” His green eyes were bright.

I put my coat over the T-shirt I had slept in and followed him out. The air was changing, the openness of the trees and dirt tightening in preparation for colder weather. It was strange to smell the woods slowing down, getting ready for sleep while everything inside me felt so open and alive.

I breathed in, the cool air tickling the inside of my nose, colored by the fragrance of us that was still hiding in my shirt. For the first time in my life, I was looking forward to the shorter days of winter. I smiled as I watched Fisher’s excitement lengthen his loping stride.

Fisher led me past the dormant vegetable garden, but instead of turning down the now well-maintained trail to the lagoon, he headed in the opposite direction, pushing through the overgrowth. My breath caught. I knew what path we’d pass going this way, but if it was as hidden as the rest had been, there was a chance he’d missed it.

He hadn’t. He stopped and stood, grinning, at the turnoff for the bluff.

“I found the coolest place,” he said.

Every memory I had been avoiding came crashing back into my head. I saw myself, running down this trail, my foraging bag full of bottles. I saw myself on the bluff, hand raised.

My fault.

I should have told Fisher the truth before, told him I wished that trail had never existed. But I hadn’t, and now he’d discovered the only place I never wanted him to see. I reached forward and grabbed his arm.

“You’ve already been there, huh?” he said. “I guess it was too much to hope. Still, we should go—”

“No.”

He stopped and looked at me, the joy draining from his face.

“Tell me,” he said.

The secrets sat there, waiting in my throat. I couldn’t imagine what this island would be like, what Fisher and I would be like, if they came out. Words were like scents that way; they changed the very air you breathed.

I shook my head, once.

His eyes, so open and expressive, went flat. “I told you everything,” he said. “Things I never told anybody.”

I looked at him. Three hours before, we’d been in bed, his skin warm against mine. In my happiness, I’d convinced myself I’d given him everything, but that was a lie. I’d kept this from him because I didn’t want him to know what I’d done. I’d wanted to be only myself, not what had happened before. As if that is ever possible.

But there was more to it than that, I knew. This one memory, that face in the water looking up at me, belonged only to my father and me. In a strange way, it was the one thing that hadn’t been touched by someone else’s stories or smells. It was all I had left. That, and a scent-paper I’d never burn.

“I can’t,” I said to Fisher. “It’s mine.”

He stared at me for a moment, the hurt of it slapped across his face.

“Keep it, then,” he said.

He turned and went back down the trail, leaving me alone.



* * *