The Scent Keeper(48)

* * *



Colette was waiting under the big light on the dock, her arm around Fisher’s mother. Their faces went wide with relief, then fear. Colette practically leapt into our boat when we got close, gathering me into a hug.

“Darling girl,” she said. “You scared us so.”

Fisher’s mother waited, her eyes locked on her son. He didn’t look at her as Henry pulled up on the other side of the dock. Fisher got off our boat, stiff legged, his father right behind him.

“Keys,” Martin said to his wife, holding out his hand. She put them in his palm. “Let’s go,” he said, starting up the dock toward their truck.

“There’s dinner…” Colette said.

“No thank you.”

And then they were gone.

“We can’t just let them…” I said as the truck started up.

Colette just shook her head, exhaustion furrowing her face. “You think we haven’t tried?”



* * *



Colette, Henry, and I sat at the dinner table. Food covered the plates in front of us, but it was as if we’d all forgotten what it was there for.

“It was my idea to go to the island,” I said. I couldn’t let Fisher take the blame.

“Today’s been long enough,” Colette said. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” And we would, I could tell.

But I knew in my gut that the day wasn’t over yet. I had told myself I was saving Fisher by getting his father off the island, but I had only made it worse. They were home now, with no witnesses. None that counted, anyway.

I went to bed and sat there, dressed, waiting. It was three in the morning when Colette came in.

“It’s Fisher,” she said.



* * *



The hospital corridor stretched out in front of me, endless and blank, but the smells told me everything—blood and love and fear, and covering it all, the sharp, fake odor of bleach and cleansers, a mask that kept slipping.

Fisher’s mother stood by the door to his room, her hands behind her back. Beyond her was a bed, and Fisher. His face was every color but his own. There was a cast on one arm, and where his hospital gown didn’t quite cover his chest, I saw what looked like the edge of a boot mark.

I went to the bed, and touched his fingers. He opened his eyes, but the Fisher I found in them was so grown-up and complicated, I almost couldn’t recognize him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

On the other side of the room, a nurse stood next to Colette and Henry. “I can’t get her to let go of it,” I heard her murmur.

When I turned, I saw the baseball bat in Fisher’s mother’s hand.

“She stopped it,” the nurse said.

“Where’s his father?” Colette asked.

“In the room down the hall. They’ll both be fine.”

“Fine?” Henry’s incredulity chilled the room. “This will never be fine.”

“I just patch ’em up,” the nurse said, with the weariness of a late-night shift.

Down the hall a male voice blared out in anger. Fisher’s hand curled tight next to mine.



* * *



I sat by Fisher’s bed, his mother on the other side. She rarely left the room, and when she did, it was almost never in the direction of her husband’s room down the hall.

She and I didn’t say much over the top of that bed—Can I get you some food? Should you get some rest?—but I saw the way she watched Fisher, as if he were a bird that might fly away. Fisher himself rarely said anything, answering only the most necessary questions. I wished his mother would leave sometimes, so I could talk to him alone. There were so many things I needed to say, wanted to know. But it seemed every time she stepped out, a nurse came in, needing to take his blood pressure, temperature.

So instead, I tried to talk through my hands, my fingers against his or touching the unbruised part of his forearm. An unspoken message to a faraway place.

Where have you gone, Fisher?



* * *



On the second day, the local police came by the hospital; they decided it had been a bad fight, but a mutual one. There would be no charges. Fisher’s eyes went dark at the news. Henry was furious, and followed the policemen out of the building. He took me down to the cafeteria for coffee when he got back.

“It’s Martin’s story against Fisher’s,” he told me. “The cop plays poker with Martin. Says he’s a great guy. And Maridel … she still won’t press charges.”

“Why not? I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us.” His expression held an old and unspoken frustration.

Later, as I approached Fisher’s room, I overheard him and his mother talking.

“A vow is a vow, Fisher.” Her voice sounded two hundred years old.

“Jesus, Mom. Can you hear yourself?”

“It’s hard for him, too.”

There was something like a laugh, cut off by a grunt of pain. “Bullshit,” he said.

Fisher’s mother flew by me out the door. Fisher looked up and saw me standing there.

“You heard,” he said. I nodded.

“I have to go,” he said as I sat down next to him. “I can’t stay here.”