The Scent Keeper(54)

Maridel’s face was sad, but set.

“You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re there, Emmeline. And you’re a long way from there.”

She picked up the sponge, and started cleaning again.





THE CHOICE


Back when we were younger, Fisher had taught me how to read a face and spot a lie. Over time, I’d learned that lies have a scent, too. They always smell a little too sweet, like they need an extra boost of olfactory persuasion. Yet the whole time Fisher’s mother had been talking that Sunday, I’d never smelled a lie, not once. What she said—her reasons for not leaving, for not telling Fisher—made no sense to me, and yet they did to her. She’d believed what she said. She was telling a truth, even if it was only hers. I could smell it.

I thought of Fisher’s letters, and the articles that I’d found on the computer at school and printed out. If only those pages were like scent-papers, and could emit the smells of lies and truth along with their stories—then I would know, the way I had known with Fisher’s mother. In the end, however, perhaps it wouldn’t matter; perhaps those stories would be just like hers. A truth. Whether it would be the same as mine, I didn’t know. I’d never know, I realized now, until I was there in the middle of them. Until I’d found Fisher. Found my mother.



* * *



And yet it was impossible to find Fisher without having a better idea of where he was. I kept hoping for another letter, a clue, an address. Weeks passed. Worry cinched my gut, raveled my thoughts. At night, I’d lie in bed, certain that he hated me, had forgotten me. In the morning, I would hate myself for doubting him. Every day the same cycle, over and over.

I promised myself that if I didn’t get a letter by New Year’s, I’d go to the city anyway. Track him down. Find my mother.

Thanksgiving came and went. We cut down a Christmas tree. I helped Colette bake pies, and stirred the hot chocolate she liked to make from scratch. I checked the mailbox. I did my homework, pretending I would be there for graduation. I took Dodge for short walks, which were all his old legs could handle. I checked the mailbox. Maridel and I finished cleaning the cottages, but she kept coming to the cove, helping Colette with reservations. I checked the mailbox. By the last day of Christmas break, I’d gotten so antsy that Colette sent me outside to help Henry fix the railing around the restaurant deck.

It was freezing, the clouds low, with the kind of breeze that sneaks right through whatever you’re wearing. I’m not even sure why we were working on the railing at that time of year, but it felt good to pound something. Henry mostly stood back and pointed; I hammered. I could feel the shock of it in my arms, loosening me.

“Watch your nail,” he said. I’d sent one in crooked. He smiled and leaned in, caught the head with his hammer, and pulled it back out. “Try again.”

We went on like that for a while. It was how we’d always worked together, not a lot of words. Colette was the one who talked. Maybe that’s why I told Henry.

“I found out who I am,” I said, not looking at him.

“Did you?” He didn’t rush in with questions, and in the space he left I found a place for my words. I started to tell him what I’d read on the Internet, but when I got to the part about my father’s machine, he put a hand on my arm.

“Do you think maybe Colette should hear this, too?” he asked, and I knew he was right.

We went back to the house, listening to our feet talking to the wooden boards as we walked. Colette was just finishing dinner preparations when we walked in.

“Good timing,” she said, placing slices of slow-cooked pork roast on a serving plate. The aroma had turned the air around us golden.

“Emmeline has something she wants to tell us,” Henry said. Colette put a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table and sat down, looking at me across the table.

“What is it?” she asked.

I took a breath, holding all the smells of that kitchen inside me, and then I told them—about my father and my mother, about Nightingale and the bottles my father kept in the drawers.

“I remember reading about that machine when it first came out,” Colette said. “But then it was just gone. I always wondered what happened.”

Henry was watching me, nodding slowly. “So that’s why you wanted to go back for the bottle,” he said. “The one you left behind on the island.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think maybe my father was making them to test the machine, to see how long the papers could last or something. That one was of the cabin. And us.”

“Ah,” Henry said.

“The stories on the Internet don’t really add up, though,” I said. “I want to know the truth.”

“Of course you do,” Colette said, her voice supportive, but I saw how she watched me, the same way she had when I’d first arrived, years ago. Like I was a tide that could leave as easily as it came.

You were a gift, she would say, when I least expected it.

We were done eating by that point. Dodge, who’d been begging bits of pork off my fingers for the past half hour, went and scratched at the front door. Henry came with me when I went to let him out. We stood on the porch, the winter night crisp around us.

“Did Colette ever tell you how we ended up here?” he asked me.