The Scent Keeper(64)

“Home isn’t perfect,” I said finally.

Victoria’s head tilted. “Oh, but it can be,” she said with a slow, delighted smile. “In fact, that’s our job.” She came around the table, put one hand on my elbow. Her voice was low. “Sales are good, but I’d like them to be higher. We’ve got every scent in the world at our disposal. What would you do?”

It was a test; I knew that. Still, it was one I desperately wanted to pass. For Victoria, my sense of smell didn’t make me weird—and if I proved I knew what I was doing, it could make me special. Maybe it would make her love me, want to keep me.

I scanned the room, my nose alert. On all sides, customers idly picked up one item after another. I could hear Fisher’s voice in my head: People guard their faces. They forget about their hands.

Don’t think about Fisher, I told myself.

But I looked at their hands anyway. I watched as one woman’s fingers ran over the softness of a blanket; another’s passed along the curving lines of a silver candle holder. They were curious, but nothing more.

The gauzy pink fragrance lay in the air. I watched it drape itself around the woman’s shoulders like a shawl. Comforting, effortless.

“You’re making it too easy,” I said.

Victoria cocked her head, intrigued. “What would you do instead?”

I thought about the island, how I used to push my face into the moss at the base of the trees to be part of its smell. About Fisher, the way the best of his scent waited in the warm spot just behind his ear.

“Hide it,” I said. “The fragrance.”

“Where?”

I looked around. “In the pillows—and the blankets. In the candles, too, just a little bit, so you have to lean in to find it.”

“Give them the thrill of the hunt, and they’ll want to take a trophy home.” Victoria’s eyes went bright. “What an amazing daughter I have.” She put her hand on my shoulder, and I warmed to its touch.





TRAINING


I spent the rest of the day watching my mother move through her world like a breeze over tall grass. Everything in her path turned to motion, admiration. She was as different from me as anything I could imagine. When we walked into Inspire, Inc., however, the receptionist did a double take.

“Miranda,” Victoria said to her, “this is my daughter, Vi … Emmeline.”

Miranda nodded. “The resemblance is striking, Ms. Wingate,” she said. She’d seen me less than twenty-four hours before and hadn’t noticed it then, I thought. What a difference a day and some clothes made.

“We should get going,” Victoria said. She walked me through the building, showing me sparkling-clean rooms filled with people in starched white coats and endless shelves of small bottles. When I got close I could hear the scents, murmuring and clamoring inside. It was all I could do not to open the bottles and let the stories out.

“You hear them?” Victoria asked in a low voice.

“Yes,” I said. I wondered if the people working so studiously around us did, too. Maybe this whole building was filled with people like me. Then again, maybe not—Victoria had whispered, after all. That thought, and the small private circle it made of the two of us, made me shiver with delight.



* * *



That evening, back at the apartment, Victoria and I made a large salad for dinner.

“I have to eat out so often. It’s hard to keep your figure,” she explained as she chopped tomatoes, her fingertips close to the sharp edge of the knife. “And trust me, you have to keep your figure. A woman can’t leave anything to chance in this world.”

I wished someone had told me that before I lost Fisher.

I looked at my mother, her creamy skin, her strength and effortless confidence. I thought of the scent in the elevator, all the fragrances I’d smelled at Inspire, Inc., the way each one had colored my mood, changed my thoughts. Maybe that’s what happened when you left nothing to chance.

We sat down at the dining room table. She chewed delicately while she considered me.

“Did you have a good day?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said fervently. The side of her mouth twitched in amusement.

“What would you think about training to be a nose?”

I hadn’t expected that. Before I’d met her, I considered Victoria a source of information. In the face of the assured, elegant reality of her, I’d figured that she’d soon tire of having me around, and send me back to Colette and Henry. As recently as last night, that scenario would not have made me sad. I loved Colette and Henry, and there were far worse things I could do with my life than help them run the resort.

But after today and all I’d seen, things—and I—felt different. Victoria’s offer sparkled in front of me like light on water. I could do something, be somebody. Maybe Fisher would hear about it.

“You could stay here,” she added. “Live with me.”

Maybe I would have a mother.

“I’d like that,” I said to Victoria.

“Good.” She smiled. “Of course, you still have to get your high school diploma.”

My fork skittered against my plate. That was the last thing I wanted to think about.

“I’m not kidding,” Victoria said. “It doesn’t have to happen right now, but it’s not negotiable. No daughter of mine will put herself at a disadvantage.”