The Scent Keeper(74)

With trembling hands I pushed on the door. A man with a short white ponytail sat at a long metal table, a ring of glass bottles around him. He looked up as I entered.

“I’m sorry.” I fumbled. “The smell…”

His bushy eyebrows rose over his gray eyes. I didn’t know if it was the scent, or how different he was from everyone who worked around me, but I recognized him. I’d seen him in the lobby that first day when I came to find Victoria. He worked here. It surprised me; he didn’t seem to fit in with Inspire, Inc. Then again, maybe I didn’t, either.

“You don’t like the scent of pipe tobacco?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I mean, yes, I do. It reminds me of a place I used to live.” He waited, inclining his head toward me. “The smell lived in the walls,” I said, and cringed, thinking of the article, and my stupid, na?ve words—They’re alive. They tell me things.

But the man just smiled in a way that filled his eyes. He held out his hand. “I’m Rene.”

I took it. “Emmeline,” I said.

“Do you know what I’m working on here, Emmeline?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I’m re-creating scents that are disappearing,” he said. “Pipe smoke. Typewriter ribbons. Those tiny wild strawberries that grow in the forest. It’s a pet project I work on in the evenings. I just can’t bear for them to be gone, you know?”

I nodded. I did know.

He reached out, taking a bottle from the ring in front of him. “This one is my favorite,” he said, undoing the cap.

“What’s that?”

He held it out like a gift. “Smell for yourself.”

I took in the scent—not with the small, clinical sniffs Claudia had taught me, but as my father had. I closed my eyes, and let the picture fill my mind. The smell of dry earth, opening to the rain in the spring. It unlocked me like a key.

Once upon a time, Emmeline.

“Petrichor,” Rene said. “The word comes from petra, which means stones, and ichor, the ethereal blood of the Greek gods. Plants release an oil that stops their seeds from germinating when it would be too difficult to survive. The oil soaks into the pores of the stones, and is set free with water. They say it’s the smell of waiting, paid off.”

I wiped my eyes with my thumb, trying to hide my reaction.

“You know,” Rene said, “you remind me of someone.”

I looked up. “My mother, probably—Victoria Wingate. People say I look like her.”

“Yes,” he said. “You do, but that’s not who I was thinking of.”

“Who then?”

“Your father, John.” The affection in his voice was clear.

My voice tightened to a croak. “You knew him?”

Rene nodded. “We worked together, a long time ago. Your father believed scents were alive, just as you do. It’s what made him so good at what he did. It was his gift.”

I saw the yearning in my father’s face as he breathed in the burning scent-papers. His hand, reaching out to grab the blue-wax bottle as he fell through the sky.

“Not always,” I said.

“Nothing can be always. That’s the first thing a smell teaches you.” He looked at me, considering. “Did he ever tell you about how he got started with scents?”

“No.” Another secret.

“It was his mother. She died when he was young—twelve, I think.”

“What happened?” I asked, holding my breath. Please, I thought, don’t let it be drowning.

“She got cancer,” Rene said. “And apparently she waited too long to go to the doctor—she didn’t want to say anything. She was in the hospital for weeks, though, before she passed. John said she hated the smells there, so he’d smuggle in new ones.” Rene gave me a sad smile. “He said he brought about half the spice bottles from the kitchen. He’d sit on her bed while she made up stories about each one, and her brave Jack who hunted for smells.”

Once upon a time, Emmeline, there was a beautiful queen who was trapped in a great white castle. None of the knights could save her …

“Oh,” I said quietly.

Open the back of your mind, I could hear my father saying. Listen to the story.

The truth had been there all along, I realized—hidden in his fairy tales like the scent-papers inside the bottles.

My brain was pounding; I needed time to figure out what it all meant. “I have to go,” I said, getting to my feet.

Rene nodded. “Come visit me again sometime.”

I headed for the door, then turned. “Thank you,” I said.

His eyes met mine. “He was a good man, Emmeline. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”



* * *



I rode the bus to Victoria’s apartment, avoiding the walk along the wharf. The bus had the same hard seats, the same tired people as the one I’d taken that first day when I’d come to Inspire, Inc. Nothing had changed except me. I sat there amidst the tag end of everyone’s day, remembering the Emmeline in the old sweatshirt who’d come here searching for her boyfriend, her past.

I had lost Fisher, but when I met Victoria, I thought I’d found a future. A new life. A better Emmeline. I’d gone forward into Victoria’s world, shedding the rest like my old clothes. Now the conversation with Rene, the smells of pipe smoke and petrichor, were like fists knocking at a door I’d closed.