The Scent Keeper(80)

“But you’re getting paid now, right?” I asked.

As soon as I said it, I wanted to grab back the words. Fisher’s face darkened.

“I happen to like it here—and I can feed a lot of these guys on what I make. Seems like a better use of my money.”

A boat motored through the canal in front of us, new and glaringly white, slowing as the people on board pointed and stared at the enclave of moldering boats. A woman pulled out a phone and aimed it at us. Took one photo, then another. I felt Fisher tense beside me.

“You know what you learn bartending?” he said. “People never order what they really want. That lady there,” he pointed straight at the woman, who was taking another photo, this time horizontally. “She’d order a glass of chardonnay, but she’d guzzle a shot of scotch if you gave it to her.”

He stood up. “We’re not a damn tourist attraction!” he yelled. The woman’s hand dropped and the boat sped away.

I hugged my knees with my arms. Fisher glanced over, flushed, and sat back down.

“Sorry,” he said.

The wake of the departing boat rocked us toward and away from one another.

“You should have told me,” I said.

“Really? Don’t you think that’s a little hypocritical?” His voice had an edge to it. “Look,” he said, “I was wrong not to write you, and I’ve told you everything you wanted to know because I am sorry. But that’s an awful lot of stones you’re throwing from your big glass house, Emmeline. You shut me out first.”

My mind filled with the image of him standing on the trail at the turnoff to the bluff. The confusion and pain on his face. The way he’d turned around and left.

“I’ve told you everything,” he said. “Again. Will you ever do that for me?”

I still wasn’t ready, even though telling Fisher my secrets had been the reason I’d come to the city in the first place.

But he was right, I knew that. I also knew this was the last time he’d ask. He might not leave me completely, but in all the ways that mattered, he’d be gone. I’d lost almost everything I loved because of secrets—Cleo, my father, the island, Dodge, the stories in the smells. I was about to lose more, and I was sick of it.

Fisher reached out his hand and took mine. “Tell me, Em,” he said.

No, I thought. No, no, no.

I took a breath. The water stilled around us.

“I killed my father,” I said.





COCKTAILS


Fisher and I talked and talked, while the sky went black and fell asleep. I went back to the beginning of everything, told him about my father’s machine and the scent-papers, the bear and Cleo, even about pitching the bottles off the bluff.

“They were yours?” he said. “The ones that washed up on the beaches?”

I nodded.

“That one I found,” he marveled. “It came from you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought he’d be willing to leave the island if they were gone.”

And still I went deeper, digging out words so old I could taste the rust. I told him about finding the blue-wax bottle, and my father falling into the sea. About waiting on the beach. Burning the scent-papers in the cabin.

When my words finally slowed, we sat for a while in silence. I wondered what to do with the extra space I could suddenly feel inside my chest.

“Why did you leave me, Fisher?” I asked.

“How could I stay there?” he said, staring at the houses across the canals, the perfect lives they promised. “The longer I was in that house, the more I became like him. I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t let it come near you.”

And that was when I finally told him what his mother had said, as she stood by the window in the red cottage at the cove.

When I finished, he put his arm around me, his cheek against my hair. “It seems like all we do is re-create our parents’ mistakes,” he said.

“So what if we both just stopped?” I asked.

I could feel the nod of his head, but what he said was “It’s not that easy, Em.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then we start with the small stuff.” I leaned across him and took the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, crumpling them in my hand.

He pulled back and looked at me, and then I could see the start of a grin.

“Does this mean we get to get rid of your jeans, too?” he asked.



* * *



It was after 3 A.M. when I said I really had to get home. Fisher rowed us back to the shore, each stroke a ruffled break in the silence. He tied up the dinghy under the dock and we set off down the path, a wideness in the dark lit only by stars.

When we arrived at Victoria’s white building, with its carved detailing and big glass doors, Fisher stared openly.

“You live here?” he asked, and I remembered how this place had felt the first time I’d seen it. Like a castle.

“That’s a story for another night,” I said.

He laughed under his breath. “I don’t think they’d even let me in the front door.”

I hugged him. “I’ll find you tomorrow,” I said as I fished my key out of my pocket. “Good luck with Izzy.”