The Scent Keeper(88)

“You know,” he said after a while, “that machine of your father’s was incredible. Those scent-papers captured everything you could possibly smell in one particular place at one point in time. It wouldn’t be the same an hour, even a minute later. Nobody chose what went in, or didn’t. It was life, held in your hand. A whole moment.”

“Except they didn’t last.”

“But they were beautiful.”

I sat there, my mind curling into the memory of my father as he broke open a red-wax seal and let out the world inside.

“He made a scent-paper of you, you know,” Rene said. “That first time he saw you. He made sure to put it in a bottle right away. Even gave it its own color of wax so he’d never open it by mistake. Don’t ever think you weren’t loved, Emmeline.”

“What color?” I asked.

“What?”

“The wax.”

He shrugged. “I can’t remember. Blue, maybe?”

I saw the bottle, flying through the air, falling toward the water, and in the almost silent whoosh of it, I could hear the cracking of my heart.



* * *



Fisher was behind the bar when I walked into The Island. I went straight to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, shoving my nose into the crook of his neck and disappearing into his scent. We didn’t move for a full minute.

Izzy came up behind us.

“Sweet as this is,” she said, “we happen to be running a bar here.”

I looked up. Her face softened.

“Would you do me a favor and get this guy out of here?” she said, jabbing a thumb at Fisher. “He’s not even on the clock tonight.”



* * *



We went back to the boats and crawled into Fisher’s cubbyhole bed. He wrapped the plaid blanket around us, and in the darkness I told him what I’d learned.

“She let your father take the fall for Nightingale?” he asked.

“More than that, I think. Somebody had to point the finger at him.”

“Jesus,” he said, “that’s cold.”

When I told him about the blue-wax bottle, I heard his breath catch. The silence that followed seemed to last for days.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, finally.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t live with her now. Mostly I just want to go home.”

“Forever?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. For a while?”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No—you can’t. What about your dad?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t go back to that house. He can’t make me now.” His hands rested open against my skin, and I leaned into the reassuring calm of them. “Besides,” he said, “it’s time I saw my mom.”

For hours, we lay there in that snug little bed and made plans. I’d go back to Victoria’s, get my things, and stay on the boat with Fisher until we could catch a bus to the cove. After that, who knew? Izzy wanted to move Fisher into a position with more responsibility. Rene’s talk of Alzheimer’s research had opened up possibilities in my mind.

And then there was the cove, the resort, the island. I could feel the pull of them, growing stronger with each rock of the boat.

We talked until we fell asleep, midsentence, and woke in the morning with our arms still around each other.



* * *



I waited until I was sure Victoria had left for the office; I wasn’t ready to see her. I didn’t know when I would be, honestly. Fisher had offered to come with me, but I told him this was mine to do.

When I entered the lobby, Becky the concierge was at her desk. I tried to slip past, but she spotted me and gave a small wave as she leaned forward to pick up the phone.

I got to the apartment without further incident and let myself in, feeling more like a burglar than an occupant. It was just as beautiful as the first time I’d seen it, no matter what I’d learned since. I looked about for proof of my mother’s treachery, but what I saw was the kitchen where we’d cooked together, the couch where we’d sat and talked late into the night.

Do you ever think of scents as colors?

Absolutely.

She’d understood a part of me that no one had since my father died. Not even Fisher. She’d opened my mind, taught me things.

She hurt your father, I told myself.

So had I, though. I saw that blue-wax bottle in the air, the way he’d instinctively reached for the memory of that baby—the one who hadn’t betrayed him yet.

Just go forward, Emmeline. I started down the hall, but at its far end, I saw the partially open door of Victoria’s bedroom. She always kept the door closed. She said it made things neater, kept out the dust. After that first day, I’d rarely entered her room.

Now I went to the door and poked my head in. The bed looked as if someone had been sleeping on top of the covers. A dresser drawer was half-open. Small things, unless you knew Victoria’s penchant for order.

The wall of squares with their bottles of scents, however, was as precise as always. Victoria had forgotten to close the curtains, and the liquid in the bottles shone in the light, drawing my eye. I remembered her talking about Andy Warhol’s museum of scents. How he used the fragrances to help him recall times in his life. How each one held memories, things that had happened.