The Book of Lost Fragrances

Fifty-nine

9:30 A.M.

At home, Jac took a shower and then tried to take a nap. But it was only ten in the morning. And she couldn’t stop her mind from reliving the past few terrible days.

Barefoot, with her hair still wet, wearing the same terrycloth robe that she’d worn as a teenager, she left her bedroom. On her way to the kitchen, she stopped at her brother’s room. She wished he was awake, but his door was shut.

Downstairs Jac made herself a cup of Etoile de Paris tea. Her grandfather once told her Mariage Frères created the blend just for him. But she never knew if that was true. As she watched the dried leaves tint the water green, Jac breathed in the scent. Vanilla wrapped around mint. And a flowery thread. She sniffed. Familiar but elusive. Peppery and sweet at the same time. Very green.

Lotus.

In those few seconds in the Orangerie, after she’d taken the pouch from Robbie, as she hurried to Xie Ping, she’d smelled the scents impregnated in the ancient pottery with a clarity that had eluded her in the catacombs. Even in the midst of the commotion, for those few moments, she’d recognized all of the individual essences.

Frankincense and myrrh, blue lotus and almond oil, and-

There was another, but now she couldn’t remember what it was. How could that be? She’d known it in the museum.

What was it?

Not sure why it mattered so much but determined to remember, she left the house, crossed the courtyard, and entered the workshop.

The scent that Robbie called Fragrance of Comfort suffused the studio. No one had been in here for at least two days. Dark and provocative, the perfume of time long gone-of regret, of longing, maybe even of madness-had intensified.

Here in this room, generations of her ancestors had blended elusive essences and absolutes from flowers, spices, wood and minerals. They had mixed elixirs to tempt patrons. Constructed perfumes to delight emperors and empresses, kings and queens. Created magic potions that no one could resist.

Here she’d discovered she was different from everyone else. Here she had suffered the most. Here her mother had ultimately failed them all. And Robbie, in saving his own life, had ended someone else’s.

Here in this terrible and wonderful room, secrets had been lost. And found. And lost again.

Jac stared at the instrument she hated and feared. Maybe it was time to finally welcome the conscious nightmares instead of fighting them and accept that she had an illness she couldn’t always control.

Jac sat down at the organ. Inhaled the cacophony of smells. Hundreds of threads. A whiff of rose. Jasmine. Orange. Sandalwood. Of myrrh. Vanilla. Orchid. Gardenia. Musk. Could there be so many, many smells in one place anywhere else in the world? A richness of odor. A treasure of it. Each individual scent a story. A tale that went back in time. Instead of interpreting myths, she could spend the rest of her life tracing them.

The glass bottles were lenses. The liquid in them prisms. Her vision was wavering. In the gold and bronze and amber, pictures were coming to life. Jac could pick out the individual threads that made up her mother’s perfume. Her father’s cologne. She remembered, when she was little and things were still good, she’d sit on her father’s lap, here at the organ, and he’d tell her the story of the book of lost fragrances that their ancestor had found. She’d close her eyes and see the scenes play out. Her own private theater of the mind.