It hit me before I reached the corner. Sweet, powdery, expensive in a way that tries to seem effortless. There was a faint floral note underneath it, something like peony, and then a warm vanilla finish that clung to the air. I knew that smell. I had smelled it on my gray knit throw blanket two weeks earlier and told myself it must have come from Tessa Riley hugging me in the kitchen after bringing over brownies. I had smelled it once on Caleb’s hoodie and accepted his explanation that Tessa had borrowed it when she got chilly on our back patio after the neighborhood chili cook-off. I had smelled it in my car once, too, though Caleb said I was imagining things.
Standing in my hallway, one hand on the wall, I let my brain bargain for a different explanation.
Maybe the candle.
Maybe the laundry detergent.
Maybe one of the patients at work had worn something similar and it had followed me home in my hair.
Maybe I was overtired.
Maybe I was becoming exactly what I had promised myself I would never become: suspicious, scanning, always waiting for betrayal because betrayal had been the weather of my childhood.
Then I heard breathing.
Not one rhythm.
Two.