Chapter 22: The Perfume

Stephanie's POV

"No," Kendra said again, from the clubhouse doorway. "I'm not going in there to be lectured."

Forty patches and their wives stood in the cold lot, and every face had turned toward her.

She came down the steps in the pink jacket with her phone raised.

"Dutch was my boyfriend," she said, loud, for the camera. "He's a grown man. I didn't steal a thing."

"The account is in your name," Norman said.

"A gift."

"Of ten years of Stephanie's money."

"She's nobody to you, Daddy."

I stepped away from Rafe and walked across the gravel until I was an arm's length from her.

She smelled of vanilla and cut grass and something faintly bitter, under it.

I had known that smell for a year.

"Hold out your wrist," I said.

"What?"

"Humor me."

She hesitated, because the ring of wives had gone quiet.

Then she held out her wrist with a bright, brittle smile.

I bent and breathed in.

It was my mother's perfume.

It came from a little shop on Elm Street in Pine Fork that had closed the year she died.

I had worn it for fifteen years. I'd bought the last of the stock.

"That's the one," said the woman with the gold chain behind me. "Stephanie wore it to every party."

"You asked me what it was," I said to Kendra.

"At the Fourth of July party. You said it was the nicest thing you'd ever smelled."

"So?"

"So I told you where I found it. I gave you half a bottle for your birthday."

The wives were starting to murmur.

"You wore it to my anniversary," I said. "You wore it on the couch."

"It's a perfume, Stephanie."

"You wore it so I'd walk past you at a party and not notice."

Her smile slipped.

"You couldn't have found it by accident," I said. "You wore it to watch."

"Say it, Kendra," Norman said. His voice was very low. "Is that true?"

She looked at her father, and something in her face finally broke.

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