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.
One deeper, slow and open-mouthed. One softer, almost delicate, with a little catch on the exhale.
The human mind is strange in the seconds before it accepts a fact that will change everything. Mine became very quiet. Not peaceful. Not calm. Quiet the way a room goes quiet after glass breaks.
I stepped forward.
The living room opened to my left. The TV showed some nature documentary, a glacier calving silently because the volume was low and the captions were on. Blue light rolled across the couch, the coffee table, the woven rug I had saved for three months to buy, the framed wedding photo on the shelf where Caleb and I smiled under an arch of white roses in Cincinnati five years earlier.
And there they were.
Caleb Hartwell, my husband, slept on our couch with his head tipped back and his mouth slightly open. His dark hair was messy in the way I used to love because it made him look younger, less guarded. His right arm was curved across his chest like a cradle. Curled into that arm, cheek pressed to his shoulder, was Tessa Riley from next door.
Our neighbor.
My friend, or what passed for one.