Chapter 5

Aya’s POV

“Box two fourteen?” said the teller. “That box hasn’t been opened in twelve years.”

“That’s right.”

“You have the key?”

I set it on the marble counter. My hand wasn’t steady. Beside me, Liron shifted her weight and kept her arms crossed, glaring at the ceiling as if daring the security cameras to try their luck.

It was ten o’clock the next morning. The old Puget Building on Second Avenue is a granite bank with a brass revolving door, high painted ceilings, and floors that echo like a church. It smelled of polish and dust and paper, a smell I loved. I have never in my life been so afraid of a smell.

The teller studied a screen. She was young, with a nose ring and kind eyes. “Rivers. Hannah. Renewed annually, paid in advance through the year twenty thirty.” She glanced up. “It looks like your mother set up a trust. The rent’s covered.”

Fourteen years. She’d paid for fourteen years of silence, and I hadn’t known.

“Right this way.”

The vault was a cold gray room lined with steel drawers. A guard unlocked the outer gate and left us. The teller used her own key, then mine, and drew out a long, flat metal box, and set it on a small table under a lamp.

“Take your time,” she said, and went out.

Liron put a hand on my back. “Ready?”

“No.”

“Do it anyway.”

I lifted the lid.

Inside lay a brown envelope. A black leather notebook, worn at the corners, tied with a ribbon. A small amber bottle, capped in red wax. And a photograph, face down.

I stopped breathing.

The envelope was addressed in slanting blue ink that I’d know anywhere.

Aya.

My mother’s hand.

I opened it with my nails. Two sheets of thin paper, folded in three. A faint smell came off them, so faint I might have imagined it. Orange blossom. Warm skin. The kind of soap she used in the morning.

I sat down on the stool. My knees had stopped working.

My darling Aya,

If you are reading this, then I am not there, and I am sorry. I am so sorry, my heart. I always meant to see you grow up. I wanted to see the woman you turned into.

I am going to tell you the truth, because I have run out of time and you deserve it.

Six months ago, I found out that Elliot Sterling has been selling a perfume I made with a friend as if it were his own. Neroli Dusk. It was ours. Mine and Daniel’s. We built it in a rented lab with a borrowed still, for two years, and when it was done, Elliot took the formula and paid Daniel with a check that bounced.

I told him I would take it to a lawyer.

That night, Diane sent me a gift. A bottle of the iris perfume you adore, wrapped in silk. She said it was an apology. I have been wearing it for three days.

I have a headache, Aya. My heart is doing a strange thing. I think I know why.

If I am wrong, burn this. If I am right, be careful. Do not eat what she offers. Do not wear what she gives. I have kept a bottle of the perfume, sealed, for you. Someone will know what to do with it.

The notebook is the formula. It is yours. It is the only thing I have to leave you.

You were the best thing I ever made. Never forget.

Your mother, always, Hannah

I read it twice. The words swam.

Someone was making a sound, low and cracked. It was me.

“Aya.” Liron’s arms were around me. “Aya, oh baby. Come here.”

“She knew,” I whispered. “She knew, Liron. She sat there and she knew.”

“I know.”

“Diane killed her.”

“We don’t know.”

“She wrote it. She wrote it down.”

“Then we’ll prove it.” Liron’s voice shook, but her hands were firm. “Look at me. We’ll prove it.”

I took a long, ragged breath. I wiped my face with my sleeve. Then I reached into the box and picked up the amber bottle.

It was small. Thirty milliliters. The red wax was intact, stamped with my mother’s thumbprint. I held it up to the light. A pale gold liquid swirled inside.

“What are you doing?” said Liron.

“I’m a nose.”

“You can’t open it.”

“I have to.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“It’s fourteen years old. It’s not dangerous in a bottle.” I broke the wax with my thumbnail. I slid the stopper out, an inch, and held the neck under my nose, and closed my eyes.

White iris. Cool and powdery, like frost on a window. Dry cedar. A sweet base of musk. I knew it. It was the perfume I made for Diane Sterling when I was seventeen. It was the first thing anyone had ever paid me for.

But there was more.

It was tiny. It hid under the iris like a splinter under skin. A green, bitter, faintly almond edge, and a note like crushed stems, so sharp and wrong that my whole body went cold.

Oleander.

I’d smelled it before. Two days ago, in a penthouse, at the cuff of Diane’s sleeve.

I put the bottle down very gently.

“Liron,” I said. My voice was steady. It shocked me. “It’s in the oil. She put oleander in her own perfume. My mother wore it for three days.”

“Oleander’s poison.”

“It stops the heart.”

“And it looks like a heart attack.”

“Cardiac arrest,” I said. “Natural causes.”

Neither of us said a word.

I turned the photograph face up.

A man and a woman, in white lab coats, at a workbench crowded with glass. The woman was my mother, young, laughing, with her sleeves rolled and her hair tied in a red scarf. She was holding up a bottle to the light. The man beside her was tall and dark-haired, with a wide grin and a pair of goggles pushed back on his forehead. He had his arm around her shoulders.

On the back, in her writing, Danny and me, the day we finished it. D.B.

I stared at his face.

I knew nothing about him. But a small, strange, unreasonable feeling crept up my spine, as if I’d seen the shape of that jaw before.

I slid everything into my bag. The notebook. The photo. The letter. The bottle, wrapped in my scarf. My hands didn’t shake. A part of me had turned very quiet, and very cold, and very clear.

“Let’s go,” I said.

~

The lobby was empty when we came out.

Almost.

Two men in dark suits stood by the revolving door, at a careless angle, hands folded. One of them was the man who’d carried me down a hotel corridor three nights ago. I knew him by his aftershave. Cheap, sweet, and heavy with musk.

Liron stopped dead.

“Aya,” she breathed.

“I see them.”

“Is there another exit?”

“Back stairs.”

“Then we...”

“Going somewhere?” said a light voice.

She stepped out from behind a marble pillar in a pale blue coat, with her hair in soft curls and a leather clutch tucked under one arm. Her lips were pink. Her eyes were clear and calm and cold.

Ilana Sterling smiled at me.

“Hello, sister,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I had you followed.”

“Get out of my way.”

“I don’t think so.” She glanced at the bag on my shoulder. “That’s Mama Hannah’s, isn’t it? Daddy’s been looking for that for years. It’s very naughty of you to have taken it.”

“It’s mine.”

“It’s the property of Sterling Fragrance House.” She held out a hand. “The formula. The letter. All of it. Hand it over, and I’ll tell the men to be gentle.”

“You drugged me.”

“I did nothing of the kind.”

“I have it on video.”

The smile flickered. Only for a second. “Don’t be silly.”

“I have you at the bar with a vial in your hand.” My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it. “I have you on the phone with your mother saying, It’s done. It’s on a drive, Ilana. It’s in a safe place. And if anything happens to me, it goes to every newspaper in the state.”

She didn’t move.

Then, very slowly, her smile widened. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.

“Oh, Aya,” she said gently. “You still think it’s about you.”

She leaned in close, so close I could smell mint and bitter chalk, and whispered in my ear.

“It’s about the baby.”

I stopped breathing.

“Mum’s PI is very good,” Ilana said. “He follows you everywhere. He saw you at the pharmacy last night. Folic acid, darling.” She drew back, blinking sweetly. “Congratulations, darling. I do hope you have a very long life.”

She nodded to the men.

They stepped forward.