The Scent of Rain (2 page)

As they spoke, random tourists applauded from the sidewalk below, where the limo waited. Rather than point out the obvious, Daphne just waved. They probably thought she and Sophie had just gotten married anyway.

“Call Arnaud and ask for your job back,” Sophie said.

“Not an option. Arnaud said if I left the perfumery, he wouldn't save a spot for me. He was so mad at me.” She looked across the park at the Fairmont Hotel. “Look, there's another bride. Her groom showed up.”

“Daphne!” Sophie's expression lightened and she looked back up toward the church. “Oh, there's your dad.”

Daphne turned to see her father standing on the church steps, blinking wildly, cupping a hand over his eyes and searching for her. A dark shame washed over her, and she ran back up the steps to be swallowed up in his embrace. “I'm sorry, Daddy.”

He patted the back of her head. “It's not important now. I want you to take the car and go home and get your things. You'll just start your job in Dayton early. Your mother and I will clean up this mess. Leave it to us.”

Her head spun. “But I want to go back to Paris. Sophie thinks I should ask Arnaud—”

Her father released her. “You'll go to your new job in Dayton. That will prove to your boss in Paris that you can follow through on something. In the meantime, I will sue that kid for everything he owns.”

“Daddy, don't.” She backed away, still wanting to defend Mark and find a reasonable explanation for his absence. “He doesn't own anything anyway.”

Her father lifted something from his tuxedo pocket, and it glistened in the sunlight. A key chain. She waited for an explanation.

“The keys to your new house.”

“My new house?”

“In Dayton. It was to be your wedding present. Mark went to Dayton two weeks ago to finalize the details. He gave me the keys so I could present them to you at the reception.” He raked his stubby fingers through his gray hair—a monument to his long work hours. He looked as if he'd aged a year in the past day.

Daphne watched the keys jangle but made no effort to reach for them. She didn't want a house in Dayton, Ohio. She didn't want anything in Dayton, Ohio. She wanted Paris. Perfumery. Mark.
In that order?
She wasn't sure.

“I want to go back to Paris,” she repeated. “I want to be a professional ‘nose' again. I only took the formulation job to be with Mark.” She looked at her feet. She just admitted she'd been pathetic enough to take a job she didn't want for a man. A man who cared so little about her he didn't even give her a reason for leaving. Talk about casting pearls before swine.

Still, she wanted to cling to the idea that he was the man she loved. Mark was the one thing that would finally have been hers alone. She'd counted on him to take the sting out of her lonely childhood. With hindsight, that felt like the dumbest belief system she'd ever embraced. But when she thought of Mark's eyes and the way they looked at her, she knew she'd do it all over again.

“You're not going back to Paris,” her father said. “Take them!” He shook the keys. “You have a job in Dayton, and you need a place to live. Now stop living in your dream world and get out of here. The guests will be out soon.” He jutted his chin toward the limo.

A fresh wave of shame washed over her. It was a natural response. She'd never measure up. Maybe Mark's behavior only confirmed what her father had thought all along—that something just wasn't quite right about Daphne.

“No offense, Mr. Sweeten, but Daphne will live where she wants to live.” Sophie snatched the keys from his outstretched hand, placed her other hand in the small of Daphne's back, and guided her firmly down the steps toward the limousine.

“Sophie, isn't part of being a therapist letting people take responsibility for their own lives?”

“Just get in the car, Daphne.”

“I'm only doing what's best,” her father called after them.

Daphne did as she was told and climbed into the car with her fluted gown shoved from behind by Sophie, who then ran around the other side and climbed in beside her. From behind the darkened windows of the limo, Daphne felt detached from the scene playing out above her. The people filing out of the church with shock and awe on their faces. The other bridesmaids milling about on the steps. On some level she was enjoying the spectacle. Like a guest at her own funeral.

“Other people just get married. Nothing happens. Their daddies walk them down the aisle and send them off in majestic triumph.” She smelled the soiled leather of the aged limousine and knew the latest scent of failure.

The driver didn't ask her where they wanted to go; he just headed toward the bay. Sophie rapped on the window that separated them from him, and it slowly came down. “Where exactly are we going, Mr. Driver?”

“Tony,” the man said, his brown eyes twinkling in the rearview mirror. “My name is Tony. I'm going to the Embarcadero. I thought you'd enjoy the fresh air.”

Daphne looked at Sophie. “He knows I've been dumped.”

“Of course he does. You're in the limo with your maid of honor and no groom. There's no shame in this, Daphne.”

The driver kept talking. “First I thought about the Palace of Fine Arts, but there will be too many tourists there on a Saturday. I think what our bride needs is peace.”

“I'm not a bride,” Daphne said. “I just play one on random Saturdays in June.” She looked at Sophie. “If I ever choose to be humiliated again, remind me to pick a weekday. Fewer crowds.”

“You should powder your nose. It's red.”

Daphne shrugged. “I'm a bride without a groom; do you think anyone is going to look at my nose?”

“Looking good is the best revenge, and that gown is sheer perfection. You have a reputation to uphold for the designer.”

“I don't want revenge,” Daphne said. “I just want to know what happened. Maybe Mark is lying in a coma somewhere and can't get to me.”

“Oh, Mark is brain-dead all right, but I can assure you, he's perfectly alive somewhere. Otherwise, his family would have been at the church.”

Daphne pouted. She crossed her arms and touched the soft silk of the embroidered flowers on her bodice. “If I want to live in a fairy tale today, I think I should be allowed.”

“I agree,” Sophie said.

At the edge of the Embarcadero, a quiet portion of San Francisco's bay front, Tony pulled into a parking lot and turned toward them. “You both look beautiful. Go out and enjoy the day.” He turned around, draping his arm over the front seat. “You're not the first bride I've seen left at the altar, and you won't be the last. But you are the prettiest, so go out and revel in your future without this guy. He'll never do better.”

The stranger's words made her smile, but suddenly she shook her head and grabbed Sophie's leg. “We have to go to the reception. The cologne I made for wedding favors for the guys. I need the bottles back to send to Arnaud so he'll remember that I'm worthy of the position he offered me once.”

She didn't dare say the real reason. She was afraid Mark would get his hands on the bottles and claim he'd created the scent. If they were both going to be in Dayton working at the same company, that would be awkward enough. But if he tried to take credit for her work, her grace would officially run out for Mark Goodsmith.

“Your parents will grab them,” Sophie said. “Let's go get some air.”

Daphne tried to feel Sophie's sense of calm, but Mark was a chemist and had most of her formula. “What if—” But she didn't want Sophie to know it was even a fear.

“What if, what?”

“Nothing.”

Tony opened their door, and Daphne felt the rush of wind off the bay hit her with its murky, foul scent. She searched for motivation to get out of the car. When she failed to move, Sophie opened her own door and tugged at her arm. “Let's go. Air, remember?”

“I'd rather have chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate, and I wouldn't even care if it left little dark spots all over my dress.”

“Yes, you would. We're selling that baby on PreOwned WeddingDresses.com, and it's going to buy me a trip to Dayton.” Sophie hesitated. “If you go there, I mean. Come on, we're getting air.” She breathed in deeply. “Ah, that is so refreshing!”

Sophie was the epitome of sweetness and light, with a side of control issues. Something like this could never happen to her, because the singing birds that flew around her head like a happy halo would never allow it. Her warm and compassionate disposition drew people to her like fresh honey, but cross one of her friends and you would rue the day. That was the side dish of control that apparently came with her degree in psychology.

Sophie was engaged.
Her
fiancé loved her unconditionally. At least it seemed that way from the outside, and even though Mark asked Daphne to marry him before Gary asked Sophie, it felt as though Gary and Sophie had been first. Daphne could just smell things. Her lost relationship was just one more way the friends were traveling in disparate directions.

“What if you catch whatever bad-luck disease I have? Do you ever worry about that, hanging out with me?”

“What?” Sophie yelled over the wind off the bay.

“Nothing.” What did it matter? Everyone would avoid contamination soon enough when she was quarantined to Dayton, Ohio.

They stood under the grand silver structure of the Bay Bridge. Daphne worried that a turbulent wind might catch her gown and cause her to take flight over the concrete barrier, tossing her into the choppy surf. The sight of the immense silver structure and the historic yellow streetcar on its rails, along with the embrace of the gusting wind, lifted her spirits. She was good at being alone in the world. Maybe she was meant to be alone.

“It's beautiful here.” Sophie came up beside her and leaned over the concrete wall to see the surf slapping into the barrier below. “You forget, when you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. You take it for granted.”

“I don't,” Daphne said. “I was thankful for every day in France and Switzerland. I'm thankful for every day here. But what if I can't feel that way in Dayton? Is that why God is sending me there?”

“He's not sending you there. You don't have to go.”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“Stay here. Open up your own perfumery.”

“I love how you believe I can do anything I set my mind to.”

“Because you can.”

“I can't stay here. I've brought shame on my parents. My mother will never let me hear the end of it, and my father will remind me daily what it cost him. Dayton will be fine until I can get back to Europe.”

“But formulating—chemistry and analyzing data—there's no art in that.” Sophie's lip rose. “You hate formulating.”

“I don't hate it. It's just not my calling. I was meant to make the world smell better.” She held down her hair from a rogue gust of wind.

“No, Daph. You hate it.”

“It's temporary. I'll be fine.” The sea lions barked in the distance. “Hear that? I wonder what new sights and sounds—and smells, of course—await me in Dayton.”

“Maybe you could wait a few days to make a decision. You don't have to leave town because your parents' society friends will gossip. Come stay with me on the Peninsula.”

“Nope. There will be fewer distractions in Dayton. I'll be able to think. Plan.”

“And if Mark shows up to work?”

Maybe a tiny part of her wanted to go to Dayton for that very reason. Just a sliver of her. “I gave up the Holy Grail of perfumer jobs for love.”

“We all do crazy things for love. Who was it who said it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”

“Someone who ended up alone.”

“That's precisely why I don't want you in Dayton. You'll be alone.”

“I'm good at being alone. Maybe too good. I thought giving up my dream was sacrificial and beautiful. Now it seems ignorant and based on one too many chick flicks. I gave up my dream job for a tool.”

“Well, you didn't know then that he was a tool.”

“How is it I didn't sniff Mark out? How is it
you
didn't figure him out? With all that Stanford schooling under your belt, you'd think you'd have some insight.”

“I'm going to put him under the category of sociopath— he's so adept at charm skills that he flew under our radar. And sociopaths don't have empathy, so anything you feel for him now is wasted on the likes of him.”

“This is a fresh diagnosis.”

“It makes me feel better, all right?”

“I thought I was the luckiest girl alive because Mark wanted to marry me.”

“So did he. Think you were the luckiest woman in the world for getting to marry him, I mean.”

Daphne stared across the choppy water and pondered what life would look like without Mark Goodsmith by her side. Tomorrow she would allow herself to feel the full depth of the day's events and book her one-way ticket to the Midwest. Without a doubt she'd be the talk of her parents' social circle for years to come; crushing failure was always a favorite topic among the city's elite. But she could rejoice over one thing: she'd be in Dayton, Ohio, far out of ear's reach. It wasn't exactly Paris, but it wasn't San Francisco either. That alone was cause for rejoicing.