The Scent of Rain (13 page)

“Yes, I have hobbies,” she said, annoyed. “I like to make perfumes.”

“Well, that won't be easy if your nose isn't working.”

“You think?”

He started scribbling on his prescription pad. “This is for steroid spray. Come back and see me in a week if you don't have your sense of smell by then. We'll run further tests.” He stopped writing. “Are there any toxins you may have inhaled? I'm not a fan of at-home chemistry.”

“I'm a chemist!” she protested. “Not a kid with a chemistry set.”

“Were you working with any solvents? Something that might be considered toxic?”

“Only if you count my ex-fiancé.” She took the prescription.

“Pay Katy at the front.” He stood and then gazed at her hard. “Do you want me to fix that lip while you're here?”

She covered her mouth with her fingertips. “My lip?”

“It's larger on one side.” He shrugged. “If it doesn't bother you, it's no big deal.” He handed her a mirror.

“Well, it bugs me now.” She'd never noticed that her upper lip was fuller on one side than it was on the other, but now it was all she saw when she looked at her face. She wondered if that had something to do with Mark leaving. Maybe he didn't want his kids born with disfigured lips. “You can fix it?”

“A little filler and you'll be as good as new.”

It was scary how quickly Dr. Seema had a syringe in his hand. Almost as if he had itchy fingers to get started on her. She fretted for about a second, but then thought of her warped lip. Maybe fixing it would make her other problems disappear. Maybe she'd been subconsciously freaking out about her lip, and her anxiety transferred to her sense of smell to get her attention.

“Will it hurt?”

“This is numbing gel. I'm barely going to use any, so you'll be back to normal soon.” He rubbed her lip with the gel.

At the prick of the needle, she exclaimed something guttural and Gollum-like. “Are you kidding me? What's that numbing gel? Toothpaste?”

“Stop moving your lips or this will turn out badly.”

As far as she was concerned, it was already turning out badly.

“Now I have to add a little to the other side to even it out. Don't move.”

“No,” she protested. “You are not sticking that syringe anywhere near my lip again. I'm not in a position to make great decisions, and I think this proves it.”

“You can't go with your lip half done.”

Daphne grabbed her sweater and her handbag and made her way to the door. Dr. Seema followed her with the syringe in his hand.

Katy sat in her mousy state the same way they'd left her. The girl wasn't reading. She wasn't working on a computer. She was simply sitting behind the desk waiting for life to happen to her. Maybe she was onto something.

“I need to pay for my visit.”

Katy looked up, and Daphne noticed the girl's eyebrows were in the middle of her forehead, inching toward her hairline. Though she wore no makeup whatsoever, she'd clearly come into contact with some of Dr. Frankenstein's magic syringes. “Is he finished with you?” Katy asked as she stared at Daphne's lip.

“I'm done. What's my total?”

Katy exchanged a glance with the doctor and came up with an amount. An amount that said Daphne would not be staying in a hotel long. Whether she wanted to face her love nest or she didn't, that was all she'd be able to afford after tonight.

Rather than call the cab, she decided to walk back to the hotel. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Sophie.

“Daphne? Where are you? I didn't want to call you because I didn't know how long you'd be at work. Did you get your smell back?”

She shook her head.

“Daphne?”

“No,” she blubbered. “Now my wip is bollen.”

“Your what?”

“My wip is bollen. Filler. Filler in my bip.”

“Filler in your bip?”

“My bip! My bip! Under my bose!”

“Your lip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why is your lip swollen?”

Daphne grew frustrated at the translation troubles. “Mark? Did anybun hear from Mark?”

“No, sweetie. Did you?”

“No.”

“How was work? Do they know you can't smell anything?”

“No.”

“I prayed for you this morning. Prayed you'd have it back before you got there. Can you taste anything? It didn't seem to stop you from downing that wedding cake.”

“I had something to prove.”

“That sounded better. Maybe your lip is going down.”

“I want to come home.”

“I know you do, but Arnaud hasn't even had time to receive Volatility! It will be better if you continue to work on the packaging there. Arnaud will know he's not your only option. When I sent the package, I told him you were pursuing other avenues.”

“What would I do bitout you?”

“You'd survive. Listen, Gary bought me a plane ticket to come see you. He says it's pointless to sit here worrying about everything when I can just go to Ohio and see for myself that everything is lovely.”

“You'd do that bor me?”

“I'd do anything for you. Just like you'd do anything for me. That's what friends are for, Daphne.”

“What if I don't have a job when you get here?”

“Then we'll play the whole time. God's in control, right?”

“Right now, it beels like PongeBob is in control.”

“That's just because you're in the midst of a trial. We all have trials.”

“But usually when one thing is going badly, something else is going well. I'm missing what's going right.”

“You have me. I'm here.”

“You're there. I'm here.”

“I'll be there soon enough, and Gary has friends looking into where Mark might be. Did Gibraltar hear from him?”

“He fudged his résumé, so they never hired him.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me? Okay, just sit tight and do your best until your sense of smell comes back. It has to return soon.”

Just hearing Sophie say that, Daphne felt her sense would return. Sophie embraced happy thoughts like a cartoon princess, and somehow they manifested before her eyes. If anyone could prayerfully will the good life into being, it was Sophie.

“I hope so.”

A truck roared past her on the road and honked a few times.

“Where are you?”

“I'm walking back to my hotel.”

“In a city you don't know?”

“I'm on the outskirts of the city. More like a country road.”

“That's even worse!”

Daphne looked around her at the barren road and the grass growing alongside it and came to the same conclusion Sophie had. “I'm almost there. I have to call my parents anyway. That should do till I'm back at the hotel.”

“Call a taxi! And why aren't you at the house anyway?”

“I'm not ready to see it.”

“That's just weird. You're acting weird.”

“I know. You're not going to diagnose me with anything, are you?”

“I should. Your parents aren't home, by the way. Your dad's in Europe on business and your mother left on a cruise.”

“How—”

“Just get off the phone with me and call a taxi. I don't want to hear you were found in a ditch somewhere.”

“I can see the hotel from here.” She wanted to keep Sophie on the line. “No one's heard from Mark? Not even his parents?”

“If you spend one more second worrying about him, I'm going to scream. He's fine. He's probably basking in the sun somewhere on someone else's dime. Does that make you feel more for him?”

“I just don't understand, Sophie. What did I ever do to him to deserve this? He knew how my parents are about money, yet he let them spend all that money on the wedding he wasn't going to show up for. He let my dad put a down payment on a house for us.”

“You're trying to make sense out of something that makes no sense. Would you call a taxi? I can't stop worrying about you in the middle of nowhere.”

“I'm fine.”

“Maybe you should come home. You can stay with me until you figure out what's next.”

“I promised my new boss I'd stay until Christmas.”

“Daph! It's okay to take care of yourself first. Why do you always do that? You're in Dayton for one day, and you're already putting someone else's needs before your own!”

“He's a single father.”

“That's not your problem.”

“He just needs me until Christmas for the shareholders' meeting, then I can go. In return, he's going to help me package Volatility! Maybe by then Arnaud will be ready to take me back.”

“I called around for some churches in the area. I sent them to your Gmail address. You need to get a posse there if you plan to stay six months. I'm planning to see you soon, though.”

“I'm at the hotel.”

“Thank goodness. How's your lip?”

She touched her mouth, and it still felt huge. And painful. “Swollen. Even if I had my sense of smell, I couldn't sniff around this lip. What was I thinking?”

“At least you can talk now. Just forget this, Daphne. When Mark couldn't get a job in Paris, you made all these concessions, and now you have nothing to show for it. I'm worried you're going to do the same thing for this single father. He's not your problem. This company isn't your problem. Come home and regroup. You can get a job anywhere in the world.”

“I
could have
gotten a job anywhere in the world. Past tense. I don't know why yet, but I feel like I'm supposed to be here. It's only been a day, and I see my piece of the puzzle fitting. At least for now.”

The problem was, could she trust that inner calling after all she'd been through? It wasn't just that Mark left her at the altar; it was that he'd
left
her, completely and utterly. No phone call. No good-bye. No closure of any kind. Just left her to imagine the worst about herself. Everyone could tell her that his actions said more about him than they did about her, but being abandoned was not unfamiliar to her. There was some message in his action that she felt compelled to understand if she wanted to correct it.

After she hung up, she entered her hotel room and dropped her handbag on the bed. She stared into the mirror over the dresser and clasped her eyes shut, only to open them and see shiny, reddish-pink lips the size of a child's inflatable toy on her face. She couldn't help but giggle.

“Why do you have to be the sacrificial lamb?” she asked her reflection. “Jesus did that already. He doesn't need your help!”

How would she go to work the next day? She looked as if she were wearing fake wax lips from Halloween. Well, if she'd hoped to take the attention off her nose, she'd certainly succeeded. Oddly, her mind went to Jesse and what he'd think. He already thought her slightly off-balance for adding sugar to her soup.

She opened her suitcase and pulled out her Bible. She had all the scent passages marked, including the ultimate image of humility that inspired her.
“Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”

How could God take away her most precious gift? It made her wonder if she'd done something wrong, something she wasn't aware of that harmed another. But God wanted good for her, for all of His children, so she kept looking for the lesson in her affliction. God had His reasons. Reasons she might never understand, but still she ruminated on possibilities.

The perfume market, with its glut in the marketplace, was oversaturated. She didn't want to miss the message this time. She'd ride God's wave that had brought her to Dayton. For the next six months anyway. She'd rely on her chemistry background to get her through. Her nose might not work, but her science skills did. Chances were, Gibraltar Industries would never know she couldn't tell the difference between an iris and a rose.

Chapter 8

J
esse watched as Daphne entered the office, once again weighted down by her suitcases and what appeared to be a weapon of some kind. Her ruby lips looked as if they'd been stung by a thousand bees in the night, and he knew he couldn't let her enter household's department meeting without asking a few questions.

“Have a seat. You really didn't go to your new house yet?”

She shook her head. “That involves all sorts of things. Groceries. Turning the heat on, making sure there's furniture. I'm just not ready for that yet. I want to focus on the task at hand. Our laundry detergent. I have a good feeling about this, Jesse.”