The Scent of Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

smelling. I’m a nose,” she said, but it had sounded a lot better in her head than aloud.
    â€œI have nose too. My cab doesn’t smell,” he said, obviously offended.
    â€œNo, your cab doesn’t smell. Nothing smells. I can’t smell anything.”
    He blinked several times in the rearview mirror before he pulled up to the curb. “We are here.”
    She stared up at the high-rise that housed Gibraltar Industries, and her first thought was of Mark. Would he be there? What would she say to him? He hadn’t called her since leaving her high and dry at the church four days earlier. Hadn’t left so much as a note, though he’d gone to the trouble to “unfriend” her on Facebook. The fact that he’d handed her father the keys to “their” house didn’t seem like a good omen.
    The cabdriver got out of the car, and she wondered if she’d made a mistake. She had come to Dayton because she had nowhere else to go, and a new environment sounded better than the pitying glances of friends and family. Healing would not come easily, but perhaps that’s why she’d been brought to this fair, flat city. At least that’s what Sophie claimed, and since Daphne had no better explanation for why her life had taken this turn, she went with her best friend’s logic.
    The taxi driver stood on the curb holding her two small polka-dot suitcases. She opened the door, handed him a wad of cash, and tried again to smell.
    â€œCrazy!” The driver rolled his eyes and scurried back into the car away from her. Men seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
    This is it. Your new life . Daphne wasn’t ready to see her new house. She’d gone straight to the office from the airport, lugging two suitcases, an archery bow, and other less visible but more significant baggage with her. Meeting Dayton without her sense of smell to guide her was like being the walking blind.
    She stared up at the building, which loomed over the city in its importance and made her feel even smaller. She pushed through the door, pulling her suitcases in one at a time. The interior boasted shiny granite walls in eighties colors of peach and green. Her heart sank. Somehow the building had looked more modern when she’d come with Mark for their interviews. Her stomach fluttered at the thought of him, and she silently hoped that he’d be here already and rush to tell her what a huge mistake he’d made. She closed her eyes and imagined all the smells she was missing: the rubber of industrial carpet, the formaldehyde on the modern birch chairs, the benzene from the rubber plants.
    People bustled around her, and she stood watching as if invisible. This is home now . She read the directory on the wall and reminded herself that Gibraltar was on the sixth and seventh floors. She stepped onto the elevator.
    At the third floor the door opened for a man in a gray pinstriped suit with lawyer written all over him. “You going on vacation?” he asked. “If so, you’re headed in the wrong direction. The exit is down. Wish I could go with you.”
    She shook her head. “Just arriving. Came straight from the airport. I’m starting a new job today.” Her enthusiastic over-sharing didn’t seem to spark any sort of interest in her fellow rider, and she retreated into silence. Like an overzealous bloodhound, she kept sniffing in each new space, hopeful. She got out on the sixth floor.
    Gibraltar’s offices were nothing special, like the offices of Givaudan, but then, Ohio wasn’t France. Then again, without a sense of smell, she wasn’t the woman they’d hired either. She looked about for any sign of humanity, but saw no one.
    â€œGod help me,” she whispered.
    â€œWell, you must be Daphne!”
    She startled at the sound of her name and turned to see a middle-aged woman with a dirty-blond bob and warm blue eyes. The woman wore a frumpy polyester