A black plastic bag rolled by, catching on the pillar of a rusted water fountain. She watched as the wind picked it up and tossed it toward the snow-covered beach. As her eyes followed the bag, her mind drifted back to twenty minutes ago when she’d gotten into a police vehicle and willingly walked away. How many times had she imagined the opposite? Being driven to an institution—a jail, a mental facility—where she’d be searched and hosed down and pumped full of nullifying substances. But, she’d walked free. And that was something. Perhaps, in some strange way, the pieces of her ruined life were falling into place to create a better mosaic. Maybe that was why she’d suggested talking in his car—to prove she could do it. Or, because she knew it was best to keep him at arm’s length. Hudson didn’t fit the bill for a cop any more than she did for an innocent photographer. He was a misfit, like her, and damn if she didn’t automatically like him a little for it.

But he was still a cop.

“Watermelon jollies,” said Grandpa Teddy.

Morgan turned, wondering if the statement was his dementia kicking in. “What?”

His eyes followed the same empty bag as it twirled and pitched. “Daisy. She smelled like watermelon jollies.”

Morgan smiled, remembering the crinkled yellow wrappers often strewn about her grandparents’ house when she was young. He was right. Her grandmother’s purse, even, smelled like artificial watermelon. After she quit smoking in the late ’90s, she sucked on hard candies instead. Her favorite was watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers.

“They say the thing you remember most about someone is their scent,” said Grandpa Teddy. “And it’s true. If I catch even the slightest whiff of anything watermelon…”

Morgan dared a glance at him. His eyes were teary. She knew if she mentioned it, he would blame it on the warm air blowing out of the vent.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Morgan,” he said, and she felt her own eyes burn. A teardrop raced down her cheek. She discreetly wiped it away with her sleeve. She nodded. Thanks was what she wanted to say, but her tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth.

Just like it had Saturday night, when she recalled the clang of the bells against the glass.

The rush of frigid air and the sound of his footsteps on the tile. She remembered the nausea that gripped her; could taste, again, the bile rising in her throat, feel her stomach lurching in response to the smell that he’d brought in with him.

“Spray paint,” she whispered.

“Pardon?”

“He smelled like spray paint,” she said, a little louder this time. “The perp at the gas station.”

“You sure? Not gasoline?”

Morgan shook her head, perhaps a bit too fervently. To an untrained olfactory, the scents of gasoline and aerosol might smell similar. But to her, the discrepancy was as stark as real sugar cookies and an artificially scented wax candle. “Aerosol,” she said again. “Spray paint. It was tacky, too. Like it hadn’t dried all that long ago.”