The Collector of Dying Breaths (35 page)

The dead do not have to be reanimated; they live as long as someone who loved them is alive.

Chapter 49

THE PRESENT

MANY MONTHS LATER

PARIS, FRANCE

Something woke Jac. Reaching out, she felt the space beside her. Cold. Empty. She listened. All was quiet. Opening her eyes, she peeked at the digital clock on her bedside table: half past two. Sliding out of the bed, she shrugged into her robe, padded out of the bedroom and walked down the hall toward the nursery.

More than three centuries of children had spent their infancies here in the L’Etoile mansion on the Rue des Saints-Pères. Dozens of them, including her grandfather, her father and her brother.

And now, Jac thought, her son would grow up here. Perhaps, like the generations before him, he too would fall in love with the world of fragrance and choose to devote his life to creating beautiful scents and evocative dreams.

The door was opened. Brahms played on the baby’s music player. The only illumination came from a night-light teddy bear. But it was enough for Jac to see by.

Griffin had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, his ten-week-old son on his chest. The baby wasn’t sleeping, though. His eyes were wide open as he watched Jac approach. On his little face was a peaceful, almost bemused expression. As if he were saying, So much for
him
putting
me
back to sleep.

Jac reached down and lifted her son out of her husband’s arms. The baby snuggled into the embrace with a contented murmur. Holding him close to her breast, Jac walked over to the window seat and sat down.

Rocking the baby to the music, she looked out on the moonlit garden. From here she could see the maze and follow the path to its center, where she and her brother used to play hide-and-seek among the fragrant boxwoods. At the maze’s heart sat two stone sphinxes Robbie had named Pain and Chocolat—after their favorite breakfast croissant. This is where she had finally scattered Robbie’s ashes and let his last breath float away in the breeze.

From here, Jac could see the glass doors to the workshop where her grandfather had created so many wonderful perfumes and where her father built the small perfumer’s organ for Jac and Robbie. Where they had played at being perfumers for hours, concocting impossible scents.

All the generations of L’Etoiles had left their mark here. Here, all around Jac, was history, passion and life and death. It was part of her and now it was part of her son.

She rocked the baby in her arms. This tiny baby who she had so much love for already. Across the room, she glanced at his father. Griffin had been right. They’d had a destiny and a choice: to fear the future or learn from the past. To accept that not everything can be understood except this—except what she’d finally learned—that love was real. It hurt and was work and it failed sometimes, but Serge had shown her: it’s the most real thing we can experience and know.

Jac bent her head to her son’s. Her lips touched his fine brown hair that was just like his father’s. The baby had his father’s dark-blue eyes too. And his mouth was the same shape as Griffin’s.

But the baby’s smell . . . she inhaled it again . . .

Her brother’s ghost had not revisited Jac after she’d left the château. She’d waited for his presence to reappear, but after she’d felt that push out the door, she never sensed him again. He seemed to have abandoned her. And so she had been forced to mourn him and feel all the grief and sadness she’d avoided and finally accept that he was gone.

Until that night, in the hospital, the first time the nurse put her baby in her arms. Suddenly a warm golden glow filled the room. Jac knew it was Robbie. And in that embracing light, when she’d bent her head to kiss her infant son, she noticed something extraordinary.

It was impossible for a newborn to smell like anything but baby powder and mother’s milk. But her baby did. He smelled of the scent she and Robbie had made up when they were children, the Scent of Us Forever. Cinnamon, carnation, patchouli, a little pepper and some jasmine. Spicy, dark and mysterious, it was a treasure hunt of a scent full of the mischievousness of childhood.

Jac knew her long quest to understand reincarnation had finally ended. She no longer needed explanations or proof.

We don’t need a magical elixir to reanimate a dying breath and bring someone back to life. We don’t need meditation tools or ancient formulas or hypnosis. The secret, which is not so secret after all, is that the people who we love live on in our hearts, in the beat of our blood. The dead live as long as someone who loves them lives.

Her baby’s soul was alive with Robbie’s soul. Reincarnated with her brother’s love. With her mother’s and her grandparents’ love. Alive with the love of those who were gone and who she missed so very much.

And her baby’s soul was alive with the love of one person who was not gone at all but sat, still sleeping, in the rocking chair.

She looked over at Griffin.

Jac settled back and inhaled her baby’s smell once more. She would tell Griffin soon about the scent . . . wanted to share it with him . . . but for now it was her secret. Hers and Robbie’s.

Author’s Note

As with most of my work, there is a lot of fact mixed in with this fictional tale.

Officina Profumo–Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, one of the world’s oldest pharmacies, was founded in 1221 in Florence by the Dominican Friars who made herbal remedies and potions. The first “Eau de Cologne” has been attributed to the pharmacy’s 1500s citrus and bergamot scented water created for Catherine de Medici.

René le Florentin was indeed apprenticed at the monastery and there created scents and creams for the young Catherine de Medici. When the fourteen-year-old duchessina traveled to France to marry the prince, she took René with her. He and Catherine are credited with bringing perfume to their newly adopted country.

René’s perfume store in Paris was as described, and along with perfume he was credited with inventing creative poisons like the ones in the book, which his queen and her subjects used on their enemies.

Catherine de Medici, her aspirations, issues, superstitions, family, reliance on Cosimo Ruggieri and René le Florentin, her reign and the customs of her country are presented here as history portrays them.

Cosimo Ruggieri was suspected of all the nefarious activity René suspects him of in this novel.

There was in fact a secret passageway from Catherine’s room to René’s workshop, and their use of it was documented. Despite how much we know about their relationship, there is very little known about René le Florentin’s personal life. He is rumored to have fathered several children but was never married.

Isabeau is a fictional character, but there was a “flying squadron” of women who were trained spies for Catherine.

The history of perfume and the fragrance industry past and present is based on research, and I would like to thank Victoria Frolova for her invaluable help. It was she who introduced me to both momie and tutty—real ingredients used in the Renaissance.

While there is no Phoenix Foundation in New York City or anywhere, the work done there by Dr. Malachai Samuels was inspired by work done at the University of Virginia Medical Center by Dr. Ian Stevenson, who studied children with past-life memories for more than thirty years. Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist, continue Ian Stevenson’s work today.

As for the theory of the dying breaths: We don’t know where this concept originated or if anyone in the Renaissance suspected such a thing was possible. But it’s not a far stretch from the well-documented and centuries-old alchemical search for immortality to the breath concept.

We do know that in the twentieth century, automotive magnate Henry Ford and the great inventor Thomas Edison, who both believed in reincarnation, supported the idea that in death, the soul leaves the body with its last breath.

Edison’s dying breath, collected by his son, Charles, is in fact on display at the Edison Winter Home in Fort Myers, Florida.

Acknowledgments

My name is on the cover of this novel, but it takes a team to bring a book to life.

For the third time and with even more gratitude, thanks to my editor, Sarah Durand, who is truly an author’s dream, and to Judith Curr, whose support means the world to me.

To Lisa Scambira, Hilary Tinsman, Ben Lee, Daniella Wexler and everyone at Atria Books whose hands this book passed through—your hard work and creative thinking does not go unnoticed.

To my agent, Dan Conaway, who is truly my knight in shining armor, and everyone at Writers House—I am so proud to be on your roster.

I also want to thank the readers, booksellers and librarians everywhere who make all the work worthwhile.

And, as always, I’m very grateful to my family and friends, especially my father and Ellie, the Kulicks and Mara Gleckel. And most of all, Doug.

Also by M. J. Rose

FICTION

Seduction

The Book of Lost Fragrances

Lip Service

In Fidelity

Flesh Tones

Sheet Music

Lying in Bed

The Halo Effect

The Delilah Complex

The Venus Fix

The Reincarnationist

The Memoirist

The Hypnotist

NONFICTION

Buzz Your Book
(with Douglas Clegg)

What To Do Before Your Book Launch
(with Randy Susan Meyers)

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Melisse Shapiro

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First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rose, M. J. The collector of dying breaths : a novel of suspense / M. J. Rose.—First Atria Books hardcover edition. pages cm. 1. Paranormal fiction. I. Title. PS3568.O76386C66 2014 813'.54—dc23 2013041448

ISBN 978-1-4516-2153-2

ISBN 978-1-4516-2155-6 (ebook)