The smell wasn’t in Maya’s room either. Her air smelled of lavender laundry soap and the sterile silicone of unused feeding tubes.
It existed only here, in the dead space between their rooms.
The Vance home was an old Craftsman that had undergone a massive, high-end renovation eighteen months ago, just before the twins were born. The hallway walls were clad in fresh plaster, finished with matte-white paint. Between the two nurseries ran a narrow architectural dead zone—what builders often call a chase, an enclosed cavity designed to hide plumbing vents, ductwork, and electrical conduits running from the basement to the attic.
I walked back down the hallway, keeping my steps light so I wouldn’t alert Julian and Clara downstairs. They were exhausted, frayed down to their nerve endings. Clara had spent the last two months weeping into phone consultations with pediatric metabolic clinics in Boston and Baltimore; Julian had taken unpaid family medical leave, his eyes hollowed out by fear and sleeplessness. The last thing they needed was a nurse chasing shadows, manufacturing false hopes out of an odor that might just be a lingering coat of interior primer.
