The scent of coffee woke her. Tess turned from her side to her back and lay dozing with
the homey, comforting smell.
How many years had it been since she’d woken to the scent of coffee already brewing?
When she’d lived in her grandfather’s house with its high ceilings and tiled foyer, she would come down the arching staircase in the mornings to find her grandfather already behind a huge plate of eggs or hotcakes, the newspaper open, and the coffee already poured.
Miss Bette, the housekeeper, would have set the table with the everyday dishes, the ones with the little violets around the edges. Flowers would have depended on the season, but they would always be there, jonquils or roses or mums in the blue porcelain vase that had been her great-grandmother’s.
There would have been the quiet whoosh of Trooper’s tail, her grandfather’s old golden retriever, as he sat beneath the table hoping for a windfall.
Those had been the mornings of her youth—steady, secure, and familiar—of her young womanhood, just as her grandfather had been the strong central figure in her life.
Sacred Sins
_____________
The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, probably more so than any of our other senses.
_____________
Stan bent down over her, close enough that she could smell the simple department-store aftershave he wore.
She recognized it and, on a wave of nostalgia, remembered her mother's driver had worn it, too.
For no other reason, her sense of trust in him was confirmed.
Night Moves