The smell of a safe room

I am not a believer by trade. For fifty years I trusted what I could measure. So I understand if you roll your eyes at this part. I would have.

On the floor that night, a smell came into the room that had no business being there. Rose, and talcum, and a third note I have never had a word for. My grandmother’s perfume. She had been dead fourteen years.

In the novel it is one paragraph. In my life it is the hinge everything else turns on. This is the part people ask me about most, so let me tell it straight.