Would you please add your general location such as city and state to help narrow down possibilities?

Would you add a photo taken from the side so that we can see how the leaves meet the stems?

thanks.

I'm in Southern Maine, 5b.

Side View:

Holly and Wax Myrtle, Ilex and Myrica are what it looks like to me as a place to start. I think we are in Maine with Sigrid.

I'm guessing Eastern Baccharis. Thanks for all your help.

I agree with bayberry

It turns out my mystery plant is a Fragrant Sumac. I saw a labeled one in a park, smelled the leaves and went home to discover mystery plant's leaves are fragrant and smell the same, as well as looking quite similar.

I don’t know Fragrant Sumac but doesn’t it have trifoliate leaves? Or do they appear as the plant grows older?

That's a really interesting point.

Morella pensylvanica

Yeah, my first thought was also bayberry as the leaves match and they have fragrant leaves/fruit.

Thank you for your insistence. Doing more Googling, I can see that the first images I saw were of the wrong type of bayberry, which is why I rejected that option. And, it explains how it volunteered --- every year, I try to grow natives from seed and rarely get any results. I probably reused an "empty" pot with soil when I seeded the Coneflower, and the bayberry seed got planted along with the coneflower and decided to sprout a year after I'd given up on it.

So, bayberry it is!

Thank you all.