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Isla and Danny were about 25 minutes later than expected for supper because Dave had failed to stipulate that they’d moved to the yoga studio. Engrossed in her new relationship, Isla hadn’t been stopping by the studio as much either. If she had, she’d have seen a pile of Dave’s household goods neatly draped with a quilt in the corner and, at the right time of day, a bed made up in the changing room. Moving out of the apartment was Dave’s plan to get them into a house sooner. Kim had said, “This is silly; we’re friends now, we can let you crash here for a couple of months, rent-free.” But Dave knew the Bilodeaus needed the money, and, truthfully, maybe the newlyweds wanted a little space of their own. The first Isla had heard of it was when she was making a racket at Dave’s door, knocking and calling, and Kim had come out to redirect her. When Isla and Danny finally arrived for supper, Isla did not mince words about her concerns should Perry discover them.
“Perry has no interest in climbing these stairs any more than strictly necessary,” Dave assured her as he lit two candles on his desk, neatly draped with a white sheet. “As long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves, it’s fine.”
“It’s probably illegal.”
“I’ve done way more illegal things than this,” Lacey laughed, guilelessly.
“Illegal is illegal,” Isla countered.
“Hey, lady, you work for City Hall, not the cops, right?” Danny lightly redirected her, squeezing her shoulders in a loving warning.
“I got him this lease, though, my reputation hangs on it at least a little bit . . .”
“It’ll be fine,” Danny sounded dismissive, and Isla hated to be dismissed. But their relationship was still new enough for her to bite her tongue.
Lacey was wearing a ruffled apron as she took a formerly frozen lasagna from a toaster oven. Isla thought she couldn’t have looked more like a bizarre caricature of a 1950s sitcom housewife if she’d tried. Dave had set his desk with four mismatched place settings, with a vase of plastic flowers in the middle. It was one of the first cool nights of early autumn and a space heater was blasting close to the desk.
Conversation was a little strained as they ate the packaged pasta and a salad that had come in a bag.
“It must be hard not having a kitchen,” Isla suggested, as she watched in some confusion as health nut Dave placed the preservative-laced food in his mouth with apparent relish, even telling Lacey that it was “very nice.”
“Oh, it’s not bad. Everything I need to cook, I can cook right here.” She gestured towards a dorm fridge and Dave’s old coffee table that was serving as a counter space with the toaster oven and a boxy old microwave on top of it. “Of course, it’s annoying not having much of a freezer, but we just go down to the store when we need to.”
“Doesn’t Dave do any of the cooking?” The apron was a rippling red flag to Isla.
“He can cook even less than I can! I couldn’t believe all the food he used to eat raw!”
“Yes, but he ate it raw because . . .”
Dave shook his head at her, his face indicating that his old raw foods diet wasn’t worth mentioning, and she stopped. “Lacey is doing great,” he said. He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.
“Do you like cooking, Isla?” Lacey asked her.
“Not particularly, but I do a lot of it. If I left it to my mom, all we’d ever eat would be . . .” Isla looked at the lasagna in its pleated paper dish and hesitated, “uhhh . . . eggplant.”
“Eggplant? Yuck.” Lacey giggled.
“You’re telling me.”
Lacey made a kissing sound and a fat gray cat appeared. It hopped up into her lap and she stroked it with one hand while eating with the other.
“I wondered how you dealt with the rodents, especially eating up here all the time,” Danny said with interest.
“Smee has always been here,” Lacey smiled.
“That’s a feral cat?” Isla said, horrified.
“It’s a stray, I guess,” Dave clarified. “I don’t think she’d let us pet her if she was feral.”
“But you’ve adopted it? Taken it to the vet and spayed it and all that?”
“She’s adopted us,” Lacey smiled and kissed its head. Isla shuddered and changed the subject.
“Hey, I, uh, brought you a wedding present.” She took out a long, flat package. Dave and Lacey ripped off the paper.
“Wow,” said Lacey, “it’s a board!” She looked at Dave, and then at Isla. She was clearly trying to act excited but failing utterly. “What’s this . . . scribble?”
“So you download this app,” Isla showed them her phone, “and then scan the scribble—it’s a sound wave, actually—and it will play this.” Isla’s phone started playing Wagner’s “Wedding March.”
“Wow, that’s so weird,” Lacey said, laughing.
“Thank you, Isla,” Dave said, displaying the board across the top of the little fridge.
“Yeah, thank you! We didn’t get many presents, having such a small wedding. My mom brought this over, though.”
“She hadn’t seen her mom in five years,” Dave added.
“Yeah, it was really special.” Lacey held out a tiny angel made of beads. “See, this big bead is her body. It’s blue for my something blue. Of course, I didn’t have it on my wedding day, though. She said it was from my Grandma.”
“Oh, how nice. Will you get to see her soon?”
“No, she’s passed. When I was seven. I miss her so much.”
Isla had so many questions as she mentally tried to calculate how long Grandma had been gone and how likely it was that the angel had actually been intended as a someday wedding gift to Lacey. She started to say, “So it’s to remind you of your Grandma,” but what if Lacey insisted the gift had come from the other side, especially when it had clearly come from Oriental Trading?
“I wish I could have met her,” Dave said, squeezing her hand.
“You always say that.”
“And it’s always true.” They smiled at each other in a sticky way that made Isla recoil.
“She’s the reason I like angels so much, you know.” Lacey turned her attention back to Isla.
“Oh, do you?” Isla tried to sound interested.
“She collected them. Whenever I got goosebumps, she’d say there was an angel nearby. And now she’s an angel too. Look, I have goosebumps! Hi Grandma!” Isla rolled her eyes at Danny who merely winked in return as he stroked the cat. Isla took her hand out of his and leaned away, reaching into her purse for some hand sanitizer.
“How do you get her to stay?” he asked.
“Grandma? Oh, she just comes and goes when she wants.” Lacey answered.
Danny tried not to laugh. “No, I’m sorry I meant . . . I meant the cat. I have something of a rat problem at my rental house. I’ve been trying to get adopted by a barn cat but they’ve turned up their noses so far . . .”
“I don’t know. Like I said, she’s always been here. Even before Dave.”
“Oh? What was up here then?” Isla realized too late she should have told Danny more about Lacey before they came over. She didn’t know for a fact that Lacey had been squatting in the old mill, but she strongly suspected.
“Oh, I . . . well . . .”
“They don’t know how, Danny.” Isla said sharply. A look of annoyance crossed his face, but he dropped it.
“I almost forgot dessert!” Lacey stood up in a whirl of skirts and Isla noticed her high-heeled shoes. “We’re excited for winter so we can have ice cream.” She pointed to a small operational window behind the desk with a roof outside of it. “We can keep the food out there and won’t have to go to the store so often.”
“Well, that is . . . that is certainly something to look forward to,” Danny agreed as Lacey put Oreos on the table.
“Your friends are strange,” Danny said as the mill door closed behind them.
“Who, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson? Uh, yeah. But what’s this my friends business? You know them, too.”
“I mean, I know Dave a little but not like you do.”
“I don’t even know how much I know him now,” Isla said sadly as she climbed up into Danny’s truck.
Danny looked at Isla’s face in the light from a streetlamp and tried hard to read it. How much had she known Dave? What did this regret mean? When she reached over to take his hand after he put the car in gear, he wondered . . . had he just been a consolation prize?
Copyright 2025 Jennie Robertson
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