New to Mercy? Start here with the first chapter
Previous Chapter: On a Tuesday
Isla rapped loudly on Kim’s kitchen door, and Kim, seeing her silhouette, yelled, “Come in!”
She was buttering toast for the kids at the table. The counter was cluttered with dirty dishes and there was a livid smear of raspberry jam on the floor. Kim was in a bathrobe with her hair everywhere, but though everything else about her said, “harried,” her face said, “serene.”
Isla strode in and dropped a scrap of paper in front of Kim, pinning it there with her index finger for emphasis, then threw herself down into a chair.
“What’s this?” Kim said.
“THAT is my new address.”
“What?”
“Yeah, that’s my new address.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve moved.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
Kim stopped buttering and looked up. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have helped you. I don’t understand how you’ve kept it a secret.” Kim looked a smidge hurt.
“Ah, well . . . That was easy. I kept it a secret because I didn’t know until last night.”
“What?!” Kim set her knife down right in the middle of the stick of butter and put a hand on her hip, eyes bugging out.
“I met Danny for supper and he put all this paperwork in front of me, said he’d sold our house and bought another and had movers in all day. Done, sir, done.”
“Didn’t he need you to sign anything?”
“Nope. The old house was in his name, of course, since he was there long before he knew me. The new one is in his name, too.” She let out a long sigh.
“Well . . . well, congratulations.” Kim smiled optimistically.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not happy.”
“Would you be? Would you want that kind of decision made without your input?”
“No, I really wouldn’t.” Kim shook her head.
“Exactly. And the killer is, he thinks he’s done something great. He meant for it to be this amazing gift or something.” Isla scrunched a napkin in her fist and threw it in the trash can, then noticed Clara and Miles looking at her out of the corners of their eyes. “Hey, guys. It’s ok. I’ve got a new house!” They looked at each other doubtfully.
“Do you like the house at least?” Kim asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“But do you?” Kim poured Clara a glass of milk.
“Thankfully. It’s actually that one on Main Street that I said was my dream house.”
“Isla, that’s wonderful!” Isla looked at her dourly, and Kim added, “But I see your point.”
“It gets worse. There’s a big garage and workshop underneath, and he buys the house thinking he’s going to reopen the shop down there! Right in the middle of a residential area, right in the middle of the historical district! I mean, the shop is the whole friggin’ reason that he decided we needed to move in the first place, and now he still can’t do it!”
Kim looked at the clock. “Time for the bus,” she said to the kids, relieved since Isla seemed about to erupt. She spent a few minutes fussing over them—hair, coats, backpacks, lunches. When they were gone and waiting by the road, she found Isla had lost her fire and was slumped by the table.
“I married the wrong person, Kim. I married the worst person for me. I’m in charge of helping businesses get along with the city, and he’s the most impossible case imaginable.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Her face showed hurt for her friend and she gave her a quick side hug, then began to clear the table, looking thoughtful.
“What? What is it? Please tell me you’re not on his side.”
“It’s not that; I totally see why you’re so upset. But I just . . . I just keep thinking about how before you married Danny, you were like the strongest critic of the zoning laws ever.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think of them; they’re still there and they’ll still keep us from a kind of important income stream.”
“Yeah, but . . . I mean, you talked of going to bat for businesses, trying to get laws changed. If you’ve had a change of heart, I mean . . . it’s kind of bad timing. Danny married someone who agreed with him about stuff like this. He could be . . . well, a smidge confused.”
Isla didn’t disagree; she couldn’t. Kim had forced a thing into focus that Isla didn’t want to see: that despite her theories and lectures about the ills and injustices of zoning laws, she didn’t want a greasy garage in the backyard of her dream house, that she didn’t want a tacky sign in her front yard, and she didn’t want drama at work. She now lived on the ¼-mile strip of street in town preserved as classic and charming small-town America and she wanted it preserved. She wouldn’t fight to destroy it. Suddenly she knew this was why these policies had not changed and wouldn’t, and she found herself uncomfortably on both sides of the issue, leaning towards the side she believed was less legitimate. She felt an urge to go to work and bury her head in papers for a few hours.
“Look at the time.”
“I’m sorry, Isla. I’m really sorry about all this. At least you like the house?”
“Yes.” Isla sullenly gave her friend a shoulder hug. “See you.”
“I just wanted to make her happy. I was so sure we were finally going to be happy.” Danny was working side by side with Dave on a little demo at the investment house, swinging his hammer with extra vigor as he recounted how Isla had reacted to his gift. “I was finally getting it right; she loved that house! How could she not be happy? Ever since all the trouble started with the garage, I felt completely powerless and I thought it would finally be fixed. She stole that from me, Dave, do you understand? She stole it.”
“How . . . exactly did she steal it?” Dave asked.
Danny stared at him, stunned. “How? By not being happy. By saying I should have asked her permission.”
“Did she say that, though?”
“Might as well have. She said we should have decided together.”
Dave was quiet while he eased a piece of fake wood paneling from the wall, then said, “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll open the garage in the basement, just like I said I would.”
“Ah.”
“What do you mean, ‘Ah’?”
“Then you’re back where you started, right?” Dave tossed the panel on top of a growing pile of debris.
“At least Isla has a house she likes, even if she’s not happy about it. And I’m not ‘backing into the road.’” Danny shook his head scornfully. “So that’s progress.”
Dave shrugged. “I guess. But this can’t go on forever.”
“So you don’t think I can beat City Hall, ever?”
“I’m not sure. The way you’ve been doing it doesn’t seem to have gotten you very far, that’s all I know. And if beating City Hall means beating your wife . . . I mean, is it worth it?”
Danny worked out a hush-hush arrangement with some of his best former customers, long-running clients to whom he felt safe explaining the situation. “Your car can be here between 10 and 3:30, that’s it. It’s gotta be gone. If you don’t come for it, at 3:30 I’m driving it to the library and you can pick it up in their parking lot.” He booked one or two cars a day, depending on the job, occasionally squeezing in an oil change here or there. Isla would come home from work and, if he wasn’t working at the rental house, would find him lying on the couch, playing Assassin’s Creed, and shake her head and sigh. Sometimes she would helpfully email him a job listing during the day, but she rarely pushed the issue. Her silence on the subject bothered him a little; did she expect nothing more from him?
It couldn’t go on forever. There was a near miss as the weather started to turn, when Isla stayed home sick from work and Danny couldn’t get in touch with Chester Perkins to cancel his appointment. Danny was waiting when Chester pulled in, glancing nervously up at the bedroom window. Leaning casually in over the steering wheel, he whispered tensely to Chester, “I’ll call you to reschedule. I’ll explain later. You’ll have to leave.”
Poor rheumy-eyed Chester was confused as he slowly threw his big old land yacht into reverse, but no one else knew how to work on the monster like Danny. He’d bring his business back.
“Who was that?” Isla startled him when he came in, sitting at the table with a steaming mug, medicinal tea and sugar packets strewn untidily around her. Her voice was thick from the virus she was fighting.
“Chester Perkins.” Danny thought it prudent to include as much truth as possible in his excuses.
“Who?”
“Guy whose car I . . . used to work on. He was hoping I could . . . help him get it fixed. You know . . . if I knew someone who could fix it.”
“He can’t find a mechanic by himself?”
“It’s kind of an unusual car,” Danny said, a touch defensively. But Isla’s head was in a fog and she didn’t ask any more questions, just left the room with her mug, bathrobe tie dragging behind her.
It was late fall when he slid out from under a car to find her standing there. Isla was no longer mad about the house, because you can’t stay mad forever. Oh, the house still stood between them, casting a shadow on their every interaction. It changed how she looked at him, and not in the adoring manner he had hoped for. It wasn’t a happy home, but it was a quiet one, and occasionally they even smiled at each other. Not, however, when Isla saw him now, working on a car.
“This isn’t your car.”
“No.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“I’m fixing it.”
“For a friend?”
“You might say that.”
Isla sighed and sat on the bottom step. “Ugh, Danny, why do you have to do this to me?”
“Gonna tattle on me?”
Isla was silent, thinking. A chilly fall breeze was wafting through the open garage door and lifting a stray curl on her forehead, putting it down again, over and over. Finally, she stood up slowly, shook her head a couple of times, and went back in the house.
Why didn’t he feel better?
Chapter 43: Nothing Had Happened
Copyright 2025 Jennie Robertson