The Spice Rack Arrangement

Rob was twenty-four years old and three months into his new life on the island, which so far consisted of a rented room above the chowder place, a piano he couldn't afford yet, and a temporary job minding the lighthouse gift shop while the owner went to Halifax to visit her sister. The pay was barely anything, but barely anything beat nothing, and the shop came with a cot in the back room, which was more than his last three months in the city had given him.

It was a grey Tuesday in late October and the shop had been empty for two hours when the bell over the door rattled and a woman walked in shaking rain off a green coat. She was twenty-five, maybe, dark hair flattened by the weather, and she looked up at him and stopped dead in the doorway with her hand still on the door.

"Rob?" she said. "Rob Greer?"

He squinted at her, and then it landed, the music theory class at the community college, five years ago, the woman two seats over who could hear a key change before the teacher announced it. "Rochelle," he said. "Rochelle Duffy. Wow, okay, hi!"

"Hi yourself." She came the rest of the way in and dripped on the welcome mat, and he noticed she was carrying the same kind of canvas satchel she'd carried back then, older now and stained at one corner. "I cannot believe this. I come to audit a fish processing company's books on a rock in the Atlantic and the gift shop guy turns out to be somebody I actually know."

"Small world," Rob said, "and then an even smaller island, apparently. What brings you to the counter today, ma'am, magnets or mugs?"

She laughed, the same laugh he remembered, quick and low, and asked what he was even doing here, and he told her the short version while he rang up a magnet for a couple from the ferry queue, that the music thing had stalled out, that he'd come east for a fresh start and taken this job because the lighthouse keeper's sister knew somebody who knew his aunt. She told him her version in return, that she was an independent auditor now, that she'd finished most of the fish plant work and was supposed to be on the four o'clock ferry back to the mainland, except the ferry workers had walked out that morning and the boat was tied up at the dock with a padlock on it.

"Nobody knows how long," she said, dropping onto the stool by the register like her legs had given out on her. "The guy at the dock said three days, the woman at the dock said a week, and the inn only has four rooms and a fishing crew got there before I did. So here I am, auditing a gift shop I guess, since it's the only building with a light on."

"Well," Rob said, and then he heard himself say the thing before his brain could vote on it, "the back room here has a cot and a space heater, and honestly I'd welcome the company. The owner said I could use it, and it's got a lock on the door, and it beats sleeping on a bench in the ferry terminal."

She looked at him for a moment and he could see her doing the math, stranger's back room versus ferry terminal bench, and then she shrugged like it was easy. "You went to music theory with me, that's a reference check. Yeah, okay, thank you. I'll pay you half the rate of the inn."

"Don't be dumb," he said. "You can buy the coffee."

So that was how they ended up shut in a lighthouse gift shop during a ferry strike, with rain coming sideways off the water and the space heater ticking away in the corner of the back room. Rob dug out the spare kettle and the box of instant soup the owner kept under the sink, and Rochelle sat on the cot with her satchel and typed up her audit notes on a laptop, and for a couple of hours it was companionable in a way he hadn't expected, just two people in their twenties not bothering to fill every silence.

It was after seven, fully dark, when she wandered out front to use the little bathroom off the shop and came back stopped at the counter instead, leaning over it with her chin in her hand.

"Okay, hold on," she said, tapping the thing on the back wall behind the till. It was a spice rack, eight little drawers of oak and walnut, with a carved wave running across the top and each drawer front inlaid with a different wood. "Is this for sale? Because this is the nicest thing in here by a mile, and I'm including the lighthouse itself."

"Oh, that!" Rob felt his ears go warm, which was ridiculous. "That's mine, actually. I made it."

"You made it," she repeated, and came around the counter to look closer, running her finger along the wave. "Rob. This is hand cut joinery. The drawers slide like butter, look, no wobble at all. Where did this even come from?"

"I started woodworking about two years ago, when the music money dried up. My uncle had a shop in his garage and I just kind of moved in and never left. It started as a joke, my aunt wanted a spice rack, and I got a little obsessive about it." He shrugged, embarrassed and pleased at the same time. "That one was practice for a dresser I never finished."

"This is practice?" She opened two of the little drawers and closed them, listening to the soft click. "I want you to know I am something of a spice rack connoisseur, my mother collected them, the kitchen had eleven, and this is the best one I have ever put my hands on. What else did you make? Do you have photos, pieces, anything?"

And that was the part where Rob's stomach did a small, complicated drop, because the honest answer was yes, there was one finished piece on the island with him right now, and it was under the cot in the back room, and it was not the kind of thing you showed somebody from a music theory class without a conversation first.

"There's one more," he said slowly. "It's under my cot. It's a chest, a little trunk, and it's, uh, it's locked, because it's kind of personal."

Rochelle looked at him, and to her credit she didn't push, she just tilted her head and said, "Personal how? Like letters from an ex personal, or like you're hiding a body personal?"

"Neither," he said, and laughed, and the laugh came out shakier than he meant. "It's more like, okay, you know how I said the music thing stalled? There's another thing I do, or want to do, and I brought most of it with me in that trunk, and I've never really shown anybody. Can I think about it until tomorrow? It's been a long day and you're stranded and I don't want to lead with the weird part."

She set down the drawer she'd been opening and sat back on her heels, and her face was not the face he'd been afraid of, it was curious and a little soft at the edges. "Rob," she said, "we're stuck on this island for at least three days, there's no ferry, and I have nowhere to be. Lead with whatever part you want, whenever you want."

Rob slept badly on the floor of the front room, which was fine, because he had slept badly most nights for three months anyway, and at least this time he had a specific reason, a locked trunk sitting six feet from where a woman he'd liked five years ago was breathing softly on his cot. He got up twice in the night and checked the combination lock, which was dumb, because nobody was going to pick through his things on an island with eleven people on it in late October, but he did it anyway, standing in the dark with his thumb on the cold brass.

In the morning the rain had moved off and the sky was the color of an old t-shirt, grey but not mean about it, and Rochelle was up before him, sitting at the counter with two paper cups from the coffee machine by the door and her laptop open. She pushed one cup across when he shuffled out and said, "I explored. Your gift shop has three kinds of fudge, none of it fresh, and a book about shipwrecks I already finished half of. Also your coffee machine is a war crime."

"That's the good machine," Rob said, sitting on the stool across from her. "The good one's in Halifax with the owner."

"So," she said, and closed the laptop halfway, which he would learn was a thing she did when she was clearing space for a real conversation. "About that trunk."

He looked at his coffee for a while, and she let him look, which he appreciated, and then he said, "Okay. Yeah. Give me a second and I'll show you." He went into the back room and crouched under the cot and pulled the trunk out, and it was heavier than he remembered it being every single time he lifted it, and he carried it out front and set it on the counter between them like a guy setting down a fish he couldn't decide whether to be proud of.

The lock was a little brass thing with a three digit combination, and his hands were not steady doing it, which annoyed him, and then the lid was open and there it all was, in the grey morning light, everything he had packed and carried onto a ferry three months ago like it was normal luggage. Three dresses folded in tissue paper, a black one, a green one, a red one with sleeves to the elbow. Two pairs of heels, one of them real leather that he'd