The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

mother took her to. The walks on neighbourhood streets lined with brick houses. The gardens in the summer. She had always been home-schooled. Her mother had a horrible time in the public school system in Nova Scotia, where she was also from, but much further east. Her parents had met by chance in Boston where her mother was training as a nurse, finding an instant comfort in their shared childhood geography.

Stella’s father has talked about the Kirkbride hospital model, going on about the extraordinary Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, for most of the drive from the airport. Stella knows he’s pushing the silence away. He doesn’t enjoy the new, quiet Stella. Before the car accident, Stella was a chatty child, comfortable with both her parents and with meeting new people. Four months can change a person at this age. She might have a head injury, she may be marbled with trauma, as the doctor says, she may not remember the accident, and she may never remember it, but she does remember the past, life in Athens, the university town the Hocking River bends through.

From both parents Stella has inherited her brain, her high IQ. She always remembered what her mother told her to do when she was small, to put her problems in some sturdy shells, nothing fancy, and keep them tucked away in her mind until she felt ready and able to open them, to encounter what lived inside.

Stella’s father fiddles with the radio. “The Wall” by Pink Floyd blasts out. Fiddle, static, fiddle. Christopher Cross singing “Ride Like the Wind.” She cringes as her father tries to sing along, lost on some stage in his mind.

She rolls her eyes. Since the Horrible Accident she is not herself. So her father says. Gone is his sparkle of a child. She resembles her mother now, quiet. Like her mother was.

Stella feels like herself, to herself. This Stella appreciates how she is more like her mother. It keeps her mother alive. She is her mother’s daughter. The chatty girl her father keeps mentioning is a fantasy Stella. She can’t imagine ever being that girl again, the girl her father has her in competition with now.

Her father says her mother home-schooled her not because Stella was painfully shy but because Catriona was. Stella’s mother didn’t want to deal with teachers and other parents. Stella didn’t particularly enjoy other children, so it was fine with her. She didn’t feel left out. Her mother and she were a society unto themselves. The Stella who chattered away about flowers and birds, who danced around the room — this Stella was the dream Stella, as her mother now was a phantom mother. The accident was just over four months ago.

“Little Bear, I’m driving with a ghost,” Stella’s father says, looking out the windshield at the sky. At first she thinks he means her dead mother, but then Stella realizes he wants her to make small talk. Right now her silence frightens him.

“Mom couldn’t stand rock music.”

Her father slams on the rental car brakes and Stella lurches forward, the seat belt locking. In front of the car looms a buck with antlers, immobile. “Jesus Christ,” he exclaims. He turns the car lights off and the music blasts from the radio, the silhouette of this beast still in front of them. “I forgot about the deer.”

Stella’s heart seems to be beating in her head. She turns the radio off. She’s hyperventilating, and her neck is sore from where her head has hit the back of the seat. The dark shape on the road prances into the woods. Her father bangs his hands on the steering wheel, turns the car lights back on and starts driving again. He sighs. “Sorry, Stella. I got lost in my head.”

Silence sits again between them, silence holding Stella’s hand, a soft whisper of touch that soothes Stella’s ears, as much as the deep bruised twilight comforts her eyes.

There is a sign that says Mercy River and they drive over the bridge and into the village down the deserted Main Street with old-fashioned storefronts from a time Stella can’t place, but not the 1980 world they are in. It’s tiny compared to Athens, but in Athens there is no ocean for the Hocking River to empty into. Both places have winding rivers, though. The Mercy River flows into the inner bay, which empties into the outer bay, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The water is still and shiny in the moonlight, glittering black. “Did you ever hear about what lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?”

Stella shakes her head.

“A nervous wreck.” Her father bangs his hand on the steering wheel and laughs. Stella says nothing. “You know, you used to think I was the funniest guy alive.”

She lets the silence continue to speak for her.

“Your grandmother always called this the purple hour, Stella, when night has not fully revealed herself.” Her father reminisces as he drives through the downtown, then up the hill and to the left. A few more turns on the maze of residential streets until they pull into the driveway of an old house. It’s plain, medium sized, bigger than their house in Athens, but without a wide verandah at the front of the house looking out on the street. As her father drives in and parks, the front windows gleam.

They stand in the driveway with their bags, the two of them. She’s not sure what he’s waiting for. Stella is tired from the travel. She’s hopeful for a bed. Stella shivers and buttons up her yellow cashmere cardigan — it was her mother’s. An outdoor light casts a soft glow at the back of the house, the rest of the yard lost in darkness. Pebbles crunch under Stella’s feet as she walks closer to the door on the closed-in back storm porch. Her father looks startled, surprised to see his daughter approaching the door of his childhood home. He doesn’t move. “There’s a magnificent sugar maple in