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

the backyard. I used to climb it. I had a tree fort. And we had a swing on it too. Sure is cold. The temperature can drop down at night — but not always. The weather here is unpredictable.”

Stella knows how home to him was never truly in Athens. She knows home for him was never with her mother, or with her, his daughter. They were merely an island this restless man was stranded on. Stella looks up at the night sky while her father talks about the weather, while he stalls at moving them inside the house. It’s a sea of black now, winking stars in the north. She finds the Big Dipper and follows the pointer stars to Stella Polaris, the North Star. She lifts her arm up and with her finger traces the Little Dipper, the constellation her father calls Little Bear, Ursa Minor.

Stella jumps as her father puts his arm around her. He takes a deep breath and walks to the rickety screen door, opening it to the solid wooden door behind it. He opens this heavy inside door and beckons to Stella. He leans down and pulls a house key from underneath a wooden statue carving of a fisherman standing on a table to the left by another inner door, also with a screen door. Hat pegs dot the wall to the right, a sole small-brimmed straw hat hangs from one.

“We always kept the spare key here, Stella,” her father says. “Frank had the house cleaned and the beds made up. And fresh towels. It’s been years since anyone lived here. Now it’s just you and me.”

Stella’s father beckons to her from the kitchen doorway. “Come, Little Bear.” She takes his hand, holding her breath as she steps onto the linoleum floor, the old-fashioned kitchen cozy with soft lamplight. There is a note from Frank on the table with a colossal vase of daisies, roses and lilies. A welcome card for Stella, mauve flowers hand-painted in watercolour.

August 1980

Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here, Stella. I hope you like this card I’ve made for you. We’ve also left a bicycle for you in the garage.

Your new friend,

Cynthia

Her handwriting is not a normal teenaged girl’s writing. It’s calligraphy, perfectly sculpted letters, black ink on thick linen paper.

Stella’s father peers over her shoulder at the note. “Wait until you meet the Seaburys. Mrs. Seabury’s family descends from a noble clan in Ireland, the O’Clearys. Made it big here as shipbuilders and such. But time passes. They ran out of money. Aoifa was married off to Frank’s father in order to keep their mansion running . . . you’ll get to see it when you meet Cynthia because Frank says she’s living with her grandmother for the summer. She wants to be home-schooled, as you are.”

There is a faint scent of lemon and lavender veneering over a deeper smell of old wood and books. Homemade bread and strawberry jam and butter on the counter. Milk and juice in the fridge. A basket full of blueberries. The freezer is filled with meat loaves and casseroles and stews Stella assumes Sally Seabury and Old Mrs. Seabury, Frank’s mother, have made.

Down the hallway off the kitchen there is an old black rotary phone on a vintage phone table. The dim kitchen light falls halfway down the hall — beyond that, the hall stretches into darkness.

“You would have adored my mother. Morgana. That was her name. Did I ever tell you that?”

Stella shakes her head.

A garbled sound comes from her father’s mouth and dies, a stillborn word. He sniffs and rubs at his eyes. “I remember how light my mother was on the stairs. You could hardly hear her coming and then she’d be in the kitchen with her gentle smile.”

Her father had flown home when his father died, but not for the funeral. There was no funeral. He had come back to Seabury on his own. Stella wasn’t even born then. He had gone to the graveyard for his father’s burial. Her mother told her that her father had donated all of the clothing and much of the furniture to the Salvation Army. There are few personal touches in the house now.

Her father carries their suitcases upstairs and Stella follows him. She’s exhausted. There is a light on at the end of the hall in a room on the right where her father will sleep. Stella peeks into the room on her left. There is a white lamp by the side of the bed, a vase with a flower. Stella tries to open the door beside her room. She peeks through the keyhole and sees only darkness. For a moment she hears waves, as though she has a seashell to her ear, and can smell sharp sea water.

“Stella.”

She jumps and screams.

Stella’s father says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You need to get to bed.”

But Stella is wide awake now. “Why is this door locked?” She touches the wide wooden door casing.

He doesn’t say anything.

Boom, boom behind her eyes.

“Dad? What’s the deal with the door?”

“You need to get to bed,” he repeats.

The Feckless Sky.

Now

Mal stopped and held her breath. Another snap in the woods, a branch breaking. And then more. Mal was panting now, drooling. She wanted to run. To scream. To be back in Los Gatos in the apartment eating sour cream and onion ripple chips and watching Netflix. She closed her eyes. Opened them. Out from the woods came a herd of deer, first two adults emerging, then several fawns. Mal bent over. She vomited on her running shoes. She had never felt more alone. More of an idiot.

She’d told the man at the airport rental car desk that she was a journalist, the rental guy with a name tag on his shirt that said Ron. She had waited for him to look up from his computer and smirk. But he didn’t. He didn’t even look up. He just bobbed his head as he