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

pneumonia and passed so quickly. Gramma Grant’s ashes were shipped to Los Gatos, where they sat on a bookshelf.

Mal had done research the way she figured an investigative journalist would, but she knew it was meagre, at best. Her primary research nothing more than a bit of distracted googling and the purchase of a specialized geographic map book of Nova Scotia. And even with that, it took her forever but she found the side roads, the back roads, the obscure location. But the paper map was more helpful than her phone because on Google Maps it showed the lake but no road to it. When Mal called Flora to follow up on her interview, she couldn’t find out anything more because Flora was dead. Not from the coronavirus — she’d jumped off her balcony. “Depression from the sheltering in place,” the landlord said. “From social isolation.” But Mal found that hard to believe. When she’d spoken to Flora the week before she had sounded normal, worried but calm.

A few days later Mal received a package in the mail from Flora. With papers. Photos. She was shocked. She didn’t know why Flora had sent these to her. Was it the Nova Scotia connection? Surely she didn’t think Mal was a real journalist? And then the creepy phone call telling her to mind her own business.

It was Mal’s mother who had suggested she do a podcast in the first place. Her mother loved podcasts, especially On Being. That was the extent of it. Do that sort of thing, her mother said. At that point in Mal’s life, she had published some short stories in impressive journals, although she had dropped out of the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She had published a few art photos. She had a nervous breakdown. And she had a podcast. But no one took her seriously. Well, she didn’t take herself seriously. This trip was supposed to change everything.

Mal took a photo of the ruins of the lodge, now a pile of scorched rock, from the mammoth fireplace, she supposed. There was a fresh path through the ruins; brush pushed back, grasses trampled down. Sweat crept out over her skin, her bamboo T-shirt sticking to her flesh. She was far from her car parked out on the road by the trail. The tourist information clerk in Middleton, where she had pulled off the highway and stopped to use the restroom, had said there was the odd black bear and coyote, but they wouldn’t be out in the day. He told her to sing and talk on the trail if she was worried. Mal had only noticed how anxious she was when she realized she had stopped singing a pop song and had unconsciously switched to an old hymn Gramma Grant had taught her. Mal thought about the envelope she had found just before she left California. On the landing outside the door to her apartment over her mother’s garage. Malmuria typed in the centre, old-school. More from Flora? But inside there was one piece of paper with one sentence typed. Mind your own business. We’re watching you. Someone knew where she lived. That was all Mal needed to finalize her plans to go to Nova Scotia, to get out of Dodge, as her father would have said. But this was Nova Scotia. This was the north. She should be safe here. The Atlantic Bubble, they once called it during the pandemic.

Rustling, this time at the edge of the woods on the south side of the clearing. Mal turned around. A crackling of branches, the swishing of leaves, as something, or someone, made its way to the edge of the forest. Mal waited for more deer to come out, but the sound stopped. All was silent except for the wind picking up now, rippling over the water and whispering through the meadow near the side of the beach. She kept her eyes on the far side of the forest to the north. The Canada geese began honking urgently, then flapping their wings as the family lifted off Mercy Lake and circled in the sky. Had someone been on the other side of the clearing the whole time, watching her? Mal turned and headed back into the woodland, her skin covered in goosebumps, hurrying on the trail to her car.

She came barrelling out of the trees, panting from her mad dash. She leaned on the hood of her rental car to catch her breath. There was no wind here and the sun had moved around in the sky. As Mal opened the car door, the faint smell of cigarette smoke curled in through her nostrils. There was a butt in the dirt right by the driver’s-side door, as if someone had been leaning against it smoking, and then had crushed the cigarette butt with a heavy shoe, ashes mixing with the powdery dirt.

A Chorus of Frogs.

Now

Stella ambled beside Dianne under the lovely afternoon sky. She was confused. The morning felt a week ago. Summer afternoons evaporated one’s sense of time, Stella thought, and not just for people like her and Dianne. No one was safe from the bewitchment of a summer afternoon. As they walked, Dianne mumbled on about the beach and the moon, how many butterflies were about this August, and then her voice faded away, as though she were just a cricket in the afternoon meadow.

Stella still held the postcard in her sweaty hand, and when she glanced at it she could hear a faint whispering.

Wish you were here. But don’t worry because I’ll be visiting soon. Just like I said I would. When the boat can’t come to the sea, the sea will come to the shore. Love, your long-lost friend, Cynthia.

That unforgettable handwriting, calligraphy in the black ink of a fountain pen. Handwriting like a birthmark.

No date on the card. Why was Cynthia coming? It had been years. So many years. She had said to hide. Silence