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

families had been ashamed to have a relative so poor or disabled that they ended up in the poor farm. There were records in the municipal offices, he said, the records from the poor farm — every farm had had to report to the superintendent of the poor. It sounded evil and inhumane, he said, but it was an improvement over the insane and poor being abandoned on islands with lighthouse keepers, or being left to beg and die in the streets. No one remembered the poor farms, he said, not anymore. After the war, when social services and social welfare had been introduced, a federal old age pension, government security, the poor farms were only remembered by historians and the elderly.

Queen Anne’s lace quivered in the breeze. Queen Anne’s lace was not a native flower. Stella remembered this. Something she learned from Granny Scotia. Tall blue flowers grew next to the Queen Anne’s lace. The shells in Stella’s mind rattled. The seahorses let out a few bubbles. She put her fingers to her temples and pressed.

Blue petals. Borage. This was a flower that grew in Granny Scotia’s garden. Ego borago, gaudia semper ago.

I, borage, always bring courage.

“Did you say something, Stella? No, course you didn’t.” Dianne swivelled her head around, her eyes narrowed and shining. She jerked upright. “Dozed off there for a bit. Getting old, Stella, my girl. Must almost be time to head back. Got to see Gracie. Let’s go. I need a cuppa tea.”

She may have spoken out loud. Stella didn’t know. She licked her lips, watching Dianne as she studied Stella’s face, and then looked at the postcard in one of Stella’s hands and the flowers in her other. Stella didn’t realize she had picked them. “Ain’t those pretty.”

Why hadn’t Isaiah come to visit? Was it that she just couldn’t remember? He usually called on Sunday nights. Had he called this week? Which day was it? Stella had a cramp in her belly, a dull ache that might have been with her for many years. She wasn’t sure. This afternoon Stella’s head was full of whispers and rustles. Bits of memory seeping out now, since the postcard — lurking danger and lost threads.

They headed to the back door of the Jericho Centre, stopping at the resident garden where Dianne snapped off some sprigs of rosemary and put them in Stella’s hand with the blue borage.

After supper, Dianne and Stella walked out behind the centre to the bench to watch the late-summer sunset. Dianne wasn’t wearing her teeth and she talked with the cigarette in her mouth, puffing and speaking at the same time. She had a flashlight. She had never brought one before. This was new, Stella noted.

“God, I miss them spring peepers. I do love a chorus of frogs.”

Stella stood up. She took the postcard out of her pocket.

“Just put that away, Stellie.”

Stella turned the postcard over and back, over and back, forty times, hoping this might break the spell, what she couldn’t remember. It was as if this was a calling card from her past, a cryptic calling card sent to her from a childhood she had tried to forget. It was her one success. She tore the postcard into two. And then into pieces, hurrying over to the river, ignoring Dianne’s protests as she threw the pieces into the water. Stella didn’t want to remember. She wanted things how they had been for years now, the quiet familiarity of days and seasons.

There was a snap in the line of trees to the west. The sun had set and a thick mauve dusk coated all. Dianne beamed the flashlight on the evergreens. She moved the light in a circle, all around, and then on the ground by Stella’s feet. They listened. Silence.

“What’s on your leg?” Dianne bent over and shone the light on the inside of Stella’s calf where a thin trickle of blood ran all the way down into her white sock in her running shoe. Dianne took a hanky from her pocket and, with great effort, leaned over and wiped at Stella’s skin. “Let’s go back and get you cleaned up. Bit late in life for the monthlies to start up again. Don’t you worry, Stellie. Old Dianne is keeping guard, just as she promised.”

Back at the centre most of the other residents were in bed, doors closed. The duty nurse was marking something in a book. Stella didn’t recognize her and hurried off towards the bathroom, Dianne following. Dianne stood outside the bathroom while Stella wiped herself with toilet paper. This bleeding was bizarre. Her underwear was ruined, covered in a red-wine-coloured stain. It was thick and sticky. Dianne opened the door and took the underpants. “I’ll get rid of them, don’t you worry.”

Later, as Stella lay in her bed, there was a quiet sound at the edges of her mind, a sniffing, a dog in the distance on the scent of something alive, hidden. Through the open window the crickets still sang and a night bird called out. Far off, a lone coyote howled and then the rest of the pack joined in.

The Original Stella.

Then

Stella asks again:

“Why is the door locked? Why won’t you tell me, Dad?”

“Well . . . that was my sister’s room.”

“Your sister?”

Stella wonders if she knew he had a sister, a memory taken by the car accident. But she knows there were no photographs of a sister, no mention of an aunt.

“She was thirteen when she died.”

“But you always said you were an only child. Just like me.”

Stella and her father stand in the hallway. He looks at the shiny hardwood floor as though it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

“Dad, come on. Why didn’t you tell me about her? Did Mom know?”

“Of course your mother knew, Stella. What kind of a question is that?”

Stella thinks it’s a reasonable question. Her mother never mentioned an aunt. Her father has hardly talked about his past and now he’s thrust them