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

my mother says. That’s what’s valuable, or will be someday. My father’s the investor but my mother can sort of see the future, he says. That’s why he needs her to spend time with him. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to keep talking about my mother.”

They come around the corner of the house and Stella sees an old lady sitting on an old-fashioned lawn chair on the garden-level terrace at the side of the house. A sweet breeze brushes Stella’s face and shakes the tree branches. The sea is visible to the west from where Granny sits in the throne-like wicker chair under a wide faded awning. As Stella and Cynthia walk towards the old lady, Stella sees Granny Scotia’s summer dress is at once antique and classic, her silver hair in a perfect bun, pearl earrings in wrinkled lobes. Her hands covered in thick blue veins. She flutters her fingers at Stella, who flutters back as though she’s at a parade and Granny is on a float passing by.

Stella is enthralled with the trees.

Granny lets out a cackle. “Those, darling, are eastern white cedars. They can live to be three hundred years old. Arborvitae.”

“That’s Latin for ‘tree of life,’” Cynthia adds.

“Yes, Cinder, darling, it certainly is. Stella, dear heart. What a pleasure to have you here.”

Granny Scotia pushes herself up with her cane. “That over there is our herb garden, although it’s dreadfully neglected. It’s a bit harder for me to garden than it used to be. But see the borage, for courage, of which we will need plenty, an herb that also opens up the mind and eyes. The mint and lavender for purification, the rosemary for protection. We’ll show you how to pick it, to use it, won’t we, Cinder? And do you see those day lilies? We just planted those a few years ago. Stella d’oro, that’s their name. And those dandelions? They’re called the two-flowered Cynthia. If you want birds about, you better have flowers and berries. My grandmother used to say birds were messengers who could move through time.”

Granny gently pokes her cane at the flowers, as though they are listening.

“I know your uncle, Isaiah Settles, although I haven’t seen him in years. He’s an antique dealer way down east in the Valley. I’ve only met him on a few occasions. He’s bought a few pieces of furniture from me.”

“I don’t think my dad likes him . . . I mean . . . even knows him.”

Granny Scotia takes a step forward. “That doesn’t surprise me either.” She hugs Stella and then takes a slow step back, giving her the eye. “We are simply so delighted to finally have you in Seabury, Miss Stella Maris. Your grandmother was a dear, dear friend of mine. I’m sure your father told you that already. He’s probably filled you in on everything and hasn’t left us any stories at all to tell.”

Stella doesn’t say that he has hardly ever mentioned Seabury, let alone the Seaburys, his childhood or the people in it. She has a feeling the old lady probably already knows.

Jericho County Courthouse Museum.

Under the Arbor

.

Now

Mal felt much better after three days of sleep at the Fundy Waves Motel. Weak but much revived, her fever gone and her throat just a bit sore now, not raw. The last three days she had dreamed of Mercy Lake, standing at the edge of the water, the burned-out ruin of the building, of Flora and her stories of what had happened to her when she was fifteen. Mal had barely eaten and felt shaky, but she had a renewed conviction to at least see what she could uncover.

From what Flora had told her, what her mother had revealed, and the way her grandmother bristled at the very mention of the area, Mal had determined Mercy Lake was used as a secret retreat for a fellowship, some sort of offshoot of a sect, with the religion part dying away but other rituals remaining. Mal was still shocked by the connection between this shadowy group in the United States and the area of Nova Scotia her mother was from. And that this group they called Sodality had existed not just in the eighties but was generational, going back at least as far as the late eighteenth century, morphing to hide in the open of whatever society it existed in at the time.

Mal had invested too much to give up so easily. Maybe, if she uncovered something, she could contact a real investigative journalist, make sure the story got out into the world. She didn’t trust herself to be able to do the job that would need to be done. And it was probably her feverish imagination that had her thinking she was being followed. Yes, there’d been the smell of smoke, the cigarette butt, but maybe it had been some local, a sportsman out fishing or something, wondering why a rental car was parked on the road in the middle of nowhere. Anyone would wonder, right?

Moving forward, it was about being careful. She had two weeks left on her “retreat,” two weeks before she was supposed to fly home to Los Gatos — her mother would be back from Big Sur by then, wanting to compare notes. Going deep into the woods at Mercy Lake had been risky, and it wasn’t Mal’s courage that had propelled her. No, it was the sheer adrenaline of discovering what was hiding behind this company called Cineris International, what Sodality was, this exhilarating feeling that she was in a suspense story. That feeling was gone now, replaced by a sobering reality. Turing thirty had spiralled her into a life crisis and made her reckless. Mal understood now the need for caution and discretion. But in this sort of rural area, a brown-skinned woman asking questions — discretion wasn’t possible. Saying she was a podcaster . . . it wasn’t something most people around here would understand. It sounded made up.