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

“Sestina.”) Why was Stella still thinking about her mother? Someone else seemed to be in her head, thinking about Catriona Sprague. Stella’s breath quickened. She made fists. All these changes, to her medication, to the schedule, holidays and appointments, were mixing everything up, the changes sending out sound waves, rattling her head, a persistent vibration spreading through her mind, down through her skeleton. She stamped her feet and shook her legs, trying to get the tremors out of her body.

“Stella’s out of sorts. Right out of sorts. Nurse Calvin was at her again about God knows what. That thing loves to spread suffering the way a farmer loves spreading cow shit on a field.”

“Well, she’ll be retiring soon.”

“Can’t be soon enough.”

Stella, light travels faster than sound, which explains why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. (Who said that? Her father. William. Why is Stella hearing him?)

The bottle was empty, now just a decoration, no perfume in it. Stella closed her eyes and tried to visualize an empty shell and put Nurse Calvin and her plans in it. But no shell appeared. There was no beach, no ocean in her mind, the watery floor covered in closed seashells, all the bad things hidden away, guarded by the seahorses. But in her mind’s eye she saw Isaiah standing at the top of the beach near Periwinkle, the cottage that had been in their family, a craftsman bungalow, with an oversized stone chimney and covered front verandah to sit and look out at the sea. He was leaning on a driftwood cane. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t angry. He was looking out over the bay. But what was he looking at? Stella didn’t know. She kept her eyes closed as Dianne and Grace talked.

“So, Dianne, the last time we talked you were telling me about your grandmother.”

“Yes, I was born in her house up on the Mountain. On the Flying Squirrel Road. My mother was only fourteen when I was born and she died having me.”

“That’s very sad, Dianne.”

“Yes, it is sad. My cousin Sorcha, she’s got the family photo albums and you can see pictures of my mother when she was a girl. And there are a few with me in them.”

Dianne let out a wheezy boom of a laugh and then drummed on her chest a few times. Stella heard the smack of the heel of her hand on her sternum. Dianne had a pot-belly but she was overall thin, and the bone sounded hollow. Stella knew she found it hard to be without a cigarette. But Dianne was nothing if not a good sport.

“My grandmother raised me for a spell. She was a widow. Her husband was a fisherman and he drowned out in the bay as so many of them did, fishing when a sudden storm come up. They didn’t have the weather forecasting, you see, not like they got now, although how reliable it is, I always wonder. Right, Stella?”

Stella shrugged her shoulders but she didn’t turn around. She looked at the antique wall map. She knew the Flying Squirrel Road, which ran for miles across the North Mountain until it ended at the Lonely Road, far west on the mountain near Cape Blomidon. She saw where the road ran — where Periwinkle cottage was in Lupin Cove; the island her grandmother came from.

Kingsport was on the map, perched on the Minas Basin, so different from the rocky basalt cliffs and beaches along the Bay of Fundy. In Kingsport, low tide revealed miles of red mud and sand, the tide that turned came in so quickly, where you could stand in bare feet on the sand and the wavelets would flow over your toes, surrounding you in a matter of minutes. She turned and saw both Dianne and Grace were looking at her. She had gone to Kingsport with Sorcha and Dianne. Sorcha was much older now and rarely drove. And she was in the hospital, Stella remembered Nurse Calvin saying. Sorcha was sick. But Dianne didn’t know. Did Grace know? Sorcha was a nurse and never married, living with her father until he died and then staying on in the house, the only child. Stella went to the bookshelves on the wall. She touched the crystal perfume bottle. Isaiah.

Dianne continued. “Nana never gave me any advice. It was more she gave me her philosophies. When my grandfather died my grandmother kept doing the things they did together, trapping and skinning racoons and the things he did alone. It always seemed he was there with her but I just couldn’t see him. Who knows? Maybe he was.

“Nana was odd about words. Be careful what you speak out loud, Dianne. Maybe she thought talking about it would make it happen. All I have now are the words and stories she left me with.”

“Do you think that’s wise advice?”

“What now?”

“To be careful what you say?”

“’Course I do, Gracie. Words have power. Silence has power. Ain’t nothing we do that don’t have some sort a power over what comes next. I remember we once come across a raccoon, hit by a car in the night, lying on the dirt shoulder, moving a bit. It was dawn, the light was blue and gold. It was gravely struck. And in the middle of the road were three of its kits, all crushed by a car. They were dead but not the mamma. Nana had a shovel in the back of the truck and she moved those babies and put them in the ditch. She left me in the truck right in the road. There wasn’t any traffic of course, it being the country. And then she turned the truck around and we went home and she got her gun.

“When we came back Nana put the gun to the creature’s head. Then she looked out over the flowers for an instant and closed her eyes. Her finger was easy on the trigger. This was before she had that tremor. And in