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

“All the more reason to go to Nova Scotia to find my roots, Mom.” But Mal didn’t actually care about her roots. She wanted to figure out the mystery of Mercy Lake. When she researched Nova Scotia — the seascape, the lakes, the forests — it seemed welcoming. No massive forest fires. “Canada’s Ocean Playground,” they called it. Compared to California, it was a haven. Except for Mercy Lake. Mal knew her mother would have worried if she’d told her the truth, what Flora had said. She would have made her call the police, as scared as her mother was of the police.

A series of sharp snaps and cracks rang out from the woods behind the ruins of the lodge. Mal was still, holding her breath. Had someone been watching her? A loon called out again and the geese honked. Another crackle and another. Something, or someone, was coming through the tangled trees.

Yoga Monday.

Dianne’s Unfortunate Teeth.

Now

The clock ticked.

Dianne was late.

It was Yoga Monday.

Yoga at 1 p.m.

On the bookshelf, Stella Sprague’s antique wind-up clock showed 12:55. Stella’s uncle Isaiah had given it to her to help her keep track of time. Every morning the alarm went off at 7 a.m., and every morning Stella would wind the clock.

At bedtime she crossed off each day on her wall calendar with a thick X.

The clock was from the shop he’d had for years, called Isaiah Antiques. Stella needed only the seasons and the sky to keep track of the days, but the clock was helpful in the morning. Stella wanted to see Isaiah. He and Stella’s mother had grown up over on the Mountain, and while Stella’s mother had left Nova Scotia when she was young, Isaiah stayed. He had worked on the family farm on the Flying Squirrel Road, and then he inherited a house just outside of Bigelow Bay, down east in the Valley. It had an old carriage house attached, in which he opened up an antique shop he ran for ages. Every object holds a story, he had taught Stella.

Stella had lived with Isaiah years ago. Those years were dim in her mind. She had lived in different kinds of hospitals and group homes, and there were therapies and drugs, and efforts to get her to talk, to live on her own. Eventually, when they realized she would never be able to live independently, she was placed in the Jericho County Care Centre. Stella detested group homes, partially residential but with closed-in stairwells for fire safety, and glowing red exit signs — a house where the staff still had jangling key rings, where the adults living in the homes were all paid staff, not family. Stella could not stand the facade.

Dianne had been transferred to the Willow Unit back when Stella was forty. Stella had seen her before, from the window. She had watched Dianne walking, seen her sitting on benches, talking, telling her stories to anyone and no one. She had once had a violent streak but that had subsided.

She and Dianne would both be late for yoga by the time they made it down the three flights of stairs from the Willow Unit to the Vitality Room where the class was held on Monday afternoons. Stella didn’t take elevators. She worried about being trapped. It was problematic for some of her appointments. That wasn’t of concern to her, being problematic.

Stella’s room was sparsely furnished, with a bed and an armchair in the corner by the wide window, a bookshelf against the wall. The Jericho Centre didn’t have air conditioning but the windows partially opened, enough to let air in and keep people from jumping out. The ward cat sat on Stella’s lap. It was a therapy animal known simply as Cat. Or CAT by residents who had no volume control, seeing the feline every time anew. But Cat’s way of rubbing at Stella’s ankles, jumping on her bed in the morning, bred a familiarity that ingrained the creature in Stella’s mind, moved the cat to her long-term memory. Cat had come after Stella arrived, but Cat was old now too.

Footsteps in the hall. At last. One determined bang at the door. Nurse Calvin at the threshold.

“Stella, you’ll be late for yoga. If you’re waiting for your sidekick, Dianne’s outside having her after-dinner smoke and talking to a visitor, a Black woman in an expensive yellow linen dress. And the hair!” Nurse Calvin held her hands out beside her ears. “Dianne will talk to anyone.”

Stella knew Nurse Calvin was wrong. Dianne was very careful about who she talked to. Everyone was always underestimating the old ladies, Dianne said.

Nurse Calvin was the senior nurse on the Willow Unit — she still wore her original white nursing uniform from 1960, complete with vintage headpiece bobby-pinned to her dyed brown hair.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Cat opened its eyes.

Nurse Calvin was retiring at the end of August. Stella knew this would be an overall improvement for most residents. Nurse Calvin had no time for the latest research. Medicine and disease, especially mental illness, were about common sense and practicality, she informed the workers in a voice loud enough for the residents to overhear. Nurse Calvin made it her mission to remind Stella just how things might have been if she’d been born in another time, when people like Stella — mute, or dumb, as they were called back then — weren’t indulged. When they worked in the fields. When they were buried in cemeteries with unmarked graves.

“Fine, have it your way. If you don’t speak up, others will make decisions for you.” Nurse Calvin waited.

The latest neurologist said what the last one had said, and the one before that: to repeat, to maintain routine, to see each task as a ritual. Stella did this. It was in her nature to adhere to routine and schedules. Now she was fifty-four, she worried about