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

her. She runs and grabs her bike and rides around the back way, takes the path to the marsh and then sits on a bench near the water, watching the geese, hiding behind the line of birches and the rustling elephant grass. She’s hysterical, gasping for air. She waits on the bench until she sees the geese are missing. When she climbs back on her bike, she sees the hat is still tied to the handlebar, but the aviators are gone. She crams the straw hat on her head and races off. There is a breeze she must lean into and it takes all her energy to keep the bike upright.

The quiet of her grandmother’s kitchen calms her, despite the dirty dishes on the counter and the unswept floor, the empty beer cans stacked by the overflowing trash can. She takes her grandmother’s apron from the hook in the pantry and puts it on, starts washing the dishes. She doesn’t want to be still. Her mother would want her to clean up. Her mother would want her to do the right thing. She will tell her father. Maybe Mr. Jessome is ill . . . that’s it. Maybe sick in the head . . . like all those people her father obsesses over. But bad sick. Not sad sick. Mean sick. Evil sick. Or just plain bad. Bone that is bad. Bad in his blood. Merciless blood. Not mad but wicked. A brutal monster.

She dries her hands on the apron and knocks on the door to her father’s study. No answer. Knocks again. Angry now, she flings open the door. The room is disgusting. The blinds are down, but she can make out overflowing ashtrays, his papers spread out on the desk, a typewriter in the middle, a blank piece of paper in it. Her head is achy. Stella is still wearing the old straw hat and she’s so angry with herself. She wants her father to snap out of it, to see she is still Stella, just a different version who has a head injury and has to wear sunglasses to reset her brain but still his daughter and that he has to, he must, be her father, that she’s not even thirteen.

In the kitchen she looks everywhere for a note but he hasn’t even bothered. He thinks she’s at Cynthia’s for the day. He’s probably buying more beer. Stella is suffocating on her own fear. She runs upstairs and splashes cold water on her face, looks in the mirror. “Mommy,” she cries, seeing only her own face, her strange eyes, the eyes of an aunt she never knew. She cannot imagine the face of either of these women and she can’t stop bawling, trembling, these inherited eyes welling with salty tears that drizzle down her cheeks, her nose running. Blood on her lips where she has bitten right through the skin.

Stella rides her bike back to Cedar Grove, taking the marsh trail all the way, avoiding the road. Tommy Jessome’s car is gone, but Frank’s car is in the driveway close to the house. Her first stop is by the dining room window. The glasses are gone. She looks everywhere. She runs to the back of the house, where she sees her father’s rental car.

Stella comes in the side door and up the few stairs, and then down the hall and into the kitchen where Granny is, back home, making tea. She doesn’t hear Stella come in. Stella clears her throat and Granny slowly turns. She has a blank face. She blinks. “Stella, darling. You’re back. I was so worried. I know you were going to Mercy Lake.”

Stella blinks this time. They weren’t going to the lake. Granny is confused. Granny’s face moves, a current passing through. She rubs her eyes and smiles. “Stella Maris, it’s so good to see you. I just had some dizzy spells. Nothing to worry about. Frankie took me to see the doctor. All is well. You go into the front room and see Cynthia. She’s lying down. She had her own dizzy spell and took a tumble. She’ll be happy to see her best friend.”

Stella walks down the hallway to the formal parlour on the north side of the house, shielded by the copper beech outside. Her father stands by a window.

Cynthia rests on a daybed, with a face cloth on her forehead and a white bandage on her arm. Frank sits by Cynthia, holding her hand. “Stella, we were worried,” he says.

Stella’s father turns from the window. “Stella,” her father says in a stern voice, “I thought I told you to come over and keep Cynthia company. She called Frank’s assistant after she fell and cut her arm. Tommy drove all the way out and took her to the hospital. He called Frank. And Frank called me from the hospital. Cynthia was asking for you.” He keeps lecturing her in front of everyone. Stella bites her sore lip and it starts bleeding again.

“If you want me to trust you, you have to do what I say. You need to take some responsibility here, Stella. You’re not a little girl anymore.”

Stella is speechless. She can’t tell them what she saw, because clearly Cynthia is hiding the truth. She is afraid of Jessome, of what he’ll do.

“Why don’t you go help my mother, Billy?” Frank kisses Cynthia’s hand. Stella’s father leaves the room.

Cynthia is relaxed. She’s even smiling. They gave her painkillers. “I am so clumsy these days. And I broke a piece of Granny’s good crystal, in the family for generations, and then I smash it . . . just like that. I was rushing.”

It shocks Stella how utterly convincing Cynthia’s deception is. She even wonders if what she saw was real, if maybe her head injury has affected her more than she thought. But she knows what she saw, what she heard. What Tommy did to Cynthia. Raped. The word makes Stella feel sick. She is overcome with shame for not saying