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

been was waking up — Billy, who made things with his hands. But then Stella wonders if he’s been pretending helplessness his whole life.

Her father explains the parts to Stella: the head, hook, tag, hackle, and tail, holding them up so she can see them from her chair.

“Like old times, Billy. It’s good to have you and Stella here. I wish you all had come to visit earlier in the spring.”

“You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that myself, Frank. But I couldn’t convince Catriona to come. I tried. But she refused to come back to Nova Scotia. I reminded her how many years had passed since she had seen her brother. Catriona said they talked on the phone. When I called to tell Isaiah she had died, he said they had spoken every week, every Monday. He asked for her ashes to be sent to Nova Scotia, so I guess one way or another she’s ended up back here.”

Stella’s father seems to have forgotten her sitting off in the corner, in the faint light, just outside the circle cast by the floor lamp. He holds a blue feather, studying it as he speaks. “Isaiah’s an odd duck. The family were Believers, an offshoot of the Shakers, who created intentional societies. There’s still a community east in the Valley. They came up from Kentucky, way back, Catriona’s father’s people. Her mother’s people came up from North Carolina, but originally from the Island of Islay, in the Old World.”

“Well, at least she had you and little Stella here. Tragic. I had a car accident once. I still remember skidding on the road, the car overturning. Do you have any memories of it, Stella? Has anything come back, now you’ve been able to relax in Seabury?” Frank has not forgotten she’s there. Frank is as alert as he is insensitive. Her father is normally oblivious, but Frank is something else entirely.

“No,” she says quietly. Stella wonders why her father doesn’t intervene and tell Frank not to talk about car accidents. She still remembers the squeal of the brakes, her mother crying out, the sound of the windshield breaking, and then shadows, a dense shadow, and then nothing. The dark shape grows in her memory. It seems larger, with defined edges, wide and thick. Her answer doesn’t stop him from asking again. “Any idea of what happened?”

“No,” Stella says again, in a louder voice. It’s strange how he keeps looking at her. And how her father keeps quiet. Her father yawns. Stella thinks this is his way of masking his annoyance at Frank for pushing Stella. He yawns but says nothing. They both know the doctor said she might remember, she might not. Stella’s brain may have created the memory and stored it, or maybe not. Only time would tell. Or not.

Stella’s father takes a sip of beer, licks his lips and looks at Frank. “She doesn’t remember, okay?”

Frank purses his lips as he looks at Stella’s father. She watches Frank take a sip of beer and then smile. “Remember how much salmon there was when we were boys, Billy boy? Did you do much fishing in Ohio?”

Stella finds Frank’s folksy way of talking, of changing the topic, off-putting. He’s a rich, New York–based business man but pretends to be something else.

“Oh, on occasion, Frankie. A bit of smallmouth bass, quillback and channel catfish.”

This is news to Stella, but maybe her father had gone fishing when she was really young and she just didn’t remember. Stella has no way of knowing if her father is concocting a story in his brain or recalling something true.

Stella leaves them there, without saying good night, and they don’t call after her. She bounds up the stairs and as she reaches the top, she hears something clatter to the floor in front of her dead aunt’s bedroom. A skeleton key. It must have been hidden on the ledge at the top of the wooden casing around the door. Stella can’t resist. She turns the key in the lock. Click. Her sweaty hand on the glass doorknob, which twists without a sound. The door glides open. She feels along the wall for a light switch. It snaps on with an echo in the empty room. Only her father’s memories inhabit this space. Stella stands on her tiptoes and puts the key back. She slips into her bedroom and between the covers.

Later, she wakes up when she hears a bang. The inside kitchen screen door from the porch. It swings closed again. She hears low voices, male voices. Her window is open. She gets out of bed to close it and hears her father talking. Violette. Stella Violette. And Frank’s voice, threatening, intensifying as he delivers a harsh sermon. Debt. Repayment. She can’t make out much more: Frank menacing, her father meek, subdued, compliant. She doesn’t put the old window down for fear it will make noise, that her father will hear. Frank will hear. And think she is listening, which she is, but not on purpose.

She crawls back into bed and pulls up the wool blanket from near her feet, covering her ears. She imagines riding her bike on the road through the marsh towards the water, the horizon. She realizes she is in a dream when she sees she is walking on the water, her feet wet, but not sinking. Out in the offing, someone is calling her name.

Seraphina and Aurora.

Age Demolishes Them.

Now

Loud, throbbing engine noise and blaring music cut through the cemetery quiet. An old green pickup truck emerged from behind the bushes on the bumpy lane in between the graves. Distorted violin and strings, guitar and bass, blared from the truck.

“Oh no, oh no,” Dianne said. “Not that one. She’s a crazy one. Don’t we know it.”

Seraphina screeched with the music and stopped as she shut off the engine and hopped out. Seraphina — unhealthily skinny, chain-smoking as she stood in her hiking boots and her jewel-toned flowery sundress.

“Are