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

For the first time in years, Stella wanted to scream. There was nothing she could do for this girl. She was fifty-four and helpless. She put her hands over her ears and rubbed, to brush away Aurora’s young desperation, the knowledge that it would just keep coming up over the girl’s life, an unstoppable tide in a world where Aurora did not belong, until it turned and sucked her back out into relentless currents, pulling her so far from shore she could never come back, pulling her to the place where Stella floated and Dianne floated, lost at sea with so many others.

Dianne kept checking the rear- and side-view mirrors, patting Stella’s knee. And Seraphina carried on. “I have to keep you all safe. And Aurora. They’ll try to get her too. Danger is coming. Danger! Stella, you need to remember. That woman from California got in touch with me. By accident. I went and found her. She was in the historical society. What I prefer to call the Hysterical Society. She was talking to Jillian at the archives. She was asking questions. Don’t you know who I’m talking about? The Black woman. Well, she’s not just Black, but she sure isn’t white. Her mother’s people go way back here. She’s in trouble too. I don’t know why she’s here. I don’t know how to protect her. I knew her mother. She was smart and went away. Stella, what do you know? What do you have? I have been forewarned.”

“Mom, you are totally fucking insane.”

Stella felt Dianne take her hand and squeeze. Why was this woman from California after them? And what did they all think Stella was hiding? Seraphina’s hypomania was swollen up now, spilling out the windows of the truck as they roared over the bumpy old road. Stella felt sorry for all of them.

Seraphina almost tipped the truck coming around the bend, over the bridge, barely missing the signpost that said Lupin Cove, and below it Petal’s End, with an arrow pointing west, and then barrelling into the driveway of a house right on the road by the river that ran into the harbour. Stella assumed it was Seraphina’s house but she didn’t really care whose house it was. It was rundown, once a lovely place, but shabby with neglect. Stella wanted out of the truck. She balled her hands into fists. The water flowed into the harbour and the air reeked of rotting fish and rancid mud, seagulls shrieking as the four women clambered out of the truck — Dianne very stiff, moving slowly, turning back and taking Stella’s hand, helping her down from the truck cab to the stone driveway — Seraphina’s voice was a gale, rising and falling, gusting, talking about the meaning of life and secrets being revealed to her. Aurora was cursing her phone because there was still no reception, and then holding it up at her mother. It looked so strange, this black rectangle with a round circle at the corner. “Don’t you take any pictures of me!” Seraphina screamed. “No movies. Don’t you break my right to privacy, my own daughter. Those pictures last forever. You have no right. And that’s how they hunt us, with those stupid things.”

It was then that Stella slipped away, back across the bridge they had just driven over, Dianne following. The other two — on a stage in a play with no ending — didn’t even notice them leave.

Stella’s body knew the way, her feet guiding her.

“Stella, do you remember, even a tad, coming over before, when we were younger, with your uncle back when he was alive?”

Stella did not. But she understood now that Isaiah was dead. Isaiah was dead as a doornail. The Covid killed him. Who didn’t it kill? Her. And Dianne. They were spared.

Stella turned left by the east wharf, with Dianne beside her now, still talking. “Do you think coming here will help you remember? Or do you just want to hide? I wish you would let me know, Stella. At least at the centre we were safe.”

Stella was happy she couldn’t talk — otherwise, she would have blurted out that they weren’t safe at the centre because Nurse Calvin was going to have them kicked out.

The island was gone from view now, completely obscured in the mist moving in over the water. They were on a laneway lined with firs, and then on an overgrown path through the woods. Stella had a flash of memory of two parked vehicles, a green car and Isaiah’s blue truck. And the path clipped and neat. Isaiah always trimmed it, she recalled. Bits and pieces coming to her. It was not an extensive walk but they were not young women. Dianne huffed and wheezed and Stella wished for the sea air to do her good, to do them both good. She heard her mother’s voice, telling her how people came over to the Fundy shore to take the sea air to cure what ailed them. Once upon a time people would carry out children with polio and stricken limbs and hope the salt water would heal them.

They came through the woods to the blue cottage near the beach. The front had a covered verandah that faced north, out over the water. On a hot day the breeze could be chilly. At the back there was just a stoop with a few steps to climb to the door. It was August and there should be a screen door, but of course there wasn’t because Isaiah was dead. He had not put the screen door on after the winter, as he had done for years. Stella’s eyes watered and she sniffed back her tears. Beside the door was a square mirror, the glass dull. Stella’s hair was tangled and streaked with more white than she remembered. There was a thick border of periwinkle and mint all around, the flowers an unearthly purple.

Stella gazed out to the beach, the island gone in the fog. Had