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

it even been there to start with? No one else had mentioned it. Stella’s cheeks were wet and she couldn’t tell if it was tears or mist billowing in from the water. She was thirsty, terribly thirsty. There was a spring in the slope behind the cottage. Stella’s need for a drink pushed her forward. Borage plants rose up from the sage-green beach grass, the blue, star-shaped flowers resting on the thick blades. The spring ran into a pool. Stella knelt and lapped out of it. She sat up and looked back at Dianne through the branches. She was on the verandah, yawning, her legs stretched out, rubbing her knees with one hand. Stella drank a bit more and then wobbled back to the cottage where Dianne dozed against the peeling wooden shingles. The curtains were pulled shut. Stella knew there was always a key under the steps, in an old metal cough drop box. The box was there but no key.

Dianne snored as Stella considered what to do next. Her hands trembled, part of her sensing the younger woman who used to come here with her uncle and part of her feeling a thousand years old, wanting to walk down the beach and lie down on the rocks, letting the tide cover her, take away her breath, fill her with brine, wash her out to sea. Dianne grunted in her sleep and rubbed her nose, smacked her lips.

On the verandah there were some grey beach stones. Stella used one of them to smash the window by the door. The pane shattered and a jagged piece of glass pierced the tendon at the base of her thumb, slick warm blood running down her wrist, smearing over her hand, her fingers slippery as she reached inside and undid the window lock. She pushed the window up enough so she could fit through. Stella managed to get her legs in the opening, her belly pressing against the window ledge as she moaned.

Dianne lurched awake. “Oh, Stella, I dozed off. What are you doing stuck halfway in the house there? Sky’s heavy. We should take cover. Take a rest. My land, look at your hand. We need to give that a wipe.”

Dianne pushed the window open a bit more, and Stella slid in and landed on the wooden floor where she lay taking deep breaths. The cottage smelled of wood and spice, as it had when she was younger.

“Stella, let me in.” Dianne pounded at the door.

Stella flicked the lock and Dianne looked around as she stepped over the threshold patting her grey hair.

“That mirror give me a terrible fright. Wish Isaiah had taken it down, for Christ’s sake. Got a look at myself and almost had a heart attack. We’re not dressed up for no party, that’s for sure.” Dianne wheezed out a bray of a laugh. “But still, weren’t nothing coming over my shoulder.” She eyed Stella. “Remember why it’s there?”

Stella did remember; she knew how people here put a mirror beside the door to see if the dead had followed them home.

Dianne looked around the kitchen and eyed the copper kettle on the antique cook stove. There was a napkin folded on the counter and she wrapped this around Stella’s bleeding hand. “Ain’t nothing but a scratch, Stella. Don’t fret.”

But Dianne looked worried, and very tired. She’s an old lady, you know. Stella was not sure who had spoken in the quiet voice, not quite a whisper, as though the person it belonged to was outside, speaking in through a window. She looked around but there was nothing through the windows but beach, a tinkle of wind in the silver birches. Her heart thumped in her chest. Had they been found? Dianne didn’t seem to have heard.

“Goddam wind. Can hardly get any shut-eye around here,” she said, behaving as if they had rented an expensive cottage and she was disillusioned.

Stella pointed at the old red sofa and Dianne lumbered over and stood by it. “If I wasn’t so tired I’d go upstairs and take a rest but that crooked, twisty staircase might be the end of me.” Dianne must have been here before, Stella realized.

Dianne seemed to read her mind. “But I don’t reckon you remember when we come over here for a little holiday?” Stella wanted to say, yes, yes, of course, to not let Dianne down. She shook her head and Dianne sighed as Stella helped her lie down. She covered up the exhausted old lady with the black wool blanket on the back of the sofa on the ocean side of the cottage, across from the petite loveseat on the opposite wall.

“Just a short rest, Stella dearie, and then I’ll be right as rain. My mother always said that. Funny what you remember. What’s right about rain? Been asking myself that for years. If only it’d rain. Endless dry summer. Oh, my legs. I’m the original Tin Lady. Get me an oil can.” Dianne closed her eyes as she mumbled. “I’ll just rest up and then go down to the shore and get some snails and seaweed and make you supper. And a cuppa tea.”

There was a knick-knack shelf over the sofa. The top shelf was covered in figurines — a few handmade wooden trinket boxes sat on the second shelf, and a row of china fishermen on the bottom. Stella didn’t recollect specific times but general times, quiet days spent reading and walking on the beach, Isaiah making soup and tea, simple days, everything the same except the weather. There was still a circle of armchairs crowded in front of the fireplace, and a rocking chair, the table beside them by the west window looking out over the beach. A dark blue vase in the centre of the mantel over the fireplace made of gemstones and basalt. Lace sheers in the windows, the pictures on the walls.

There were still glasses in the cupboard by the sink and a glass pitcher, everything left as it had