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

always been, waiting. More knick-knack shelves, with a collection of salt and pepper shakers: a pair of starfish, two lobsters, two lighthouses, a pair of seals. They all had round eyes, even the starfish. Stella took the pitcher and went out to the spring to fill it, and when she came back into the cottage Dianne sat up, taking a glass of water and gulping it down before falling back to sleep.

Stella sat in an armchair by the fireplace looking at the empty woodbox. She wondered where the matches were but was too tired to stand up and look. She thought about the snacks in her backpack but her stomach was queasy. She considered her brain, that the seahorse in her head would restore itself now they were by the ocean. Or maybe not. But perhaps she could navigate without it. Stella wanted to take a nap but she needed to pee. The floor creaked as she stepped carefully, not to wake Dianne.

It was then she saw the book on the shelf against the wall beside the red sofa. By itself on the shelf except for a photo in an elaborate frame made of seashells. Stella crept over the floor, carefully, and looked at the picture. It was her and Isaiah, standing on the beach around a driftwood fire, the sun setting on the bay behind them, the island low and dark in the background, a silhouette. The island was real. This was confirmation. And Dianne, sitting on a log, her head back laughing as she roasted a marshmallow. Stella did not remember that night. She closed her eyes and waited. She pictured the mind shells guarded by the seahorses. But they didn’t move.

The outhouse was in the woods and full of cobwebs. But Stella didn’t mind cobwebs. She left the door to the outhouse open and sat on the cold wooden seat. Nothing came out, and then a gush. She kept sitting, waiting, thinking about the photo and who had taken it, not who was in it. There was old toilet paper, damp from age. The cottage had been a year-round house when it was built, for some ancestor who was a fisherman. But Isaiah had only used it as a cottage in the warmer months. When they would open it up in the spring it was always neat and dusty, as it was now.

Stella wiped and saw blood on the toilet paper. She thought about her test at the hospital. She couldn’t recall if they had given her the results. She was quite sure they had not, but not sure enough. Through the branches the sky was orange. Sunset. Evening.

Dianne was still snoring as Stella poked around in the kitchen. There was no food, of course, except what she had in her backpack. Her routine was gone, the routine that framed and shaped her life. Stella wasn’t sure what day it was. There was no Fireside Friday. No Seaside Saturday. She knew she should try to light a fire but her body felt weighted down. It seemed the rocky beach had come in through the floor and the rocks had fingers, curling around her ankles. She looked at the photo again, and then at the black book. She took it to the window for the last of the dying light. There was a silver flower on the spine, the stem running to the bottom, delicate petals near the top. She opened the book, turning the thick, yellowed pages until she came to the title page: The Commonplace Book of the Offing Society. The rest of the book was blank. Must be one of Isaiah’s antiques, she thought as she set it on the coffee table and curled up on the loveseat, across from Dianne. Stella kept looking at the book. There was something familiar about it but she couldn’t quite figure out what.

The light was dark grey now. She heard the breakers. Almost high tide. A breeze came in through the broken windowpane, blowing the curtain. The ocean was calling her name. Her thumb throbbed. It seemed a lady in alabaster had come through the door humming, holding a gauzy shawl she whispered was made of sleep, and it fell down upon Stella, a spiderweb covering her, taking her away to a place where there were no dreams, and no sound, no words or wind or ripples.

A voice. Droning on. It was hard to wake up. The air was cold in her nose. Where was she? Who was speaking? The air smelled different, familiar, but it was the reminiscence of a scent, comforting, a scent of another time.

“Rise and shine.”

Stella’s face was crushed into a musty pillow, a hard pillow, cotton stuffing dense from years of resting heads. Her eyes were crusty. Stella was at Periwinkle Cottage. Her thumb burned and she pulled her hand out from the blanket. It was swollen and red.

“Going to sleep all day, Stellie? Must be almost noontime from the looks of the sky. We’re safe here, I reckon, for now. Awful stiff today. But nothing like sleep to fix you right up.”

Dianne was eating crackers at the kitchen table, mushing them up with her gums. She sipped from a glass of water and ate a few blackberries and raspberries that she must have picked outside. Sunlight streamed in through the windows. “Come and get your breakfast. Can you move yourself, Stella girl? Lots to look at here. Bringing back any memories for you?”

Stella shook her head. Dianne was in no hurry, relaxed and comfortable in the way people are when they have always lived in a place. “We could put on a fire and have a cuppa tea. Better than this old water.” She rattled a tea tin on the centre of the table. “Found this in the cupboard. Bags inside. Tea gets better with age, my nana always said.”

There was a croaking sound outside and a crow flew by the window. Stella fell back to sleep.

When she woke the next time,