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

by the tide, also picking up hollow pieces of straw and putting those in the pocket of her dirty blue dress, now smudged with soot from the fire. Dianne walked slowly, more stiffly than normal. Stella felt a tightness in her chest as she listened to Dianne wheeze. “Out of smokes, Stella. Just as well but not the time I’d pick to quit smoking.”

A high-pitched squealing came through the fog from down near the water. Dianne and Stella looked at each other. With the second shrill squeal Dianne stiffened. “Might be seals,” she said hopefully.

Stella considered this. Seals grunted, barked — sea dogs, Isaiah used to call them. Surely Dianne knew that. In her mind, Stella saw herself as a young woman on the beach near Periwinkle Cottage. Sunset, the bay crimson-stained, a hot summer evening. The man beside her, Isaiah, her uncle, the dark shapes on the luminous water, seals chasing fish on the incoming tide.

Then children’s laughter pulled Stella back to the hazy August beach on a day of the week she couldn’t remember, the idea of a week almost dissolved, with time measured in daylight and nightlight, and the times in between. Dianne smiled and Stella wondered at how foreign the laughter was, how these young creatures were so remote and unknown to them. There was the clinking of rocks as the children came up the beach and emerged from the white, the older one with dark hair saw them first and stopped, putting her arms around the other two, both much younger.

Cynthia. Was it Cynthia? No, it couldn’t be, Stella thought, as she looked down at her hands, her old hands, and the sudden twist of her gut, the ache. She was not a girl. She was not middle-aged. She was not old. She was lost in between ages, no different from that time separating night from day. It was Dianne before her with her hands on her hips, trying to stretch her sacrum by leaning back, her hair loose now, moving in the humid breeze. She and Dianne might be washed out to sea and no one would ever know what had become of them. No one would ever be there at her grave or Dianne’s grave except for banshee seals and whales and keening winds.

“Hello, girls,” Dianne called to the children. She smiled, but without her teeth she looked menacing. Her hair was matted, like long pieces of bleached seaweed, streaks of soot on her cheeks. For all Stella knew, Dianne had drawn them as part of a ritual while she was making a fire, evoking forces Stella couldn’t even imagine. Stella smoothed her dress, running her fingers over the stains from where she had slopped the tea and onion soup the day before. Or was it the day before that? The mist blocked out the sun and sky. A perpetual twilight. All Stella could see were her hands, the misty faces of the girls, the back of Dianne’s head, a few dark rocks. But she could hear the breakers. The water was higher on the beach.

“Girls, we’re looking to know the time. Do you have the time?” They didn’t say a word and then the two smaller ones giggled, and the older one pushed them up the beach, over the rocks in their bare nimble feet. “It’s suppertime soon,” the older one called over her shoulder as they vanished into the mists.

The blue cottage had been obscured but now it peeked out as they came onto the lawn. Stella saw Dianne stumble with her seaweed, putting out a hand and steadying herself on a rock. She pushed herself back upright and Stella noticed a bit of blood on Dianne’s hands. Stella took in a sharp breath and Dianne smiled. “My land. We both got cuts now, battle scars. Don’t you worry about me. I’m tough as these old rocks. You’re not looking so good, Stella. Let me cook you up a camp supper.” Stella was feeling very warm, even with the damp breeze.

There was a crunching, the sound of feet on the rocky beach. Dianne whirled around, wincing from the effort. A wave crashed through the mist. The tide was close now. “If they come for us, you go in the water. You’ll be safe there.” This made no sense to Stella. The footsteps on the rocks became louder and louder, closer and closer.

“Well, for God’s sake. Look who it is. Are you two following me?” Seraphina clomped out of the white, over the rocks in her uniform of hiking boots and sundress. Stella thought that they too must look in uniform with their house dresses and running shoes.

“Serrie! For the love of God, what do you want? Scared the life right out of me.”

“There are worse things that could happen. I’ve come to warn you again. That journalist still wants to find you, but I said I didn’t know where you were. And it was true. I thought maybe they got you and then I thought maybe you were saved. Then I thought maybe you were both shivering away in that blue cottage not knowing what to do. I’m here to help. There’s no point in calling the police. They’re just covering up all of this anyway. You can’t trust anyone. Do you understand? Someone already did call the police and then took Aurora away. I told her she wasn’t safe either. She’s got eyes the same as yours, Stella. They’ll look for her too. I told her that, I yelled it at her when they took her away. They wanted to take me too, back to the hospital, but there was no way I was getting in that police car. I know my rights, my patient rights. They don’t care because it’s just one less person for them to deal with. Aurora told them she ran away, that I didn’t take her. It is to weep. I told Aurora to tell them I was about to head down to Seabury, to tell them