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

only one left, sick and tired. Even now I doubt my mental stability. I have learned to respect the shattering power of trauma and the equally deep power of the subconscious to protect us, to seal off the world around us, allowing us to be in the world but not of it. I’m wary of my own self, wary of this Stella inside who must be watching, waiting to emerge, this Stella who kept the shells lined up for so many years. But for now, I lie still, my hands trembling, clasped together, listening to the man in the hall insist on a quick visit, the fiery petite nurse having none of it, annoyed now by his persistence, by his tone, his expectation.

“And look at that, she’s asleep already! Me oh my, as the old ladies say! No one can sleep like the sick, except for the dead. So you’ll have to come back another time.” The nurse shuts the door to my room.

For now, I’m safe. I fall asleep. It’s the only place I can hide now. When I wake up, it’s dawn. But I’m back in the cottage. Dianne is talking as I wake up on the sofa. She is talking about the box. The necklace she wore, that Isaiah gave to her. Yes, he gave it to her. At the beach. When Cynthia was there.

“Yes,” Dianne says, “the silver necklace. It turns into a key. It looks all swirly and ornate but if you just turn it this way, and then that way, and then this way, you’ll see. It was crafted by Irish silversmiths in the Old World, Isaiah said. Clever, hey? Don’t you remember, Stellie?”

“Yes, Dianne, I remember,” I say. Dianne smiles her toothless smile. “Such a pretty voice. I could always hear it loud and clear. But you always knew that, Stellie, you always knew it. My own daughter, you were to me. You get those film canisters out of that box and you get them developed and to the girl in the yellow dress. Understand? Isaiah and me, we kept the memories for you, until you could hold them again.”

Then the sun is shining in and Dianne is gone, and it’s full morning. It’s not Periwinkle but Valley Regional Hospital. The September leaves shiver but the window doesn’t open and I can’t hear their sound, what it might be telling me. I don’t know where this box is with the film, or Dianne’s necklace, which was probably buried with her. I close my eyes and get caught in a sticky sleep.

A seagull cries as it drifts by the window and I sit up. Napping makes it hard to keep track of time. The bird flaps its wings and disappears and I look at the cardboard box on the window ledge, the one that Nurse Calvin brought. What could Dianne have left me? She hardly had anything. I bring the box back to the bed and turn my back to the open door. They must have come in to check on me. There are a few empty wooden boxes inside, a few old sweaters, an old ivory hairbrush. Dianne’s false teeth are in the box. Maybe there will come a day when I can wear them. Her nana’s apple blossom teapot. Something rattles inside. I take the lid from the pot. Inside, her antique silver necklace. My eyes fill with tears as I hold it. I twist it three times this way, and then that way, and then this way. A key. If only Dianne were here now, now that I can talk, and she could answer me. I close my eyes. I have no idea what to do. Useless. Without Dianne, without that fierce old lady, I am nothing.

The Speed of Mercy.

Then and Now.

Now and Then

Silence under here and darkness, water. I see my mother swimming towards me and I reach out to her, her gentle face blurred by the water, but still her face, her hands reaching out, but there is nothing but bubbles as I let out the air in my aching lungs. And then I am crashing up from the water, propelled upwards and smashing down onto the hard wooden dock, the lake water streaming from my hair. Frank and Tommy swim back through the choppy water to the dock, their arms flailing. Cynthia is on the dock, dry, standing, her backpack at her feet, holding a book, the Commonplace Book of the Offing Society. Tears bead down her cheeks and fall on the pages. She kneels down beside me and an illuminated text appears in the moonlight, her tears of regret pouring onto the pages. Chaidh na geasan a 397chur oirnn. Cynthia speaks the words, a language I have never heard before, and yet one that sounds familiar. She sings. The rising wind is cold now on my rippling skin, the lake surging. A Bhana-phrionns’ a’ chuain shiar. The men are far from shore now. A bheil sgeul agad ri luaidh? A flash of moonlight on waving arms and then darkness, screams, and under they go in the inky black water. The same waters where Stella the Original perished.

We run then towards the lodge. Cynthia has gasoline — the tanks we saw by the chainsaws when we arrived, although that seems years ago now. She has matches and she lights one and hands it to me. She lights another and we ignite the gas canisters. The timber lodge so old and dry. We stand back as it blazes, Cynthia holding the straps of her backpack, me with my hands at my side, demon flames leaping up, rumbling groans of rage emanating from the fire.

What happened returns in pieces: Running through the woods. The hospital. The news that my father died at his parents’ house, out back, in the sugar maple — a young boy climbing to fasten a swing, but not a young boy anymore, a tired man engulfed in cowardice and shame. And