Stony River by Ciarra Montanna

he corrected her automatically. “Just what do you intend to do in Cragmont?”
    “I’ll stay there until I decide what to do next.”
    “Will you!” He speared a cucumber on the point of a knife. “And what has caused this change of plans? You find the place too rough for your liking?”
    She compressed her lips as she toyed with the handle of her tin cup. “It’s not the place. It’s—you.”
    “What—just because I’d rather not indulge in your fond little brother-sister fantasies?” He sounded disgusted.
    She watched him slice the dill over the fried ham. “It’s not that—especially. I just—don’t want to stay if you don’t want me here.”
    “You’re overreacting. I never said that. All I want is my own space. Is that too much to ask?”
    “No, it’s just…” She didn’t continue.
    “Look, Sevana, you can’t just be running around on your own.” He stopped bagging up his unorthodox sandwiches to reason with her. “Folks would start asking questions—send you back to me, likely as not. I am your appointed guardian for the summer, after all.”
    “Unwillingly,” she was swift to point out.
    “It’s true I’m not used to having anybody else around,” he admitted blandly. “But I did agree to it. If I wasn’t willing for you to come, I wouldn’t have given my consent.” His lunch—such as it was—was made, his fishing pole and tackle by the door. Now he was taking time with her when he normally would have been leaving.
    Sevana stared at him, two spots of color in her cheeks. After everything he’d indicated to the contrary, he now seemed to be asking her to stay. He was ready to go, lunch in hand, yet he stood waiting for her response with more than his usual tolerance. “Come on, Sevana, it’s only for a few months. You can put up with it here that long, can’t you?”
    She swallowed. “If you’re sure it’s all right with you.”
    “I’m sure.” He headed for the door. “Then I’ll see you tonight. With fish for supper, maybe. And since you seem to like to cook, why don’t you make some bread? I won’t be back to town before we run out.”
    “I—could try.” She was still adjusting to his abrupt turnabout in manner. She went out to watch as he put his gear in the truck. “Where are you going?”
    “Spruce Creek.” He drove out of the yard as if eager to get away.
    Sevana took down the cookbook and started a batch of bread, doing her best to interpret the cryptic recipe. As she punched at the sticky whole-wheat dough, which the instructions stated would soon be magicked into a ball both smooth and elastic, she went back over the morning’s conversation, debating if she should have agreed to stay. But overriding these doubts was the fact that Fenn wanted her there by his own admission. And for whatever the reason he’d said it, his words were enough to satisfy her at present. She eventually despaired of the unmanageable dough, and set it in its untransformed state to rise.
    When the flat, heavy loaves came out of the oven, Sevana covered them with floursacking (to get them out of sight as much as anything), and went out into the sunshine calling to her through the open door. She was about to visit the river again when she remembered Avalanche Creek, and went straight across the lane in search of it.
    It wasn’t hard to find. After a short walk through a colonial stand of cedar giants, she came to a brook gabbling in a bed of many-sized rocks. She walked upstream along it. The creek had different moods—sparkling in the sunlight here, lying dark and quiet in the shade of the cedars there. She came to a broad rock in the middle of the stream, and jumped out with one leap to sit on its flat surface, almost level with the water—a grand, front-row seat on the creek.
    As the transparent water sparkled in and out of the shadows, Sevana played her hand in the current and thought how she might have already been gone now, on her way to Cragmont. She had to admit