Chapter 6: The Ridge

By nine the next morning, Stellan had a backpack, two thermoses and a plan.

"You haven't seen the land," he said. "You've seen a gate and a kitchen."

"I want you to see the ridge."

"Is this a rescue or a date?"

"It's a hike. Whichever one you pick."

I called my clinic from the porch and told them I had the flu.

It was the first lie I had told in years that I didn't feel bad about.

Then I put on Linnea's spare boots, and Stellan led me up behind the house.

The trail climbed through red pines and then maple, and every leaf on the maples had turned.

Stellan walked ahead of me, backwards, so he could look at me.

"You'll fall," I said.

"I won't. I know every root on this hill."

He tripped on a root.

He caught himself on a birch, grinned, and kept walking backwards.

"Okay, that one is new."

By ten o'clock we were at the top.

The whole Niemi land spread out below us.

I could see the long timber house and the gravel road to the Longhouse.

Past it was a grey shelf of rock above the lake.

"That's the Moon Stone," Stellan said.

I stopped.

It lay flat and bare, with the lake behind it.

I knew without being told that I did not want to be on it in four weeks.

He saw my face, and he didn't say anything about the Stone.

"My mom used to bring us up here," he said instead. "Before she died."

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