Page 16 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Paul caught it and frowned. “There’s little worth mentioning. Certainly nothing to interest most scholars.”

“Yet—his is ‘a story of love and loyalty,’ isn’t it?”

He stopped his pacing and squinted out at her. “Ah.”

The audience stirred. They didn’t understand what she was getting at. But she knew Paul would not have written aboutLýif he hadn’t thought the artist compelling.

“You want to know aboutLý? He’s a conundrum. Beloved in some very small circles, reviled in most others. Significant? No, not to most of my colleagues. They would say that his work follows in established footsteps. That it’s derivative. Literal to the point of cliché. And that literality is the death knell for automatism.”

“What doyouthink?”

He pressed his hands onto the edge of the podium. “Every few years, an enterprising student takes upLý’s mantle. They think they will discover something that everyone else has missed. But here’s the truth: he will be a mystery for years to come. We have such a wealth of source material for other artists: interviews, sketchbooks, journals. ForLý, we have nothing but a handful of disjointed paintings. Maybe some mysteries are better left as they are. Maybe the art is enough.”

Vivi heard a note of resignation in his voice and understood that he too had followed a broken trail. His dismissiveness towardLýwas not born of disdain, but failure.

“Aren’t we investigators of history, though?” she pushed. “Isn’t our job to probe into the past?”

“To be a Surrealist is to resign oneself to not knowing. Your desire for a narrative does not meet the artistic promise of the movement.”

He turned to take another question. But before he did, she saw a spark of reluctant interest in his expression. He was annoyed at her, but she had his attention. That was more than she’d hoped for.

Afterward, Vivi approached the stage.

“I know you,” he said. Up close, the mole on his chin gyrated as he spoke.

“VivianNguy?n. I’m a conservator at the Forster Institute in Chicago. Rathmore class of—”

“I remember now. You wrote a paper onNguy?nGia Tri’s lacquer paintings. Made some ludicrous theoretical jumps too.”

“And yet, you gave me an A minus.”

“I was nicer, back then. Would probably give you a C now. What do you want?”

“My late father,Tu?nNguy?n, had your business card in his files. I wondered if he was in contact with you.”

“Oh, him. You could call it that. It was a one-sided correspondence. He was persistent; asked me too many questions.” His frown eased a centimeter or two. “I didn’t know he’d died. Sorry for your loss.”

“It was very sudden. He wasn’t—we weren’t close. Please. I have questions too. If you have a moment.”

He looked as if he would refuse, but then he tilted his head and studied Vivi’s pleading expression. He sighed deeply. “Fine, then. Come to my office.”

Vivi hesitated. It felt wrong to talk to Paul without Calla. But if she went looking for Calla, she might not get this opportunity again.

“I won’t wait,” he called. He was nearly out the door now, his shoes clomping onto the steps leading to the quad.

With a curse under her breath, she ran to catch up with him.

Chapter 6

Paul’s office window faced a crowded avenue of campus. Through the hairline gap between the curtains, Vivi could see the blur of students on their way from the dining halls and dorms. For a moment, that blur expanded, like a portal, and she could almost glimpse past versions of herself and Calla running to class as Frisbees zoomed past them. Her, yelling at Calla for making them late; Calla scowling and laughing at the same time.I had to say goodbye to Way. Wayland, who pulled away after long weekends, honking outside their shitty apartment as Calla blew him kisses. Vivi holding herself back, watching their blooming relationship and wanting to be anywhere but there.

“Find a place to sit, if you want,” Paul said.

Inside his cave of an office, sets of oak shelves lined the walls, each crowded with scholarly tomes Vivi would have given anything to explore. His velvet curtains snuffed most of the light, giving the room a claustrophobic quality that had Vivi unbuttoning her blazer. She smelled pine and tinned fish and mold, a silty edge of riverbed decay. Strangely, the office did not repel her. Its disorder felt familiar to that of her childhood home.

There was a calendar on the wall. She saw crosshatches that delineated days past. Now, only nineteen days until the opening forSea to Earth. What would they do with the restored version ofBlue Mirror? Samuelhad positioned it as the centerpiece of the exhibition; the sun around which the other pieces spun. All the exhibition catalogues had already been printed with the overpainted version that Maxine had bequeathed; the marketing complete, the articles written. Vivi had unwittingly begun a PR nightmare for the museum. She had a knack for destroying good things.

Vivi had begun this madcap quest for her sister, yes, but she also did it for herself. A small part of her still believed that if she could unravel thewhyof the overpainting, she might be absolved in Samuel’s eyes, maybe even the Forster’s. The discovery itself was significant, but if she could prove that she had a reason for pursuing it, then perhaps she could find a way to set everything right again. Her work wouldn’t be a rogue mistake, but a considered discovery. At this point, there seemed to be more reasons to pursue the offering than to forget it. Not that she could.