Page 17 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

And if there was another reason under the obvious ones that might explain this drive toward the unknown, she didn’t choose to examine it. Not yet.

She cleared a stack of scholarly journals from a chair and leaned back to watch Paul dodge past his Baroque-inspired furniture, fingers light on the piles of paperwork whose organization was legible only to him. Dashing to a shelf, he pulled out two mugs and flicked the switch of an electric kettle. Once the water boiled, he poured it into the mugs and stirred in scoops of instant Vinacafé.

Vivi sipped and tasted bitter earth, a slick of home on her tongue. “I enjoyed your lecture.”

“You ambushed me aboutLý.”

She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was intrigued.” He fixed his slightly protuberant eyes onto her. “I heard about the exhibition that Samuel Noi is putting on at your museum.Sea to Earth. And you all have that strange little painting ofLý’s in it. The crown jewel. What did you make ofBlue Mirror?”

“I was unnerved by the women. And I never wanted to stop looking at them. I loved the painting.”

“Your firstLý?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I didn’t really think much of his work before.”

“I sawBlue Mirrorin persononce.” He spoke with distant awe, as if he were recounting a meeting with a celebrity. “I was in Chicago as a visiting lecturer at the Art Institute. Maxine Ph?m had me over for tea; she wanted my opinion on it.”

“Which was?”

He smiled, his first since she’d met him. “I loved it too. That was the first time I felt like I understoodLý.”

“It was the first time Iwantedto understand him. The painting had humanity.”

There was a shared sheepishness in their admiration forBlue Mirror. In their line of work, they bandied discourse about what was compelling or notable in a piece of art. Sometimes, even the market, that gruesome engine of commerce. They were comfortable examining the art from the angles of history and technique; materials and dates and numbers.

Yet it felt gaudy, somehow, to confess the simplicity of personal attachment. They loved the art, and that might have been trite, but it was the only reason to keep going. Sudden kinship stretched between the two.

He hesitated. “But when I encounteredBlue Mirror, something about it unsettled me. Those faces haunted me, even after I left Maxine’s. The painting felt—”

“Unfinished?”

“Unsatisfying.”

“Like a book that ends too abruptly.” He nodded, wariness settling around his sharpening gaze. Vivi took out her phone and showed the screen to Paul. “Your instincts weren’t wrong. I believe this is the painting thatLý intended.”

He grabbed at the phone. “What is that? It’s notBlue Mirror.”

She explained her initial suspicions of pentimento, the difference of craquelure, a slight impasto atop the women’s faces. As she talked about the process of restoring the original, Paul zoomed in and out on the screen with his fingertips, licking his lips in greed. She was familiar with thissense of avarice. It was difficult to be around such art and not want to make it yours. She didn’t talk about the freckle, but Paul saw the resemblance immediately.

“Uncanny,” he said, looking from her phone screen to her face. She had the disquieting sense that he was regarding her not as a person, but as another work of art. “You’re sure it’s not a copy?”

“Of course. I’ve done the authenticating myself. Everything except the frame is original. This restored version is the real thing. But the public doesn’t know about it yet.”

“You’re afraid that they’ll worm in on your discovery.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I need to know more before we—they—announce it. There had to be a reason for the overpainting. What did my father write to you?”

Paul told her about howTu?nhad unearthed his oldArtforumarticle onLý’s use of blue. It was one of the few pieces aboutLýthat’d gained any scholarly traction, but even so, it must have takenTu?nsome effort to find it.Tu?nhad written to ask Paul if he possessed any correspondence fromLýto Blanc. He said that he was an admirer. Hinted that he had an originalLýsomewhere. Paul ignored all the messages. He got dozens of requests a week, most more convincing thanTu?n’s oddly punctuated missives.

“I assumed he was an idiot. Some person who sees a Michelangelo in a Crayola drawing.”

Vivi slid the manila envelope out of her bag and held it on her lap, wavering in her conviction. “Maybe not.”

His eyes narrowed. “What is that you’ve got there?”

“DidLýever mention in his correspondence to Emil Blanc a place where ‘time peels from light’?”