Page 30 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Maybe, in her relief and her oversized loyalty to Wayland, Vivi had letherself ignore the signs of rupture in their marriage. She wished she could talk to Way about it, but it was impossible now.

Calla emerged from the bathroom, hair brushed, a shiny coat of crimson on her lips. She looked refreshed, energized from the hundreds of miles crossed. “Come on, let’s go exploring.”

“I’m going to need a moment.”

“Well, I’m going to see what I can find.”

“Not the cottage. Please? Wait for me to go to the cottage.”

“Fine. But don’t snooze the day away, lazy.”

After Calla left, Vivi threw herself onto one of the beds. Without bothering to pull the blankets off or draw the curtains, she fell straight into a fitful sleep. She thrashed on the silk pillows, dreaming of vines wrapping around her legs, tugging her down into an oubliette in the earth. A single beam of sunlight pierced the heart of the darkness like a lance. When she reached for it, her skin turned to ash and blew away.

Hours later, she woke to the strains of Vivaldi’s summer concerto. Vivi had always found this composition strangely elegiac, especially as a representation of summer. It sounded like a hunt gone awry. A marathon of grief, frantic and breathless. Not cocktail hour music, at any rate.

On the lawn, to the right of the pool, the terrace soaked the dying light into its grooves. A man wearing a black tuxedo played a violin with his eyes closed. A few feet away, a woman in her sixties danced on the grass, mouth open as if to swallow each note. Her dress had a metallic sheen, reminding Vivi of crumpled aluminum foil. Calla was dancing next to her, her hair a streak of carbon. For one heady moment, it seemed as if they’d been transported back into the romantic ebullience of the Années folles.

Vivi shook the sleep from her limbs and went downstairs to join the guests, knowing and not caring that she was underdressed. She was at least three decades younger than everyone there, except for Calla andJean, who milled without her romance novel but did not manage to dislodge the ennui from her features. Jean gave Vivi a nod of acknowledgment when she approached.

“How did you settle in?”

“Too well. The jet lag took me down.”

“At least you didn’t lose a full day to it, as some do.” Jean indicated her head toward Calla. “Your companion seems to be settling in fine.”

“My sister. She’s a well of energy. Always has been.”

“To be young.”

“Have you worked here long?”

“For the last ten years. My mother was a housekeeper before me. And before her, her grandfather was a gardener. We’ve kept this place running for generations.” Pride ran through Jean’s words.

“What was it like? Back then.”

“In my grandfather’s day, Maison de Notre Rêve was a private residence, charming and beautiful, but you know what happens to all those old estates. They get too expensive to maintain. People move away, lineages die out.”

“I read that Marcel and Justine Allard were the owners in the 1930s. Do you know of them?”

“I recall the name, yes. They didn’t own the property for long before Marcel sold it to a distant nephew of his. Marcel was an important man from what I remember.”

“Are there any records from their time here?”

She frowned. “Perhaps.”

“I’m an art scholar,” Vivi explained. She told a version of the truth. “In 1936, a painter named K. P.Lýcame to stay at Maison de Notre Rêve for a summer. Or so I suspect. I’m hoping to find evidence of this.”

“Why?”

“I believe he painted some of his last works here. He might have even painted Justine Allard. That would be of interest to you, wouldn’t it?”

IfMoonbatherswas painted at the estate, who was to say thatBlueMirror, his most mystifying work, couldn’t have been too? The more Vivi thought aboutBlue Mirrorand Emil Blanc’s letters to his sister, the more she thought it likely that Justine might have inspiredLýenough to appear on the canvas. It was, after all, common practice for an artist to pay homage to a patron in this way.

Vivi pulled up one of the pixelated images ofMoonbathersand showed it to Jean. Interest flickered across the other woman’s face, then sank back into the pool of her boredom.

Jean said, “He wouldn’t be the only artist to have been inspired by Maison de Notre Rêve.”

“Maybe he was the first.”