Page 48 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“My darling,” I began.

“Never come back.”

Justine did not look at me again. Emil pulled me, panting, upright, and though my ankle ached and my head pounded, I didn’t resist. We ran toward the station with nothing more on us than the money in our pockets. Thieves, criminals, reprobates. Past the bench, past the almond trees, past the houseguests filtering into their cars, past all the precious landmarks of the summer. As we came to the gates at the edge of Maison de Notre Rêve, I stopped with my hand on the post.

“The blue lovers. We must retrieve my painting.”

Emil was not a violent man, but just then he looked like he might slap me. “Let them destroy your goddamned painting. You were a fool for making it in the first place.”

I didn’t argue that he was the one who capitalized off the pain in my art. He’d always encouraged my tempests, as a sort of rod for inspiration. His anger was justified. With that painting, that stupid, terrible, beautiful secret painting, I’d cost him his sister, as surely as I’d cost my own love.

“I’m sorry, Emil.”

Relenting, he squeezed my forearm. “You will paint others. Let’s get out of this godforsaken place.” I have never deserved such a friend.

We left the Camargue that very morning. I didn’t see the Chaton again. She and Marcel emigrated to Germany as planned, and, from what I heard, became important art patrons there. Marcel aligned himself with power, as usual. This time, it was with the rising star of a charismatic chancellor who would, one day soon, bring Europe to its knees.

After Arles, I buriedTâmfor good. Cut my hair again, donned my severe clothing. Burrowed in my solitude like a pig in filth. For the remainder of my life, however brief it shall be, I will only ever be known as K. P.Lý. Once, I’d marveled at the prospect of being known, truly known, by a person who loved me. Now I understand the dear price of that knowledge.

And Emil—he might never truly forgive me, though our friendship has continued to soldier along, weary and battered, but faithful to the last. After all, he’d protected my identity; he would not betray me, not even after all I’d cost him. We did not speak of Justine, but seeing her resemblance in his face, slight as it was, never failed to make my heartbeat stumble.

This very winter, as a birthday gift, he took me to the Hautes-Alpes, where we spent many cold mornings walking among the famous sundials of the region. Knowing of my devotion to the study of light and all its acrobatic twists across this great earth, Emil wanted me to witness the enduring presence of this ancient craft. He meant it to be a kind of solace, or perhaps a relief from my failing health, but the sight of those sundials filled me with despair. What of my creations could hope to touch immortality?

My favorite sundial, one I wish I’d painted, towered on the exterior of a church. Its inscription, written in Latin:Ab Ultima Aeternitas.

“From the last hour begins eternity.”

Seven quiet, lonely years have passed since I’ve spoken to the Chaton. My letters were never answered. The blue lovers, lost or destroyed, I’ll never know. I write these pages from a mournful distance, no longer the same woman who trod through the brilliance of a Provençal spring, to a fate I held but could not keep.

There’s the old adage that time will heal pain. But all it’s done for me is exacerbate it. I cannot seem to forget that summer. Even now, as the tumors eat away at my body, I think about the bench behind the cottage, the way the drooping sun set the Chaton’s curls aflame. How,when we sat there together, I could pretend that she and my Huy were with me, that I had not lost so much as I thought. But she is gone, she has made a new life beyond the borders of mine.

Now Huy is my only concern. What can I do for my son, a man of twenty-nine? He is not young; he no longer needs me. Does he have a partner? Children? The thought of my phantom grandchildren fills me with grief and something more. A prod of curiosity. If I could find Huy, what might I say—what might I do? If he has thought at all of me during his years, it would have been with pain. And I have no fortune to leave. Only love. As if that has ever been enough.

My doctor, a stodgy old goat with no gift for bedside manners, has decreed six months for me. Perhaps longer, he said, with temperate weather and a restful routine. Somberly, he advised me to settle my affairs. Time, that velvet-gloved old vise.

“What will you do?” Emil had asked. “Imagine the world is yours. Where would your feet take you?”

I know the answer now. First, I’ll find my way back to the Camargue. Leave this document of our summer where it belongs, with the worms and the debris of that epoch. Perhaps Justine will stumble upon it and finally know how sorry I am for it all.

But I can’t stay in France. Paris has been occupied for three years now. Europe grows more dangerous with each passing day and I, more vulnerable in it. If these are to be my final days, I do not want to spend them in flight from a hidden menace.

If darkness must be my final end, then I will seek, for what few days and months I can, the radiance of the sun. I will go toward the light and leave the best of myself there.

Chapter 13

When Vivi woke, her hand reached to touch the freckle on her cheek. Once, not so many generations ago, a lover had pressed her rouged lips to a similar star, memorialized it in defiance and desire. And here the star appeared again, as a sort of unreadable punctuation mark within a story that continued to resist conclusion.

She looked up to find Calla’s empty bed. Vivi’s laptop had shut off, but within it, inside a typo-laced document, she’d saved a full translation of the journal, which lay open in front of her, splayed to the final page. She’d worked all night on the translation, understanding that was the least she could do for her sister and knowing that was still not enough.

By now, it was past noon. The hallways of the inn were flurried with activity: guests banging doors, bellhops wheeling luggage racks, jouncing the credenzas with offended bursts of noise. Vivi didn’t mind her sister’s absence. Calla had a way of crowding her thoughts, so that Vivi had no space left for her own. Without her, the air was dull and skimmed, but Vivi breathed more easily.

As she showered, she continued thinking through the entries she’d read. This journal, she became convinced, couldn’t be the offering. Below the very last entry, there was another drawing of a sundial, almost identical to the one in the letter that Calla had found in their father’s shed.I will go toward the light and leave the best of myself there.Anotherclue. Where Vivi should have felt satisfaction, she instead succumbed to frustration. The goalpost had moved again.

She drew a heart in the condensation on the shower glass. What would Samuel do?

She could almost hear his voice through the steam.Let’s outline the facts, V. What do you know?

Nguy?nwas a common enough surname in Vietnamese circles, but she’d only encountered a handful ofTâmsin her lifetime. Vivi flipped through her paltry store of recollections, trying to locate the name. It returned to her with increasing urgency, like a child tugging at a shirtsleeve. Then she remembered Calla, drawing on the bedspread with her fingertips.