Page 5 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“Thirty.”

Calla whistled. “A step up from those drawings we used to sell in grade school. Remember those? Your unicorns looked like limping dogs that should’ve been put out of their misery. But you were good with portraits.”

“Not as good as you.”

“No,” Calla agreed. “No one was. Can we find someplace to sit? I need to show you something.”

“Now?”

“It’s important.”

“Fine, keep up.” Vivi walked them to her lab, continuing all the while, “Where have you been? You stopped answering my texts and calls.”

AfterEnmeshment,the only way Vivi could make sure Calla was still alive was through Wayland. He’d wryly pointed Vivi toward the mounting credit card bills as proof of life.She’s fine, V, see?Just doing her Calla thing. Why he continued paying the bills was another question altogether. But guilt makes people do peculiar things.

“I threw my phone in Lake Michigan.” Catching Vivi’s incredulous look, Calla waved her hand. “It’s fine. Some people get divorce haircuts. I decided to unshackle myself from modern life.”

“It’s final then? The divorce?”

“Hallelujah, your girl’s free again.”

A bubble of sadness sat in Vivi’s throat, but she swallowed it. What right did she have to comment on their marriage? She thought of the last time she saw Wayland, also a year ago, afterEnmeshment. How his jaw had twitched, pulling at the serpent tattoo running up the side of his neck.

In the lab, the sisters sat at a long wooden table. Vivi studied Calla under the lights. Same slash of crimson lipstick. No flush, no palpitations. She did fidget more than usual, stroking a strand of her hair, drumming her elbow as she studied the works in progress lining the walls. But wasn’t Calla always a bit frenetic? That was the problem with someone as dynamic as her; even the most finely tuned memories could never capture the shifting hues of reality.

Vivi sniffed past the citrus perfume, trying to detect the rotting decadence of pinot noir or, worse yet, the sulfuric burn of Calla’s preferred uppers. Loving an addict meant that their vices would eventually become your permanent bedfellows. You brushed against them everywhere.

Calla scowled at Vivi’s obvious scrutiny. “Can you not?”

With effort, she shelved her concern. “I’m sorry. You’re sure nothing is wrong? You’re okay?”

“Better than okay.” Calla took Vivi’s hand and slid off the silver antler ring, placing it onto her own finger. “It’s my turn to wear the ring. You’ve hung onto it for too long.”

Over the decades, May’s ring had migrated from sororal hand to sororal hand, sometimes lifted under protest, sometimes given up in important moments, such as the day of Calla’s wedding, when her nerves made her want to leap out the window and only Vivi’s soothing assurances—and the familiar press of the antler ring—could keep her in place. Now Vivi felt the bareness of her finger but admitted that Calla was right. It was her time.

“Don’t lose it,” Vivi said.

Calla scoffed. “I’m not the one who mislaid her sister’s favorite pair of cowboy boots at a frat party. Who loses theirshoesin the middle of a party anyway?”

“They were— Never mind. What did you want to show me?”

Calla pulled out the manila folder and set two items down. Each was protected in a plastic pocket. One was a small, eight-by-ten sketch on fine cotton paper. The other, a letter creased neatly into eighths.

Vivi examined the sketch first. The subject was a pair of women, staring from the surface of a mirror. A thin fissure of charcoal separated them. The strange part was that the faces were blank, as if the artist had paused amid the work, but even without those details, Vivi recognized the composition immediately. The sketch-in-progress was a replica of Vietnamese French Surrealist painter K. P.Lý’sBlue Mirror, a painting due to arrive at the Forster the very next day. The coincidence made Vivi quaver with inner prescience.

Blue Mirrorwas the first and only work of portraiture byLý, named by historians for the tactile streaks of blue dominating the painting. The blues were broken by an ominous trail of red dividing the women’s faces. Scholars guessed thatBlue Mirrorwas painted sometime in the 1930s, beforeLý’s final disappearance in 1943, making it one of his last—and most inscrutable—works.

Lý’sdiminutive oil-on-canvas had been recently bequeathed to the Forster’s permanent collection by the late granddame of Chicago arts, Maxine Ph?m. To commemorate the acquisition, Samuel built an exhibition of Asian expatriate art aroundBlue Mirror. He called itSea to Earth,a typically evocative name. The exhibition would be opening in three weeks, hopefully to laurels and glowing reviews.

But because of a labyrinthine series of legal obstacles,Blue Mirrorwasn’t due to arrive on the premises until the following day. No one at the Forster, except Samuel, had seen it in person. Every other assigned work inSea to Earthsat in Gallery C, duly flashing their best behind the cordoned ropes and plastic sheeting, but at the center of it all, there was a waiting space, into whichBlue Mirrorwould slide.

Vivi snatched up the sketch. “You did this?”

“No. I found it in Dad’s shed. I recognized the reference because of theTribarticle.”

The local papers had posted small pieces about the Forster’s newest acquisition, mostly due to the PR from Samuel’s upcoming exhibition. But Vivi didn’t understand how their father could have known aboutBlue MirrororSea to Earth. He’d been far away, in Wisconsin. And he’d never mentioned art in any significant way. Certainly never K. P.Lý.

She brought the sketch close. The linework was confident and sophisticated, not the work of an amateur. By now, she’d honed a sense of presage when it came to art; after years of study, her body could intuit when a piece was worthy of extra attention. Anticipation began to rise in her, but she tamped it down again.