Page 6 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“So why did Dad have the sketch? Did he draw it?”

“Of course not,” Calla said. “He’s no artist. But it’s something, right? As soon as I saw it, I knew you’d be interested.”

Vivi didn’t dare take the sketch out of the plastic sheeting, but she longed to examine it under her loupe. “I don’t understand. It’sBlue Mirrorexactly, line for line. All except for the faces. Why did the artist leave those off?”

“How should I know? Where is it, anyway? The painting.” Calla glanced around, as if Vivi was keepingBlue Mirrorunder one of the canvas drapes.

“It’s being reframed. Maxine liked a Baroque treatment. Samuel thought the painting might be best displayed with a simpler frame.”

Calla’s face shuttered at the mention of Samuel’s name. They’d met once at a rooftop restaurant Vivi carefully selected for the occasion. Calla and Wayland were inexcusably late, arriving from a film screening across town, already sloshed and belligerent. Samuel had tried to be pleasant, but his inner metronome had been set off-rhythm by the delay. He came across as stilted and bland. Vivi had been pained to see her sister’s eyes glaze over when he spoke. Wayland, smirking when Samuel set his card down for the check.

Then, toward the end of the night, Calla and Wayland erupted in an explosive argument over one of Wayland’s assistant filmmakers, a pretty, young Columbia graduate, and the two of them left in a clatter of upturned tableware and stained linens. Samuel quietly put everything back to order.It’s okay, V. We’ll try again another time.But Vivi didn’t have the heart to attempt another meeting.

Now she reached into her pocket and jangled the chatelaine, that placeholder for possibility. Vivi wouldn’t tell Calla about Samuel’s offer. She couldn’t bear for Samuel’s gesture to be tainted by her sister’s scorn, abrasive enough to scour any fledgling hope that’d begun to emerge.

“Can you get to it?” Calla asked suddenly. “Blue Mirror?”

Calla’s words spun circles of misgiving around Vivi. Her sister’s desires had layers: What she wanted, then why she wanted it, and what that want could cost.

“Why do you want the painting?”

“Read the letter.”

Vivi lifted it from the plastic. The paper was thin, as transparent as onion skin. Its edges were tea-stained. The letter was unsigned and written in Vietnamese, in a hand she didn’t recognize. After the final sentence, there was an ornate sketch of a sundial. Vivi had never seen anything like it before. It was spiky and artful with minute, decorative notches between each numeral. Not a utilitarian sundial, then, but an ornamental one.

Interstitial

June 1945

Most beloved,

I died so you could live. This is dramatic. And it is true. You will someday understand that art comes not only from life but from its absence.

Has it all been worth it? You will answer that question for yourself. I hope there will be forgiveness in your answer. But even if there isn’t, know that my love for you can—and does—exist in the silence between us. I ask, undeserving, for your faith.

You may wonder: Where do I find the audacity? The same way any of us do—from desperation.

I am on the verge of a second, perhaps more immutable, death. I won’t offend you with scrambled last words or portentous tidings. Only an offering that may finally illuminate. When my body is gone, the art is all that is left.

Go to the place where time peels from light—you’ll know it when you see it. Then you will understand that everything that is mine has only ever belonged to you.

Vivi set the letter on the table.

“Dad wrote this?”

“Don’t be slow. It was written in 1945. He was five years old then.”

“But what does it mean? What can he possibly have to do withBlue Mirroror K. P.Lý?”

“I’m going to tell you something. And save your judgment; I don’t want to hear it.”

Vivi pressed her lips together as Calla recalled howTu?nhad reached out to her in the weeks beforeEnmeshment. He’d asked her to come see him in Deer Creek. He’d entered a program, had begun making amends. At first she resisted, but then they talked on the phone. Minutes at a time; then longer conversations. In the months before his death, she’d returned to Wisconsin a few times, stayed the weekend in the sisters’ old bedroom as he shared the stories he’d withheld in their childhood. They became close. Or closer, at least, than they’d ever been.

On their last call, he said he was working on something spectacular, a discovery he needed his daughters’ help with. He was more excited than she’d ever heard, Calla said. Like a kid before a birthday. Soon, he’d said, he would tell them everything he knew.

But then, his sudden death. His maroon truck hurtling at high speed down the country roads, swerving in the dark until it crashed into a tree less than a mile from the highway. Everyone assumed alcohol, pills, the usual. Calla insisted it couldn’t have been. He’d promised her he was sober.

Vivi snorted.