Page 56 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Ashamed, she didn’t call Calla right away. She didn’t confess to Samuel. She didn’t blow any of their lives up. What if she had? Would it have stopped anything? The longer she went, the harder it was to break the calcifying silence. The less she wanted to. Even now, she had not yet found a way to voice all her regrets. She only feinted and flinched from Calla and Wayland in the months after the opening, as if her avoidance might erase her crimes. Still hiding herself, knowing that, this time, she didn’t want to be found.

Chapter 16

Present Day

Two days after Calla left her in Arles, Vivi found herself loitering in front of the Forster, a weekday stream of dogwalkers and joggers coursing around her. Jet-lagged, aimless, she didn’t know exactly how she’d ended up back at the museum. Maybe she hoped for a glimpse ofBlue Mirror, even though there’d be no way to access the painting now. It’d be shielded in Gallery C, protected by the guards who’d regard her with the faintly suspicious apathy they saved for overeager patrons. Abel hadn’t outright stated that she was banned from the Forster, so there’d be no legal recourse for her curiosity. But she remained outside, stalled by her own shame.

In her most secret of hearts, she knew what she was hoping for. It was noon. Samuel usually brought his lunch, a sandwich from the corner bodega or a Tupperware of his ex-wife’s newest creation, but occasionally, he got restless and walked the streets with a granola bar like a modern flâneur. She longed for a glimpse of his striding confidence, the clear joy in his gaze as it swept around his surroundings. With him, she often wondered if joy was something you could borrow, like a toothbrush or a spare T-shirt. Used, then returned, none the worse for the wear.

Samuel deserved to know that he was the one who’d led her to the journal buried under the bench in Arles. Him and Dr. Dirt. Maybe he’deven know what to do next. They’d always leaned on each other when one of them encountered an art conundrum they couldn’t solve alone. Their minds seemed to skip with the same cadence; words were often extraneous between them.

But now the silence was of a different sort, more conclusive. Many times since the night she left the Forster, she’d composed emails to him, hoping to explain it all, thinking that if she could find the most correct and earnest arrangement of words, he might forgive her.

I would never hurt the art—

I do love you, in the only way I know how—

She deleted each email without sending it.

Vivi counted the days. A little over a week between the moment when Calla appeared on the museum steps and this moment, when she stood alone.

After all that, she didn’t even have her great-grandmother’s journal anymore. Calla had taken it with her when she’d left Maison de Notre Rêve, though Vivi didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like Calla could read French. But maybe Calla’s reason was as simple as love. That was more than Vivi could say for herself. Her own rationale had never been so clear.

At this point, giving up agency would be a relief. Maybe the past had yielded all it would.

Then, as she turned from the Forster, she heard a dinging alert on her phone. She harbored a fleeting thought that Samuel had glimpsed her from his office window. Maybe he wanted her to meet him, to make everything right again. She fumbled to unlock her screen, but it wasn’t a text. Instead, an email had arrived from Paul Quân.

To: VivianNguy?n[[email protected]]

From: Paul Quân [[email protected]]

Subject: an offering

Vivi,

I can’t seem to shake my curiosity about our conversation, these weeks later. Was the mysterious and melancholy artist yourLýafter all? Did he stay with Justine for the entire summer? In rereading my book manuscript—oh, endnotes, dreaded endnotes—I see that summer of 1936 is an oddly silent one for Blanc, especially for one so typically prolific in his correspondence. It’s as if a slice of his history has been gobbled up, leaving not a crumb behind for a scavenger like myself. It perturbs me, this silence.

And then I return to your letter fromLýwith its strange sundial and all the yearning, the regret. There is something in the hand that feels important. Like a snag of thread in an otherwise faultless tablecloth. I have honed an instinct for anomaly in my later years. Maybe now, I can admit that you might not be quite as inept a researcher as I thought. Or maybe it’s simply a case of the broken clock being correct twice a day.

As an apology for my brusqueness, I have something to offer in return for the letter you (stupidly) relinquished. This morning, I unearthed in one of my digital trash bins a scan of Blanc’s shipping log from 1943. (My organization, I confess, is not exemplary.) The log was incomplete and largely nonsensical to me. Normally, I might have discarded the page; what evidence, after all, can a stack of numbers and addresses really give us?

But then I saw one entry that stood out from the rest. Instead of a street address, it was simply the name of a town—uncommon for someone like Blanc, who was regular in his denotations, if nothing else. “The house on the ravine, LongXuyên,Vi?tNam.” I couldn’t find a house that matched the description in Blanc’s source material. Why, I asked, would my old friend have an interest in an obscure spot in a country he’d never visited or expressed interest in?

It might be a coincidence. An aberration. Who am I to say! I’m including a copy of the shipping entry. You’ll notice that Blanc sent rolls of canvas, paints, thinning agents, and sardines. A motley yet notable cache, no? Maybe it’s worth your time to investigate. (It is not worth mine!) Despite my better impulses, I find myself rooting for you.

Fortitude!

PQ

PS. I’ve been thinking of a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that I encountered last week. It reminds me of yourBlue Mirror. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” Beautiful, isn’t it? Sad too. We never can really see each other, not even in the poetry of our fantasies.

Chapter 17

Vivi didn’t notice how dim the light had gotten in her studio apartment. She’d been staring for what felt like hours into a satellite view of a town buffeted on the east by the squiggle of a river and hugged by fields of malachite in every other direction.

In the early days of the twentieth century, back when SouthVi?tNam was still known as French-occupied Cochinchina, LongXuyênwas a developing outpost. Over time, the city grew, until it eclipsed its neighbors and became the capital city of the An Giang Province, an urban center that drew young people and, occasionally, tourists into the Mekong River Delta.

LongXuyênwas also her father’s birthplace, the place he referred to often and with great longing as his true home. She hadn’t remembered until recently. When they were younger,Tu?nhad occasionally traveled to LongXuyênover the years whenever there was money to spare.