Page 57 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

The city was approximately a hundred and eighty kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, hovering toward the tip of the country’s rattling tail. Multistory buildings and strips of residences sprung up on either side of the floating market. Flat warehouse roofs and evenly spaced agricultural boundaries gridded the spaces beyond the concentrated city center.

The house on the ravine.Tâmhad mentioned such a house in herjournal. But how many houses like that existed in 1943? Blanc’s entry seemed to indicate that the description was specific enough for the shipment to find its destination. But there were hundreds of tributaries spawning from the mother river, the mightyH?u, and no way for her to know which held the secrets of her family’s past.

Vivi’s eyes began to cross. Was that the flexuous river where her great-grandmother staged her death? Did she give birth to Vivi’s grandfather under that brown awning on the western edge of the bank? Or was it that corrugated roof on the northern side? She spent the night at her desk, forgetting dinner and sleep to research everything she could about LongXuyênand its surrounding areas.

By morning, she had made her decision. She’d go toVi?tNam and fumble her way around once she was there. Her roots had been in art scholarship, in panning for the specks of gold from meaningless sediment. If there was something left to find, she might be the one to find it. But she wouldn’t do it without Calla. In the eternal ledger between sisters, Vivi was deep in the red. Before that, however, she had one last thing to settle.

She texted Wayland.Can we meet? I have some things to tell you in person.

The dreaded ellipses. But then—

The Point. I’ll be there in an hour after my run.

There was a peninsula on the south side of the city where a graying seawall curved into the amorphous outline of a toadstool. On one side, sunbathers lay with knobby knees and tortoiseshell sunglasses that left medallions of pallor after their removal. On the other, Lake Michigan, blue as cornflowers in some lights, turbid laurel in others. Clouds strung across the invisible loom of the sky, while dogs huffed as their paws slapped the water.

Once, before their rift, Calla would sit on the rocks in her red bikini, counting Vivi off as she dived into the lake.Ready, steady, go!Calla could not swim well, but she liked to watch Vivi’s purposeful strokes cuttingthrough the waves. She’d remark that Vivi seemed more mechanical than human out there, arms pulling so vigorously they seemed driven by horsepower. Vivi was proud to be seen this way by her sister. Indomitable.

Even when the shoreline emptied of swimmers and became littered with tumbling fast-food wrappers, when winter began to whistle its fluty song, the sisters would meet at the Point. Over the years, as work and marriage and distance wedged between them, those meetings dwindled. And yet Vivi would always think of it as their spot.

Now she waited for Wayland on the stone revetment that stood against Lake Michigan. She closed her eyes against the sting of the wind, imagining herself enfolded within the woods of Deer Creek, swimming in another, less magnificent and more potent body of water.

She was kicking inside the artery of gold that stretched through the pines and birches until it met the Wolf River in a rushing exhale. Her toes sinking into the soft give of the creek floor. Instinctively, she listened for the echoes of two children who did not yet know all that awaited them on the untrammeled banks of the future.

The sisters were floating on their backs, pinkies hooked. Every time one of them began drifting, the other tugged her back with a crook of the finger. Out, and back again. The effortless rhythm of salvation.

From a faraway place, Calla asked, “You know why Dad is afraid of water?”

“He’s not afraid. He just doesn’t like to swim. Like you.”

“That’s what he says. Because: can you imagine him admitting any weakness?”

“Guess not.” Vivi paused to concede the point. “Okay then, why is he afraid?”

“Mom told me. One of his relatives drowned in the river near their home. Or maybe it was the bath.”

“You can’t drown in a bath, Button.”

“Anyway, Dad’s family started thinking of it as a curse. No one wasallowed to go near water after she died. They even moved away from the river, into the city, and as for Dad...”

Calla’s voice was fading. When Vivi turned to her, Calla had already disappeared. Vivi strained her fingers, searching for her sister’s hot clasp, the revelations that were just out of reach. What else was she going to say? Vivi dove under, parsing through the waves for Calla, but her hands met emptiness.

She was holding her breath. A burble, a press of pain. Just a bit longer. Her body could hold so much—the past, the present, the unknowable spaces in between—so long as she kicked against the inexorable tug of the darkness beneath her.

When Vivi finally gasped up for air, reality descended like a star shower. The moment at the creek slipped away and she was back on Lake Michigan, alone, dreaming along the seawall. She scooted back from the rocks.

“Viv? What are you doing out there?”

In the distance, a figure stood against the white light. Wide shoulders, a daredevil slouch to his stance. Vivi raised her hand in greeting. She was shaken but determined not to show it. More and more, reality felt like a room she could slip in and out of, its walls porous and suggestive.

Wayland jogged to her side. He wore a pair of loose sweatpants, a shirt that bore the logo of his filmmaking union. Once he reached the wall, he shook his hair. Dark wings framed his features. Upturned eyes, a gift from his Chinese mother, and pale skin from his Irish-Welsh-everything-else father.

“If it isn’t my former sister-in-law.”

“I prefer friend.” She smiled despite the awkwardness. With Wayland, happiness was habit.

“Is that what we are? Friends who avoid each other for a year?” But he was already pulling her in for a hug, rubbing his cheek against her hair like a collie finding its favorite spot.

They settled next to each other in the grass. He stretched his legs infront of him and watched the runners panting on the paths in their sleek, neoprene gear.