Page 65 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“I still have Dad’s ashes,” Calla told her, a trace of guilt in her voice. “We could take them to LongXuyêntoo.”

Vivi’s mouth hinged open. “You said you were going to spread them!”

“I was going to! But no place ever seemed important or meaningful enough. What, the BP that went out of business? The lumberyard where he lost his hand? Not like we had a lot of good memories to pick from.”

“I see what you mean. Okay, bring the ashes.”

“I’m keeping them in an Altoids tin.”

Vivi had a sudden recollection of finding mints in Calla’s suitcase. The containerhadfelt strangely light when she picked it up. Slowly, she asked, “Did you take our father’s ashes to Arles? In an Altoids tin?”

“I like to travel light.”

“CallaNguy?n!” But Vivi was laughing.

“Mint-infused dad cremains.”

“Stop it.” Vivi kicked at her.

Mischief draining, Calla said, “I spread some over the entrance of the estate before I left. I think he would have liked Provence. He always wanted to see Europe.”

The sisters were sober for a moment. Vivi would never have imagined that their father harbored any wanderlust. Every vacation he took was spent inVi?tNam. He dismissed May’s timid suggestions for them to take family trips to Chicago, Mackinac Island.White people vacations.When the girls are older, we’ll take them home. To Vi?t Nam.Back then, she hadn’t understood exactly what drew him to the same place over and over again. And now she knew. A brother, still alive; a network of relatives, possibly, who could illuminate the cipher that was their father. The thought filled Vivi with a vacillation of hope and its other, more complicated foil, a frustrated and consuming despair. Her parents’ secrets hadwhittled away at their family, shaving at the truth until all that was left was a brittle core that could be snapped between a child’s fingers.

Calla slapped at her own shoulder. “These no-see-ums are killing me. Let’s go inside. But I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I’m too buzzed from—everything.”

“There are probably DVDs around somewhere. We can watch a movie.”

“Or we can watchLittle House.”

May had carried a fierce devotion toLittle House on the Prairie. Perhaps it was the Wisconsin connection. Or maybe she identified with Caroline Ingalls, the calm, self-sacrificing mother she wanted to be. Many evenings, she’d stay up late watching syndicated reruns, until one Christmas whenTu?nbought her a boxed set of the DVDs. Then the sisters watched too, finding any excuse to sit with their harried mother in peace.

The year before she left, May made them costumes based on Mary and Laura Ingalls, braiding Calla’s hair, sewing white Peter Pan collars onto floral bedsheets-turned-dresses.

Whoever heard of Chinese pioneer girls?some kid had sneered during trick-or-treating.

Vivi shoved the boy backward, surprising them both with her force. He fell on the pavement, Halloween candy scattered around him.We’re Vietnamese, dummy. And we can be whoever thefuckwe want to be.

Tu?nwatched the confrontation from a distance up the street. Vivi thought he’d reprimand her for pushing the kid or for using a curse word, even though she’d learned such behavior from him, but he only winked, a flick of an eyelid that disappeared before she fully registered it, then walked on to the next house.It was complicated, his pride in her violence.

“Okay, let’s do it.” Vivi pulled Calla to standing. She quoted, with a catch in her voice, “Because ‘home is the nicest word there is.’”

They poked a fire into being and sat on the couch in front of the small Sony television, a musty-smelling fleece spread on their laps.

The swelling opening credits toLittle House on the Prairiewouldalways fill Vivi with a sense of borrowed contentment. Ma and Pa jogging along in their covered wagon through the red-clay town. Little Carrie tumbling in the grass, a fortuitous filming accident that the director kept in.

“Michael Landon is a zaddy,” Calla declared. “So tan and rugged. With those suspenders.”

“Don’t talk about Pa Ingalls that way.”

“I’d like to homesteadhisprairie.”

The windows were open at Calla’s insistence, after she’d declared the house a mausoleum of odors. A breeze wended in and stirred the newspapers laying around. Calla placed the Altoids tin on the table in front of them, raising her brows in response to Vivi’s drawn ones. Vivi shook her head and settled back onto a lumpy throw pillow.

From the beginning, each Ingalls sister had their delineated role: Mary, the eldest, was a scold, a worrywart. The good one. Laura was the tomboy, attuned to adventure, repelled by injustice. Theirs was an uneasy yet steadfast love. Or maybe it wasn’t so much love as an alliance based on proximity and need.

After a few episodes, Vivi paused the DVD. “I’m not sure this aged well.”

“I don’t remember it being so religious.”