Page 69 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“You can’t live your life for me,” Vivi repeated. “Calla. I have never lived my life for anyonebutyou.”

There had to have been a time before Calla, but Vivi couldn’t excavate that far back in her memory. Still, she tried to imagine it. Her as an unsistered toddler, ambling on pigeon toes through the farmhouse. Reaching for the bobbing tassels on the tablecloth. Nestling her nose into the animal warmth of May andTu?n, whose stubble sandpapered against her forehead.

Maybe that time, the Calla-less breach, would have been lighter and less burdened. Or maybe it’d simply been lonelier.

The indigo river glimmered with lights from the cruise boats and skyscrapers, a cloudy mirror held up to the city’s many extravagances.

“No one asked you to do that.”

“No?” Vivi had never revealed May’s last words to Calla, intuiting on some level that it would cheapen Vivi’s years of caretaking. She worried that Calla would feel like a burden. For all the things they had cause to doubt, she never wanted Calla to doubt her.

Calla was yawning, bored of this now-familiar argument. “It’s too late to get into it with you.”

Vivi hailed a cab and slid in next to her sister. After only a minute,Calla’s head was on Vivi’s shoulder and she was snoring lightly. Vivi breathed in the scent of orange groves and something deeper, a miasma of her sister’s mortality. She wished she had a potion to keep Calla sleeping, like Briar Rose in her uninterrupted night. But soon enough, Calla would be awake, her mind running loops through time and space, and Vivi would be again tasked with holding Calla against her will as she struggled toward a destiny that had nothing at all to do with Vivi.

At the hotel, Calla collapsed as soon as the door shut, boneless and still. It was as if she’d been waiting to let down her guard. Vivi pulled a blanket over and around her, tucking in the edges. One of Calla’s legs slid off the side of the bed, where it rambled in aimless pirouettes.

Vivi was tired too, but she didn’t feel ready for sleep. She opened her laptop and continued working on her letter to Samuel. She tweaked each sentence mercilessly, until her fingers stilled and she finally rested her head on the desk, spent of emotion and no less certain of what she had to say. There were no sufficient words, after all, for the pain that humans caused one another.

To: Samuel Noi [[email protected]]

From: VivianNguy?n[[email protected]]

Subject: Re: the perils of rationalizing [DRAFT]

Samuel,

The first thing is: I want you to know how sorry I am. I cherish your words, even the ones that hurt. You are the person I most admire and should have held closer. Your integrity is one of the things I love about you. I shouldn’t have put you in a position that threatened it. You did nothing wrong, neither you nor Phoebe. It was all me.

You asked if the risk was worth it. I don’t know how to answer that. I regret the way I left you. But I’ve also uncovered more than I’d ever hoped about myself and my past. I want you to know everything about me. Not because I think you could forgive me, but because you are the only person who ever saw me, despite how much I hid from you. I owe you my story.

I’ll start it the way I know best, as a warped little fairy tale.

Once upon a time, near the hem of the woods in Wisconsin, in a yellow farmhouse that often seemed as remote as a forgotten palace under the sea, lived two sisters who believed they would only ever have each other...

Chapter 22

That night, Vivi dreamed about diving into Lake Michigan. Only, the moment she sank underwater, the lake’s surface hardened above her into a thick layer of ice that she couldn’t break, no matter how forcefully she pounded at it. Freezing water flooded her nose, her eye sockets bulged. Everything was wet and burning at the same time. She would not survive. It would all be for nothing. Then, just before she let herself fall away into the surge of blue, a woman’s voice pushed through her consciousness.

Wake up, beloved.

Quickly now.

Time is peeling away.

“I keep telling you that you shouldn’t sleep like that. It’ll screw with your neck.”

Behind her on the bed, Calla stretched her arms to the ceiling like a tall, white lily. Sleep had made her cheeks rosy, healthful. Vivi imagined folding Calla up into an origami swan, sliding her in her pocket. With each passing moment, she felt an untraceable dread, wondering if it was the last time she’d see her sister. Calla, in this form, was one she wanted to keep. Who knew which Calla might show up next time?

Vivi rifled in her suitcase for fresh clothes.

“Can I borrow your toothbrush?” Calla asked. She pushed from thebed and vaulted past Vivi, jamming her elbow into Vivi’s hip as she raced for the bathroom.

“Ow.”

Calla rolled her eyes. “I barely grazed you.”

Minutes later, she emerged with Vivi’s toothbrush dangling from her mouth, foamy toothpaste dribbling down her chin. After Calla was done, she pushed Vivi’s laptop toward her.