Page 70 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“We’re going to book a car,” she said. “The bus will take too long, and we haven’t seenVi?tNam. We can’t let this opportunity pass us by—traveling together, finally! The way we always wanted.”

“Sure. That’s a good idea.”

“Maybe after LongXuyên, we should go to Cam Ranh. Mom’s relatives will be there.”

“The assholes who didn’t bother to tell us she died?”

“You can yell at them in person. Aren’t you curious?”

Vivi was. But she also understood that this period of wandering wasn’t sustainable. Once they found the offering—if they found it—there’d be consequences to face. Vivi’s savings were nearly depleted. She needed to find another job. They had to decide what to do about the farmhouse in Deer Creek. But Calla wasn’t interested in the drear of practicalities. She would do what she’d always done. Take on odd jobs, wheedle her way into adventures, live day to day with the desperation that chased her, confident that the world would take care of her.

“We can’t keep jumping from place to place for the rest of our lives.”

“Why not, when it sounds so fun?”

“Why do you keep running? From your life? From me?”

Calla turned, incredulous, so she could peer into Vivi’s face. “I’m not running away from you, you self-absorbed nitwit.”

“I’m the self-absorbed one.”

Calla ignored this. “I’m running because I love to run. You know this. It’s always been in me, this need to fly. Now that I’m sober, released from Wayland and his impossible expectations, the color is back in the world.It’s a Kandinsky, a Hockney. There are so many brushstrokes to follow; I’m going to chase them all.”

“Until you collapse?”

“Running isn’t a symptom of my addiction. Running is what makes meme.”

Vivi considered this. What was essential and immutable in a person? Was it the way they spoke or the choices they made or the way they drank their coffee? Could Calla be Calla without the pain of the past, the questions that drove her to run? Vivi had a sense of kaleidoscopic turning.

In a small voice, she asked, “What happens to me whenever you disappear?”

Calla gave her a look that was part sympathy and part exasperation. “You stay, Bee. You stay and you live your life. That’s what you always wanted. You see it, don’t you? You’re meant to have a family. Not the kind we had. Not like the Ingalls either. A noisy, happy, imperfect, boring family. But you’re running too, just in a different way. I run toward what I want; you run away from it.”

“Maybe I don’t know how to stay.”

“Sure you do. You’ve never left me. Just do that for yourself this time.”

An hour later, the sisters were strapped into the back of a rust-colored sedan that had seen better days. It smelled of fried scallions and wet dog and the sort of sticky sweat that pools in the creases of your skin after languishing afternoons. An advertisement for a hair salon was taped to the cracking leather of the back seat:The New You Is Waiting. Vivi and Calla rolled down the windows and coughed out the residue of the previous passengers.

For the first few miles, their driver, Ted, spent more time honking than pushing the gas pedal, weaving through the streets with stomach-roiling jerks and sudden brakes that jammed the sisters against each other, like Lincoln Logs in a bucket. He leaned back every few minutes to shootthem a grin meant to be reassuring. His well-groomed mustache fell at the ends, like the arms of a defeated general.

He dangled a toothpick from his lips, speaking softly through his earbuds to what appeared to be a very disgruntled lover. His coaxing—alternately fervent and defiant—became the soundtrack of the three-and-a-half-hour ride.

Calla was easily distracted by the scenery, pointing at cyclists with towering baskets of fruit and flowers. While they were stopped in traffic, she leaned out a window and bought them skewers of grilled beef. The lemongrass stuck in their teeth and the oil from the meat slicked against their lips. Food tasted better here, it was a fact. Vivi laughed as Calla reached through the window again, this time fluttering a bill toward the peanut seller, who was only too glad to oblige with a paper sack of boiled nuts.

“I like to hear you laughing. Are you happy?” Calla asked. She squeezed a fleshy peanut from its shell into Vivi’s outstretched hand.

“I am.” She found that it was true. Her conversation with Calla had eased the weight of her mother’s words.Keep close to your sister.Not entirely, but by a little, the vise was loosening. “Are you?”

“The happiest. This country is magic. I never want to leave. Maybe I won’t.”

Vivi worked past the needle in her gut, not wanting to dwell on the future yet. “What do you think the offering is?”

“It has to be a piece of art. Right?”

“A hiddenLýpainting. Would it belong to us?”

“Who else could claim it?”