Page 74 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“No chance. They were too tonal. And there were rarely figures in their work.”

“But look at the haze over here, near the grass. Rembrandt would have never fallen into that romanticism.”

Linh glanced back and forth between them, a bemused expression settling as they argued. Vivi handed the painting back to her.

“I’m sorry. We do this. Bicker too much. Especially about art.”

“I was just thinking how much you remind me of my own siblings.”

“Do you have any more of our father’s paintings?” Calla asked.

“Many.” The voice trailed from a back hallway, slightly high-pitched and unfamiliar. “We’ll show you all of them.”

Linh got up. “That’s yourC?uKi`êu. I’ll help him. He doesn’t need it, but I like to be needed.”

Linh brought their uncle into the room in a wheelchair.Ki`êuwas an unassuming man, his hands placed on his lap, a shy smile tugging the sides of his mouth. He was clean-faced and sparse-haired, dressed in gray slacks and a linen button-down with a missing button near the collar. Thick white brows shielded eyes that were heavily lined at the corners, a product of a life of mirth. They’d learned that he was seventy-seven years old, five years their father’s junior, born the year thatTâmhad died.

Vivi studied him for similarities withTu?n. The brothers didn’t resemble each other in any discernible way, except perhaps in the rise of their cheekbones. Where her father possessed a brutish charisma,Ki`êuseemed gentle to a fault, like the sort of man who might frequently be taken advantage of by men likeTu?n. Lion and mouse, an unlikely brotherhood.

BàAnh said with overblown cheer, “Look who’s come!Tu?n’s girls from America.”

As Ki`êustudied them, Vivi saw that his eyes were not blue or black, but some shade in between. The color of hawk’s eye quartz; of pines in shadow on the coldest of January twilights; of rare sea creatures and pockets of the galaxies that light sought but could never reach.

Finally, their uncle said, “You’re just as I expected. AnhTu?nhad talked of you constantly. I worried over you after—”

He stopped, as if the fact of his brother’s passing was too terrible to articulate.

Why hadn’t he written them afterTu?n’s death? Or, for that matter, all those years before, when a friendly voice would have made all the difference? Maybe he had written in the last few months, but the letters hadarrived unanswered, stuffed into the mailbox that neither sister bothered to clear out after the funeral. Missed chances, the story of their lives.

Calla, buoyant in nearly any social situation, nearly throttled him with a hug. “We already feel like we’ve come home,C?uKi`êu.”

Vivi could only observe his mannerisms with taciturn detachment, searching for a break in his gentleness.

After the pleasantries and explanations,Ki`êusaid, “I’m happy to talk with you about your father. About our family, if you like. Will you girls sit by the bridge with me?”

“In this heat!” Linh protested.

She went to straighten his shirt collar. Seeing her aunt fuss over her family made Vivi ache. How many times had May committed these small acts of caregiving forTu?n? Laying a miniature soy sauce tin into his lunch box, wordlessly untying his boots at the back door because he struggled with the laces after the accident. She offered him countless deeds of love, and he still lost himself.

“Evening is almost here,”Ki`êu said, touching his wife’s hand lightly with his own.“If they don’t mind the mosquitoes.”

“I don’t,” Vivi said immediately, then turned to her sister. “Button?”

Calla hesitated, pen dangling from her fingers. “Why don’t you go without me? I’m in the middle of something. AndKhánhpromised to let me drive her motorbike before dinner.”

Her sketches lay next to her in a pile on the floor, each portrait rendered with swift, dynamic strokes. Amid her eagerness to get to know their relatives, Calla seemed to have forgotten that they’d come all that way forTâm. But Vivi saw her sister’s beseeching expression and gave in. One couldn’t force Calla to do something she didn’t want to.

“Fine,” Vivi said, suppressing her irritation. “You stay then. Don’t crash her bike.”

“Love you, mean it.”

Chapter 25

Out at the back of the house,Ki`êuwheeled himself down the ramp, shrugging off Vivi’s offers of assistance. The bridge in front of them led across a dry, shallow gulch and into an uncleared thicket. Her uncle’s chair caught at the planks, but he pushed it along, stronger than his age might suggest.

Even though he was the younger brother,Ki`êuseemed much older than her father. But it made sense. Vivi hadn’t seenTu?nfor years, since Calla’s wedding, so her image of him had frozen in time. The body she’d gazed upon in the coffin—clad in a pressed suit; signet ring on his pinky finger; a weird rictus grimace on his face—had been that of a stranger.

Vivi handedKi`êuthe unsent letter from her father, the one that had led the sisters to LongXuyên. “A delivery from beyond the grave.”