Page 78 of The Seekers of Deer Creek
Impulsively, Vivi reached over and hugged Calla, pressing her sister’swarm head near her heart.Ki`êu’s stories had underlined the fragility of life, how easy it was to lose what you most loved.
A beat later, Calla wriggled free. “Why are you so obsessed with me?”
After they ate dinner with the family and settled into a spare room, Calla leapt across Vivi on the bed to claim the side closest to the window, the cooler side. They faced each other. Vivi smelled the grassy sweetness of pandan syrup on her breath. A slick of sweat articulated the baby hairs near her temple into black crosshatches.
Across from them, on another bed, a set of visiting cousins slept back-to-back, thighs wrapped around long body pillows. They reminded Vivi of caterpillars twisting around twigs. Their snores wound around the sisters, muffling their conversation.
“Aren’t you glad we came?” Calla whispered.
“It’s been illuminating.”
“We have an uncle. Cousins.”
“More of Dad’s secrets.”
“His paintings, though,” Calla said. “They’re beautiful.”
“They’re fine.” Vivi was lying. Earlier that night,Ki`êuhad shown the sisters the rest ofTu?n’s art and she had privately marveled at each. Landscapes, mostly, done with precision and skill. His palette was consistent, his vision true. She struggled to understand how someone who could see the world so clearly could also fail to understand his own limitations when it came to his family.
Calla kicked her lightly in the shin. “Why are you so mad at him still?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“You were never so angry at Mom when she left.”
“I didn’t have time to be angry. I was busy making sure you were taken care of. Becausehedisappeared into a bottle every night.”
“So that’s it, then, you’ll never forgive him?”
“He didn’t ask for my forgiveness.”
“Maybe you weren’t ready to listen.”
They stared at each other, sheets of blame laid in the space between them. Finally, Calla faltered. She looked away first. But the victory felt hollow to Vivi. She didn’t want to win, she only wanted to be understood.
“Tomorrow,” Vivi said. “After the wedding. We’ll go toTâm’s house then.”
Calla adjusted her pillow. “Sure, okay. But what if we stayed for a while? Here. With our family. What if this was what we’d been missing all along?”
“And the offering?”
“There’s always time.”
“Nowwe’re in no rush?”
“Can’t you hear the call?”
“What call?”
“Destiny.”
“I can’t with you, Madame Clairvoyant.”
“You’ll see. Something bigger than us is waiting in this town.”
Vivi shut her eyes and thought of the teenage boys who’d tried to catchTâm’s ghostly reflection in the river. How they imagined they heard her too. Were they the mad ones? Or was it Vivi, so cut off from the possibility of things she couldn’t understand?
A creature whistled in the darkness—a bird, a beast, a human—and she strained her ears toward the sound, as if it would tell her something new. But she simply couldn’t hear the same things her sister did. Not destiny, not promises from beyond the grave. Maybe she never could. Their psychic alienation, once a pond, now a yawning and uncrossable ocean, became too much for her.
