Page 84 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Linh told Vivi thatBàAnh, her mother, had something to share with Vivi.Ki`êuhad relayed Vivi’s interest in the house by the ravine, and that, combined with Vivi’s mentions of a sundial, sparked something in the older woman’s memory.

“I’m coming right now,” Vivi said. She stepped forward so swiftly that dark spots blotted her vision.

Calla rose as they spoke. “I want to hear what she has to say too.”

The sisters walked together to the sitting room, whereBàAnh held a sheaf of papers. She handed them to Vivi. They were the plans of a building, etched on transparent drafting paper.

“Do you recognize it?”BàAnh asked. She held a cup of tea in her palms. Jasmine-scented steam fogged in front of her.

Vivi shook her head but continued examining the blueprints. She didn’t understand until she got to the last page. On it was an architect’s rendering of a room with a thin arrow pointing to one of the interior walls. There, sketched onto the wall, was a tiny sundial, a crude replica of the one drawn onto the last page ofTâm’s journal and her letter to Huy.

“Ð?má,” Calla breathed, looking over her sister’s shoulder.

“How do you have these?” Vivi was blinking rapidly. It was too much to hope for.

BàAnh unfolded a curling edge of the blueprint. “My father was the most talented builder in town, so when MadameLýarrived, she sought him out to renovate the house by the ravine. These belonged to him. I remember how many long hours he worked on that renovation. It was unlivable before he got to it.”

“What does that arrow signify?” Vivi asked. She pressed her fingertip on the drawn sundial, as if it would unlock a passageway beneath the page.

“Once, he told my mother about a strange request that MadameLýhad made. She said that he should leave a hollow space in the wall behind a tapestry she’d commissioned from a local weaver. That drawing was his way of marking the spot, so he wouldn’t forget. She’d sworn him to secrecy, but there were no secrets between Má and Ba.”

Vivi’s breath stilled. “What was on that tapestry?”

“The design was based on one of her paintings. My father said there were creatures the likes of which no one had ever seen—monsters from a nightmare. They all spun around an object at the center of the tapestry.”

“A sundial.”

“A sundial.”BàAnh paused. “So it means something to you, that sundial?”

The sisters exchanged a look. Calla nodded. Then Vivi explained toBàAnh that they believed something had been placed in the wall behind the tapestry. Something essential to art scholarship, yes, but also to their family. She showed her the stripped version ofBlue Mirror, the photos she’d taken ofTâm’s letter. She described, briefly, the contents of the journal they’d found in Arles.

“What is it? This offering you’re hoping to find?”

“I don’t know,” Vivi said. She bit the corner of her thumbnail, hesitating. “We’d need to break into the wall to find it, whatever it is.”

Vivi thoughtBàAnh might have been aghast at their sacrilege or at least try to talk them out of damaging a piece of history, but she only looked thoughtful. “You’ve come all this way for this sundial?”

“Yes.”

“And you think MadameLý, this K. P.Lý, is your great-grandmotherTâm.”

“It’s an unbelievable tale, I know.”

BàAnh was gazing at the pile of blueprints in front of her. Vivi could see from the tender manner in which she rearranged the papers that she understood something about legacy. She’d preserved her own father’s for many years. Some cycles, Vivi surmised, did not need to be broken. They went on and on, fueled by the persistence of love and memory.

Finally,BàAnh said, “Stranger things have happened here. This delta holds a million secrets; why notTâm’s? If you say it’s so, I believe you.”

Calla asked, “Can you tell us what you remember of MadameLý’s time at the house by the river?”

“It’s okay if it’s not much,” Vivi added. “It was a long time ago.”

“I remember more than you’d think,”BàAnh said, a bit sharply. “That was the mid-forties, I suppose. Those were quieter times within the endless string of wars. The war in Europe, of course, raged, but that was far away in our minds. In our country, it was just before theVi?tMinh and the French were at each other’s throats. And I was a young girl, dying for excitement, eager to gather any bits of adult gossip I could. So naturally I eavesdropped on my parents whenever they spoke of MadameLý. She reminded me of a figure from a fairy tale. Or a spirit from a ghost story that kids like to scare each other with.”

“She was, in a way,” Vivi said. “The woman who never drowned.”

“My father always said that MadameLýwas not entirely of this world. She didn’t scare him, exactly, but she made him nervous. Those intense eyes. That ceaseless painting—all of which she destroyed before her death. Her sight often traveled beyond him, he said, as if she were seeing something us normal people couldn’t. Or, as if she was waiting for something.”

Her Chaton? Her son? The impossibility of a life where she could have both? Want ran in their blood. None could escape it, that insatiable hunger.