Page 10 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Bitingly, she said, “I should think you’d want to know too, as a historian. ”

“Okay. So you’re saying you want to strip it?”

“Yes.”

He blew air from his mouth. “We need to discuss this. You, me, and Abel.”

“Fine.”

“AfterSea to Earth. Then we can do this together. The right way, with all the permissions we need.”

Three weeks. Could she wait? But it wouldn’t be just three weeks. She understood how bureaucracy worked. A month, at least, to pin Abel down for a meeting. He’d dawdle and sigh about paperwork. The board would have to be involved, another month or two. They’d swish about, talking about wasted resources and bad press if it didn’t pan out, and they’d drag their heels into oblivion until Vivi gave up. None of it would be worth a thing if she didn’t have the support of the head curator. Of Samuel.

“But do you believe me?” Her voice was small.

He swallowed. “I believe that you believe it.”

“Fuck your psychotherapy talk.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them.

He drew back. It was a point of contention between them, his firm belief in therapy and her firmer belief in just getting through it all without looking backward. Navel-gazing, she called it. Raised in a family that valued communication and emotional balance, Sam had the luxury of talking about his experiences. As a child fighting to survive, Vivi simply didn’t have the time for self-reflection. She still didn’t.

She knew that her cynicism was rooted not in conviction, but in fear, like so many of her other choices. But the careful way he spoke around her, as one would a wounded animal, stoked her anger. She thought she detected, under his gentleness, a hint of condescension.

“Please don’t talk to me like that,” he said, wounded.

“Don’t talk tomelike that.” She was being an asshole, but she couldn’t stop herself.

He sighed. “Do you know that the word ‘curator’ comes from the Latin rootcurare, to watch over? To guard. This painting is my responsibility. I love you, Vivi, and I think you’re brilliant. But I can’t let you strip it on a hunch. Especially since—”

He stopped abruptly. Red flooded Vivi’s vision. He’d promised,they’d all promised, that it was in the past. Her one mistake. The one that had nearly cost her her career.

Two years ago, before Smith’s last exhibition opening, Vivi had insisted she saw a faint outline of a figure in a shadowed corner of a K. K. Hebbar oil painting. She convinced Smith that a discovery of that magnitude would garner media attention for the exhibition. Lured by the promise of scholarly acclaim, Smith had agreed to delay the opening so Vivi could examine the painting closer. And then, after a week of painstaking effort, Vivi had found nothing at all, only a chemical mutilation of the paint from natural degradation. Smith had been furious; Abel, dolorous. And Vivi had never quite lived down the humiliation of that mistake.

“Right.” She snatched the envelope from Samuel. “I see.”

“Please, can I take you to coffee? We can talk about your father, if you want. I know it’s complicated, finding all this after his death.”

Her laugh was brittle. “I’m good. Thanks. I just need to get to work.”

“V—”

“This frame is filthy.”

“And tonight? I’ll see you for Phoebe’s recital?”

She ran her tongue below her canines, feeling their sharp press. The beast was gnashing inside of her, clawing at her rib cage, demanding release. She wanted him out of her space. If he stayed, she would scream, she would throw something at him, she would become her father’s double. And she’d spent their whole relationship hiding her wildness from Samuel.

When he came in for a kiss, she turned her head, so it fell against her cheek. He lingered, as if to say something else, but she’d turned to pick up a steel spatula from her tray. She bit her lip so hard it began to bleed and she tasted metal and mud and a deeper betrayal of the body. As soon as he was gone, she locked the door to the lab. She drew the blinds. And she got to work.

Chapter 4

It didn’t take nearly as long as she thought it would. First came the dusting, the swabbing of grime, rolling cotton over pockets of accumulated dirt. Then she removed the yellowed varnish with a bespoke mixture of solvents, halting the process through a precise application of neutralizer. This was a delicate moment: too much solvent and the paint might warp and swell; too little, and the cleaning must be repeated, time wasted.

But her expert body took over, as it always did, and she was rewarded for her efforts. Already, the painting was brighter and more luminous, as if lit from within.

She knew from the scant record of provenance thatBlue Mirrororiginated from a German collector who later sold the painting to an automotive heiress, who then auctioned it off at Christie’s to Maxine Ph?m in the 1990s. All previous owners were now deceased. Maxine had kept the painting in temperature-controlled storage, so its condition was better than that of most that came into Vivi’s lab. But even the efforts of the most conscientious art collector could never quite stall time’s unsympathetic progress.

Her phone buzzed with messages, but she didn’t stop to check them.Blue Mirrorwas coming back to life under her hand.