Page 4 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Vivi stood rubbing her arms and tugging at the hem of her black blouse, unsure what to do with her face. Calla was hovering near the casket, bent slightly at the hip. From her sister’s incredulous glances, Vivi could tell that Calla found her lack of outward emotion heartless. It wasn’t that Vivi was gladTu?nwas dead, but she could not find it in herself to mourn him the way Calla did, nor apologize for her dearth of grief.

Vivi glanced down at her father, unrecognizable in his postmortem makeup and still, so still. She remembered a Naomi Shihab Nye poem she’d once read and loved, in which a young girl asks her mother how anyone knows if they’re going to die.

The mother had said:When you can no longer make a fist.

Each time the door to the viewing room opened—a solicitous attendant, an old coworker come to pay respects—the sisters turned swiftly, hope brimming in their eyes. Privately, both had thought May might show up to the funeral, her shuffle on the carpet, the gentle hands that would run across their brows like an eraser over a chalkboard. Maybe she was the only one who could mend the unspoken rift between them, the way she used to patch their secondhand jeans with embroidered stars.

Calla leaned over the casket to place her hand on their father’s. A tear dropped onto his chin.

Before she turned to walk out of the room, she said to Vivi, “He loved us. I know you don’t believe me. But he did.” She took her hand fromTu?n’s casket and held it up against Vivi’s protests. “I don’t want to argue today. I just want you to hear me.”

When, Vivi wondered, had they stopped standing on the same side? The girls who raced through the woods, twin shadows scrawling stories in the dirt, had become women who could no longer hold a conversation without hidden currents.

But before she could reply, Calla was gone and it was just Vivi standing alone with a corpse, bearing the weight of their shared griefs.

Chapter 2

When the Uber arrived outside of Samuel’s apartment, driven by a man with a crew cut, bored efficiency sunk into his features, Vivi asked if he could take her to another address, instead of the home location she’d selected from the app.

Minutes later, they pulled up next to the Forster. Ivy fell over the sides of the building like the locks of a Pre-Raphaelite muse. Swept, dove-gray steps led to a double set of doors. Off to the side, there was a neat placard announcing the building, as if it were a historical site. The museum’s reserved exterior gave it an air of secrecy. Few people knew it was a museum at first glance. One stumbled into the Forster with no expectations and emerged with a sense of having glimpsed a hidden world.

Vivi had been drawn to it from the start, with a fervor she found both surprising and heartening. When her emotions became too much for her, she found her way back there. In her lab, fussing over objects that had withstood the onslaught of time, she could convince herself that she was part of the vast river of human accomplishment. What were her problems, compared to the varnish obscuring a Madonna’s smile or a nick in the limestone bust of an ancient Egyptian queen?

As Vivi got out of the car, she glimpsed a shadow on the step. For a moment, she saw her mother with her nervous gait, the flopping bun at her nape. She quickened her pace. Twenty-seven years and she’d never stopped looking for May.

Then the shadow turned and it was Calla, standing in a red cardigan, her sleek bob cupping her jawline. Each of her sister’s features came to Vivi in pieces, a beautiful yet disjointed assemblage that eventually whisked into theher-ness that Vivi could identify a mile off. Amid her surprise, Vivi felt a deep softening inside of her, like the ease of sinking into a broken-in chair.There you are, she thought.

“Finally,”Calla cried. She clutched a manila folder under her arm. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Why are you here?” Trepidation tightened Vivi’s question so it sounded like an accusation she didn’t intend. Calla’s brows drew together. Vivi tried again, “I mean, how did you know I’d be here?”

Calla moved toward Vivi, not touching her, but looking as if she wanted to. “You’re always at the museum, if you’re not at your apartment. A slave to the art. I’ve been here for hours, you know. Feel my fingers.”

They were whitened, puckered at the tips. Calla was gaunter than Vivi had ever seen her, even during the week in junior year of college that she had strep and refused to consume anything other than broth. Her cheekbones were sculpted, eyes huge and glittering, almost feline in their intensity. She wore an ivory slip dress under her cardigan. On her feet, ankle-high boots without socks or tights.

Vivi rubbed Calla’s fingers in her own hands. “You look like an urchin.”

“You’re the only person in the twenty-first century who still uses the word ‘urchin’ as an insult.”

“Why are you dressed like that? It’s forty degrees out.”

“You’re getting soft. We used to snowshoe in our pajamas.”

“With parkas over them and thermals underneath.” Correcting one another’s memories had become a cherished pastime, their spiky yet earnest way of saying:You were not alone. I was there too.

“Come on, let’s go inside. You’ll freeze in that weird getup.”

Vivi unlocked the door with her key card, knowing that she shouldn’t allow Calla inside the Forster after hours. But who would know? Ewan, the lone security guard, wouldn’t care. And it’d been nearly a year sincethe sisters had talked about anything meaningful. Since last September, the night of Calla’s disastrous solo art opening,Enmeshment. They’d seen each other in June, at their father’s funeral, but Vivi didn’t count that as conversation. She feared Calla would slip through her fingers again if she didn’t hold fast.

Inside, the Forster was a mausoleum. Spectral shadows danced on the walls, profiles of forgotten heroes gazed with apathy from plinths of stone. The marble halls echoed and shone from the cleaners’ painstaking efforts.

“Is that a Sanyu?” Calla gasped. She rushed into a gallery, pushing so close to the painting that her nose nearly touched its surface.

Calla was a profoundly talented artist, one who excelled in whatever medium she attempted. Collage, painting, charcoals. She’d been the star of her program at Rathmore College, before she dropped out to marry Wayland Howard, their Deer Creek neighbor and Vivi’s former best friend. Since she became a Howard, she’d never had to work again. Wayland’s trust fund, along with his innumerable successes as a filmmaker, made the question of money immaterial. The newlyweds traveled the world at breakneck speed, yet no matter how much distance she crossed, Calla would find a way to pause for the art.

Vivi pulled her back. “Stop that. It’s on loan from China. We bartered Abel’s first grandchild for it.”

“How much?”