Page 31 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

She twisted her lips, then offered grudgingly, “I can look in our archives. If I have the time. They are not well maintained. Our staff is much smaller than it once was.”

“It would mean the world to me and my sister. Our late father lovedLý’s work.” Was that true? Love didn’t feel like the right word, but one couldn’t very well talk about deathbed obsessions to a stranger.

“I make no promises.”

“If you find something, could I please review the documents myself? The originals. It would be immensely helpful for my research.”

Jean gave a shrug that could have meant yes or no or anything in between, then pivoted from Vivi and began speaking with a man in coral trousers. It was as clear a dismissal as she could have gotten but, elated by Jean’s concession, Vivi turned away with a smile. Here was hope, arriving in tiny yet discrete droplets.

On the terrace, petrichor hung like tinsel in the cooling air. She took a glass of seltzer and swam among the artists, eavesdropping as she made her way to Calla. Their conversation, taken piecemeal, sounded like the enjambment of magnetic tiles on a fridge, sparse yet poetic.

“A great storm that—”

“Was a promising young—”

“Question.”

“Did you see—”

“The amphitheater—”

“Of broke Americans.”

Calla had abandoned her dance. Now she stood next to a painter who’d set up an easel on the uneven pavers. Whenever he set brush to canvas, the legs of the easel slumped one way or the other. He was unperturbed by the setup. The paint on the canvas mottled together with violent pointillism, but once you glanced away, then looked back, the splotches somehow coalesced into a vision of the scene in front of them. He hadn’t captured the exactitude of shape or hue, but something of its ambiance.

“My sister, back from the dead,” Calla called. “Jerome, this is Vivi.”

The painter surveyed them. “I would never have guessed you were sisters. You don’t look at all alike.”

Where Vivi had inherited her father’s height, his thick brows and hard jaw, Calla was small and soft, her slight frame belying the iron will beneath. Vivi had always felt like the less beautiful sister, and she didn’t mind it usually. She was happy to watch Calla be admired from the sidelines. But sometimes it smarted, inhabiting the shadow against the light. Wayland had been the only person who, given the choice, had turned his gaze on her first.

Vivi said to the painter, “I like your landscape.”

“It’s not good. But I’ll get better.”

Calla said, “I was telling Jerome that he picked the right place for inspiration.”

He swiped his brush on a rag. “We all think genius is like osmosis. The closer we stand to it, the more likely we’re going to become the next Van Artist. It’s stupid. But here we are. Are you artists?”

“Yes,” Calla said.

“No,” said Vivi at the same time.

“I was a scientist in a past life.”

“What did you study?” Vivi asked.

“Viruses. Now I study light. I used to think my work was so important. Itwas. But science never gave me the sort of joy I feel when I sketch some throwaway thing in my backyard. What legacy matters more?”

“Maybe we think too much about legacy,” Vivi said.

“As opposed to?”

“Living?” She didn’t know why she said it as a question. She scratched an itch near her wrist.

“Art is the antidote to death, they say.” He dabbed a scarlet anemone into the corner of the canvas.

“Could you sketch us?” Calla asked impulsively. “Something to remember this trip by.”