Page 54 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“Don’t touch me.”

Dominic tried to take control of the situation by laying his hand on Wayland’s back. He meant to placate him, perhaps, or lead him out of the gallery so that his fury could diffuse into the night. Accustomed to agreeable patrons, people who revered him and his gallery, Dominic could not anticipate Wayland with his wild eyes and stoked anger. Way jerked from Dominic, then raised both palms to push him away with a force that made Dominic’s teeth clatter. There was a popping sound. For a moment, Vivi thought Wayland might have seriously hurt Dominic.

But it was Dominic crashing ontoClio, his shoulder tearing through the bottom half of the painting. Vivi’s teenage face, crooked-toothed and sallow, unbeautiful and yearning, the farthest thing from a muse, towered above him. The younger her, lofty in her installation, was judging the group of them. All that talent and potential, and where had they ended up?

Vivi wondered for a time afterward if Wayland had done it on purpose, but the truth was, it didn’t matter. Intention, an afterthought to consequence. Amid all her other concerns, she felt a pang forClio.Thepiece had, for the briefest of moments, made her feel cherished. Despite the urgent and sinister tones of the piece, Calla had painted her as a powerful goddess, not a cowering kid. In her sister’s eyes, she was strong.

A silence settled onto the gallery. She thought Wayland was going to walk away. He should have. But instead, he took the nearest glass of Shiraz from a teetering table and flung it at the canvas. The wine soared in a graceful arc until it met its mark, splattering onto Vivi’s face, soaking into the canvas. Glass shattered on the cement floor.

“Look. Now I’m an artist too,” Wayland said hollowly.

“Get out,” Dominic said.

Wayland spared him no glance. Instead, he took one last look atClio, then at Calla, and finally at Vivi. The gaping crowd disappeared, and it was just the three of them, caught together.

He said softly, all the fight disappearing from him, “I’m sorry, Vivi. You deserved better from us.”

And he left. As soon as his footsteps faded, Calla began to laugh. Vivi stared before she realized. Calla was sobbing. Tears matted her cheeks and pooled along the divots in her neck. She wrung her hands like they were small birds to be put out of their misery.

This was where memory deviated into all the alternate paths she and Calla could have taken.

In one, Vivi didn’t think before she took her sister in her arms and led her out, away fromEnmeshmentand the stunned spectators, all those people who would never understand the terrible and transcendent love that could usher Calla to the extremes of feeling.

Calla would stay with Vivi that night. Huddled together in her bed, Vivi would stroke her sister’s hair as they talked about different options for the future. Vivi, offering to write a statement that Calla could sign. Maybe a newspaper might pick it up; if not, Dominic could send it out to the guests.

Vivi would say that they’d find a way to withdraw all the pieces fromEnmeshment. Calla could paint over them if she wanted. She could put on a new show, if not with Dominic’s gallery, then another, better one. Or maybe Calla could teach; children loved her, after all. There would be a future after Wayland. She’d tell Calla that she deserved better from her husband.

When Vivi finished talking, Calla would lean against her. “My annoying little life coach.”

“Miscreant.”

“I love you.” Calla’s cold feet would find hers, rub against them for warmth.

Vivi would answer the way she always did. “Forever and a day.”

The next morning, waking in the nest of each other’s arms, they’d start again.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Vivi waited too long to go to her sister. For a handful of loaded moments, the length of time it takes to latch a door closed, she let Calla cry alone. Then, with one wounded look around the room, Calla ran out of her own opening, still crying as she leapt in a cab and headed for the Pilsen loft. She packed her clothes and art supplies. She drove to Deer Creek to lick her wounds and, soon after, set off the chain of events that would lead Vivi around the world, still chasing her.

After Calla left the gallery, it happened. The memory Vivi fought to bury.

Wine on the floor, the gasps of spectators, the strains of infamy they’d all rehash over hundred-dollar brunches in River North, twisting Calla’s humiliation into a cautionary tale that they would swallow in gulps, reveling in its clean and satisfying burn.

This is why you don’t get involved with an artist.

At last, Vivi shook herself from her spell. She ran out, looking for hersister. Where were all the cabs? She stood on the sidewalk outside of the gallery, one foot near the entrance, the other on the leaf-mottled pavement, hand outstretched. If a taxi had arrived a moment sooner, then—well, again, another vanished path.

“Always rescuing the princess.” Wayland’s voice came to her from an alleyway beside the gallery. Smoke rose from an orange-budded cigarette hung loosely from his fingers. His tone was caustic and unfamiliar. Dangerous.

But it was Wayland, her first true friend outside of Calla. Her family. She knew him, she loved him.

She joined him. “You should go after her.”

“Calla doesn’t want me. She doesn’t want anyone.”

“There has to be a better way.”