Page 58 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“I’m sorry,” Vivi said. “For never answering your texts or calls.”

“I knew why.”

“Calla told me the divorce was final. Sorry for that too.”

“Why? It wasn’t your fault. We were never going to make it.” He took a long blade of grass between his fingers and tied it into a bow, then placed it on Vivi’s knee.

“Why did she paintClio?”

He sighed. “Now?”

“Please.”

“She found a video that I made.” He took out his phone. “Do you want to see it?”

Vivi hesitated for a moment, then nodded. The bow of grass blew from her knee.

The video was in black-and-white. There was no sound. It began with a cloudy haze sharpening into Vivi’s fourteen-year-old face, young and a little startled, a crewneck hugging her thin torso. It was the first photo Wayland took of her, the same portrait trapped withinClio. As soon as Vivi registered the image, the photograph transitioned into a new one. In the next, two gloved hands hung together against the sky, thumbs hooked together. Fingers splayed like the wings of a bird, snow in the distance. Then, a shot of Vivi in the midst of jumping off a stone pillar. Bent over a book on Wayland’s swinging bench, flicking him off with chipped fingernails on the way to school. And later yet, at Rathmore, Vivi side-eyeing some pretentious senior’s joke at a house party; sleepily dancing with a groomsman at Wayland and Calla’s wedding. The photos cut so quickly between one another that the impression left was one of urgency and decline, like a rocket hurtling too swiftly into an abyss.

With each image, Vivi heard the faint ringing surrounding those lost moments, all those snatches of confessions and laughter and arguments that defined their trio’s story.

The video ended. It couldn’t have been longer than thirty seconds.There was no title, no credits, only the rush of white finality. Wayland put the phone away.

“I don’t know why I made that goddamn video. I found a box of photos of you, all the ones I’d taken over the years, and I wanted to do something with them. Calla thought that the video was evidence of how much I loved you. How she’d always be second best.”

“That’s not true, though.”

He didn’t answer. Vivi intuited in a place deeper than knowledge what Calla must have feared. It was the same fear as hers. That, taken alone, she wouldn’t be enough to make someone stay. Suddenly, Vivi felt a crushing anger toward Wayland.

“Was she right? Did you sleep with all those women, the ones she painted over inEnmeshment?”

Wayland swallowed and moved restlessly. Sitting up, laying back down. He was, at once, remorseful and defiant. She could see him wrestling with which version of the story to give her.

“Our marriage wasn’t what you think. Neither Calla nor I were faithful. It wasn’t something we talked about. But I knew about the men she’d run off with from time to time. She knew about the women. It was the cost of being together.”

“But it hurt her. Your infidelity.”

“We were both hurt.”

“So why couldn’t you have just ended it and saved us all the trouble?”

He leveled Vivi with a long, searching gaze. “For the same reason we can’t let go of you. Before I moved to Deer Creek, I’d only known some pale approximation of family. You and Calla became my sisters, my parents, my kin. It was deeper than friendship. We were all soul mates. The way I love her—you—is tied up in my most essential self.”

“And now?”

“It’s time to grow up. Calla was afraid of what that would mean. In her mind, you would never accept any part of her that wasn’t what you wanted to see. She was complicated. Not just a victim. Not just your little sister.”

“I know that.”

“Did you, though? I worry that you’ve spent your life trying to keep her from growing up. Do you ever wonder why?”

Vivi paused. Whycouldn’tshe allow her sister the right of evolution? Calla was no longer five years old, the sleeping beauty Vivi was tasked with guarding. In Vivi’s unflinching fidelity to the child version of Calla, the sweet-cheeked girl who hid in the woods, had she inadvertently stunted Calla’s growth, stripping her of the nuance that made her a fully realized person? Ideals were only beautiful until they became a shield against one’s fears.

But if Vivi wasn’t the protector, then who was she? What value could she command in the world, without Calla?

Wayland gave her a pitying look. “Your sister wore a thousand masks and switched them out like a person switches shoes. But she gave you the best part of herself. You are the love of her life. Maybe the only person she could love unselfishly.”

“There’s no such thing as an unselfish love. Not for people like us.” She thought of Samuel rushing into the conservation lab, finding the abandoned key, the stripped painting. She never deserved him. And, as Vivi had long suspected, he did not deserve her.