Page 60 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

One, sunken into the woods behind the yellow farmhouse, remained a secret between three old friends.

As Vivi drove, she traced the crumbling public library with its frequently stuck sliding doors, four blocks down from the rows of unclaimed spots in the high school lot, empty during the summer, save the skateboarders doing wheelies up and down the front entrance. There was the DrugMart where Calla once stole a sleeve of rainbow-colored fruit Mentos. (Vivi went back and paid for it by slipping a dollar bill under the register when the boy behind the counter wasn’t looking.) The movie theater where Vivi and Wayland snuck in to seeRocky Horror Picture Showand shyly touched knees between the worn-down seat cushions.

The past perched next to her in the passenger’s seat, whispering its many confessions.

Back in June, Samuel had asked to come with her to her father’s funeral. He wanted to help and he wanted to see where she grew up. She’d said so little about Deer Creek. As they lay in bed, legs spliced together like cards in a deck, he tilted her face up so he could look into her eyes.I can take it, Viv. Anything you need to feel, I can be there to feel it with you.A part of her wanted nothing more than to hold his hand as she reentered that dark fairy tale she’d outgrown. But the larger, louder part wanted to warn him away.

Soon she came upon the fanned-out branches of the redbud tree by the country road. She turned onto their old street and slowed the car to a creep. The Howards’ blue colonial rose before her first, a bit faded and worse for wear, but still showy. Puffed up like an overdressed guest at a summer barbecue. Way’s parents were long gone, back in Baltimore, shuddering over that time they had spent in the sticks of the Midwest. Now there was a Volvo in the drive, one she didn’t recognize. A sprinkler rattled its neck over an overgrown lawn, drenching a chew toy left in the grass.

She pulled her gaze over to the yellow farmhouse. In the drive, a nondescript car bearing Illinois plates was parked at a hasty angle. The house had a crestfallen air, as if suffering from a recent disappointment. All the shades were drawn, except for one up front that revealed a wedge of a dark interior. Not much had changed, aside from the height of the scaly-barked red pines, which now blocked out much of the late afternoon sun.

A superstitious fear detained Vivi from going inside, convincing her that if she stepped into the house again, she’d shrink down into the ten-year-old child with her back against a door. For so long, she told herself she didn’t belong in this small town, in this predictable life. She and Callaboth did. They’d skirted their childhoods, disavowed their pasts. And maybe it had finally come true: they’d traveled so far that it might be impossible to find the old versions of themselves again.

The front door of the farmhouse was unlocked. It gave easily when Vivi pushed, as if relieved to have the chance to release. Inside, the furniture was dusty yet undisturbed from its familiar arrangement. EvenTu?n’s oxblood recliner still swiveled toward the television set, like he’d just gotten up to grab a beer from the fridge. On the shrine, the ancestors looked out dispassionately. Vivi rummaged in her purse for the stolen photo ofTâmat the party in Arles and stuck it next to the one of her grandfather Huy. The resemblance between mother and son was glancing at best, but it didn’t matter. Like called to like.

Vivi went to the kitchen. The stovetop still exuded the worn-in pungency of scorched cheese and coffee grounds spilling over from the phin their parents used. On the counter, a cookbook lay open. A worm-eaten tomato sat on the sill, sunken in on itself like an organ on an operating tray, abuzz with growth. Vivi slung it into the trash can and scrubbed her hands.

Had Calla carried the tomato home from the farmer’s market after the funeral, preparing to make a sandwich? Or had it been rotting for even longer, since whenTu?nwas still alive?

Sometimes Vivi let herself think of his last days. Even in his most turbulent of times, her father had loved the rhythms of living among the livestock farms and cherry orchards of Wisconsin. He believed there was dignity to such a life, even if he didn’t farm himself. He’d stand by the fence and rock as he smoked, watching the unwinding of a peaceful world. But it wasn’t enough, this beauty, this hidden solace. Why had he made the decision to get in the truck and drive to his death that early summer morning? It could have been an accident. But his instinct toward self-destruction usually proved stronger than all others. With that choice, he left them, just as surely as May did. If not deliberately, then through negligence.

In an unexpected show of competency and selflessness, Calla had volunteered to handle the postmortem arrangements after their father’sdeath: putting the house up for sale, paying the last of the bills withTu?n’s modest savings, driving the unwanted belongings to Goodwill. Vivi had let her take over because she was tired of the memories ofhimrearing up toward her at every turn. She wanted to be done with him. Looking around, Vivi saw that her sister hadn’t undertaken any of the things she’d promised.

Maybe it’d been too much for her. Vivi couldn’t shake the thought that Calla’s preoccupation withBlue Mirrorbegan in those early moments of rootless mourning, among the ghosts in that abandoned farmhouse who would never, could never, give Calla what she needed. Yet they were back here, both sisters. The woods were calling to them again.

As if she were following an invisible rescue rope, Vivi made her way into their old bedroom. Between the twin beds sat the nightstand with the rickety top drawer that never closed completely. She didn’t have to open it to know exactly what she would find inside: gum wrappers folded into paper stars and dried tubes of Bonne Bell chapstick and lovesick notes never sent. An archive of teenage life, imperfectly preserved but still robust with meaning.

She could have drawn the entire room by memory. On the wall, indie band posters and cheap art-print reproductions tacked up with yellowed tape; on the shelves, dog-eared paperbacks. A corkboard, pinned with photos of their friends, sat above a row of Calla’s track medals. Gold and silver, only lightly tarnished by time.

Vivi had once loved watching her sister run. Despite Calla’s slight stature, she had such an effortless command of her body. Her limbs seemed to defy gravitational pull. Other runners underestimated her, and she’d lope past them with an easy smile on her face, as agile as the deer who vaulted through the woods.

The closet door was ajar. Vivi pushed aside the hangers to reveal the mural she knew would be hidden along the northwest corner. The mural was faded now, peeling in scabby clumps of acrylic, but it was just as she remembered it.

When Calla was in fourth grade, she had gotten it in her head topaint an underwater scene on the wall. She’d just seenFree Willyand wanted to portray the ocean that the orca had longed for. Vivi warned her against it, but once Calla stumbled on an impulse, she couldn’t rest until the urge was sated. She took stiff-haired brushes and pots of paints from the art room at school, then set to work.

On her mural, filaments of light flirted with the shifting blues in the water. Sand-submerged creatures shook up puffs of ocean floor. The strokes were imperfect, of course; back then, Calla had been a novice at technique and nursed that child’s tendency toward exaggerated form and flattened colors. But it was the first time Vivi had understood her sister’s potential so clearly. She did not know what to make of the despair that trickled inside of her like a bathtub leak.

The day after Calla finished painting,Tu?nfound her mural. Calla had grabbed Vivi’s hand, petrified. They thought he would yell. Possibly destroy the mural. The worst thing he could have done was laugh at Calla. But he only stared at the ocean scene with some odd wistfulness, as if looking upon a place he’d seen once before.

Add green into the waves, he’d said.It’ll give them more depth.

Calla was stunned. Vivi, sinking against the wall, found herself beset by a bewildered envy that only grew as, after that day, a set of watercolors or a cheap sketchbook would sometimes appear on Calla’s pillow, never with an explanation. They were not extravagant offerings, but offerings all the same.

Calla did end up adding a streak of green into the shadows of the waves. Their father had been right. That contrast made the mural leap off the wall.

Now, Vivi pinched an edge of the peeling paint and tore it off in a slow and satisfying strip. She let the paint fall like a ribbon of flayed skin.

From the gable window, Vivi could see into the backyard, whereTu?n's shed sat. He’d built it himself a few years before the accident, nailing mismatched planks into a rectangular exterior with two small, irregular windows set a touch too high. A rusted roof lay like an open book on the top of the structure. Over time, the surrounding foliage had begun to drag the shed back into the earth, so what remained was a tired sag of tin and plywood clinging to its last semblance of utility.

Vivi went down the stairs and out the back door, picking through the clusters of cockleburs and the pigweeds that scratched against her shins. The rusted padlock on the shed was broken, its shackle dangling from the looped closure. Even then, she hesitated. She could hear the pitiless incursion of her father’s anger.

You’ll take this from me too?

She pushed the door open and stood in the dim exterior, letting her gaze adjust. Unlike the rest of the house, the shed was neatly tended, belying its ill-kempt exterior. Along one wall stretched a wooden board with filing cabinets shoved beneath to form a makeshift table. Sealed boxes had been stacked in the corners, casting columnar shadows on the floor. Vivi was disappointed and relieved. All that subterfuge for what was, essentially, a storage space.

But after she got on her tiptoes and shoved the drapes of the windows aside, letting in the rush of light, she saw that each wall was plastered in shades of blue. Ultramarine and cobalt; peacock andCôted’Azur; boundless and vivid.

Heavyweight cotton pages had been taped haphazardly together to form a strange and arresting wallpaper of K. P.Lýlandscapes. They were all paintings, Calla’s copies, Vivi was sure. A sudden gust of wind from the open door swept in and dislodged a handful of the paintings, agitating them around her like a tempest. The edge of one brushed against her lip and gave her an invisible paper cut that smarted for days afterward when she spoke.