Page 80 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

Even though Vivi was losing grasp of the conversation, she recalled, in a painful flash, how it felt to sit in front of a single leaf for long stretches at a time, studying its shape as it swung from a thread-thin axil. The delight of cataloguing the numerous shades of nut in a chipmunk’s tail. Then, after she received a watercolor set for Christmas, the awestruck wonder of discovering the true complicity of color. Brown on top of green becomes a deeper,woodsiershade. Blue could be warm and yellowish or it could carry the briskness of mint or it could even sit alongside the stridency of black, deeper for the addition of darkness, more alluring somehow, like the far side of the moon...

Calla was still speaking. “It was like you were building a world wherenone of us could go. That’s probably why I began painting. I wanted to follow you into that world. And you, all you wanted was to be an artist.”

“I was a child. I didn’t know what I wanted.” The emptiness after her mother left. Paintbrushes slung into a shoebox in the closet. That terrible dejection whenTu?ntook interest in Calla’s underwater mural, after he’d never once glanced at Vivi’s drawings. Art had never been enough. Orshehad never been enough.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she swiped at them, embarrassed. Calla saw more than Vivi had given her credit for.

“Did you ever think the reason why you decided to preserve art instead of creating it was because you like the control? You work in the shadows so no one can judge your heart or mind. You’d sooner vanish than leave yourself vulnerable.”

“Better that than painting my dirty laundry for a gallery full of strangers. How’d that vulnerability work out for you?”

Hurt zipped across Calla’s face. Vivi had never outwardly blamed Calla for her part in theEnmeshmentscandal. If anything, she wanted to protect her with silence. But now, something was cracking open between them, and Vivi felt as if she could destroy everything. It’d be easier than being exposed like this.

Calla swallowed, then said, “I’m not going to apologize for what I painted. Creation requires an act of faith. So does love. And both scare the shit out of you. I’m not sure you’ve ever learned to love a single person in your life. How could you, when you hate yourself so much? I don’t want this life for you, Bee.”

Calla’s face crumpled with all the wishes she held for her sister. The selfless and selfish ones both. She opened her arms to Vivi. The desperation in her eyes was enough to give Vivi pause. Two paths opened in front of her. In one, she might allow herself to hear her sister’s words and admit that her manner of existence in the world—remote, fearful, ridden with a nameless, pursuant anxiety—was not the only way to survive. But that would require her to change herself completely, from beginning to end. It would be hard work, the hardest she could imagine.

Calla’s arms wavered, then fell at her sides.

“Just stay out of my email,” Vivi said. She didn’t yell the words. They were neutral and firm, clipped with a businesslike dismissal. “And for the love of God, please stay out of my life.”

Calla stepped back, stricken. She pulled her bottom lip under her teeth, worrying at it, her features pinching in hurt. If Vivi had screamed at her, Calla might have been able to hold her position. Fury would be more tolerable than this icy being who resembled her sister on the surface but bore no emotional resonance to the Vivi she loved.

The wedding banquet hall was up the street. Guests fanned themselves as they slid through the front doors and into the blissful gusts of air conditioning that awaited them. On a side street, someone set off a spree of fireworks. There was a high whistle, then a machine-gun round of ear-shattering pops. Cheering and smoke filled the air.

Vivi thought of watching the distant Fourth of July fireworks from Wayland’s yard when they were teenagers, how they’d slap bugs off one another’s legs, pass around a stolen bottle. The glow of a bonfire burnishing their faces—happy, young, stupid.

It had once been easy to see the future. Now she could only take in the emptiness. A life without Calla. It was not, actually, so unthinkable. And that was the real heartbreak of it all. Finally, a chip of ice gave way. Warmth crept reluctantly into Vivi’s heart, dissolving some of the anger.

“Let’s take a beat,” she said. “We’re saying things we don’t mean.”

“Are we?” Calla became gentle, even as she wouldn’t meet Vivi’s gaze. “You go ahead. FindTâm’s house; find the offering. It’s your mission now. I don’t want to keep going.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“You think that all this began because I somehow couldn’t do it without your precious art history knowledge. But I didn’t need you, VivianNguy?n. I included you because Iwantedyou, because I wanted you to be able to see me as a person you could trust. But no offering is going to fix what’s broken.”

“But—”

“Please go. I don’t need you anymore.”

Vivi had drawn the first blood, but Calla’s words became the killing blow. A person could obliterate a thing in an instant, even those things built over countless moments of labor. It seemed unjust, wasteful, but Vivi couldn’t bear to be the one to pick up the pieces again.

She left her sister standing in the street, surrounded by laughing wedding guests and the jaunty spill of music from the banquet hall. Calla stared at the ground, as if she’d lost something precious in the dirt, and could not possibly, for all her seeking, find it again.

To: VivianNguy?n[[email protected]]

From: Paul Quân [[email protected]]

Subject: Re: an offering

You’ve done what few have, ViviNguy?n—you’ve managed to surprise me.

But why are you wasting your time typing this out to me? It’s not an email; it’s an article. A goddamn book. I’ll even blurb it if you remove some of the adjectives. Your prose swims in them.

The story is missing something, though. An ending. What’s the conclusion to yourTâm’s great tragedy? Figure that out. Then you can understand the arc of it all.

—PQ