Page 85 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“In the end, MadameLýonly lived two years in that house by the river. After all the work my father put into finishing it! Of course, it wasn’t her fault she died so soon. Only, the tragedy of it. My father said that it was a rare gift to fulfill someone’s last wish, and that house was MadameLý’s. She called it her ill-earned reward.”

“Were she and your father friends?” Vivi asked.

“Friendly, I’d say. She liked to talk with him about the European architecture she’d encountered in her travels. He spoke French too and she loosened her tongue with him. She considered herself both French and Vietnamese, in between places. A citizen of no country. It must have been difficult to live—and die—in such a lonely way.”

“What did she die of?”

“She had a malignancy of the lung, I believe. My father was there on the morning that she passed. The family was all around her,Ng?cand Huy and even littleTu?n, who was confused, crying. My father said that MadameLýwas wheezing so hard it was difficult to understand what she wanted. She would not part her lips for even a drop of water. But my father would never forget her last words.Thosewere crystal clear.”

“What were they?” The sisters asked. Unconsciously, they edged closer together.

Rain dribbled onto the tin roof. Tiny drumbeats springing from tin to wood to soil, impatient to reform into a mass greater than themselves. From sea, back to earth. The recumbent clouds above had darkened the room, so the women only saw the outlines of one another’s faces.

“My father said that MadameLýsat up very suddenly and gasped, in a tone of awe and joy, the sort of which he had never witnessed before: ‘Oh, what a wild and glorious blue!’ And then she laid back down and closed her eyes again. She never took another breath. That was the end.”

“Or,” Vivi said, thinking of Los Brillantes, “that was a new beginning.”

BàAnh sighed and agreed. “We should all be so lucky.”

Despite the alienation that’d grown between them, Vivi and Calla found each other’s gazes. They spoke their intentions without words.

Chapter 30

The rain was descending in starts and stops. Wearing borrowed ponchos, Vivi and Calla made their way through the forest, slowed by the sporadic downpours that drenched them to the bone. Each time one of the sisters slipped in the mud, the other would reach out with a steadying hand. They ignored their soaked hair and the bite of branches on their skin, intent on finding their way to the house by the ravine.

Each carried a hammer in one hand. It was a slightly ridiculous image, the two of them striding with militaristic concentration, only to stumble a moment later into the wet grass. But Vivi pressed on, seeing in her mind’s eye the hollow behind the tapestry. She berated herself for not investigating it more closely the previous day. But now that she knew what hid there, she couldn’t be dissuaded. Neither of them could. The LongXuyênNguy?ns hadn’t managed to convince them to wait; nor did they wish to accompany the sisters on a day such as this.

“Come home quickly,”Ki`êuhad said. The lines were deeper around his eyes, gravity dragging his mouth into a gully of worry.

Vivi squeezed his shoulder as they left, but she didn’t promise anything. It would take as long as it took.

Even without speaking, she knew Calla felt the same need for completion. If Vivi squinted, she could make out the specter of their father blurred in the trees. Hand against bark, shadow long and unwavering,nodding them along. Whatever the offering was, they had earned it together, all of them.

The wind began to still as they approached the house. Vivi saw anew how perilously it balanced on the edge of the ravine. Below, the terrain wrinkled into a trench that filled with more rain each passing moment. From a distance, the rising water looked to be about ankle-high, tumbling in a loud rush around the rocks. A wasp of anxiety circled her mind but never managed to land.

“This is it?” Calla eyed the house, then the water. “Why do I feel like it’s going to collapse at any moment?”

“It won’t. Let’s go.”

In moments that frightened her, Vivi became curt. She saw herself as a general girding for battle, armored against stray darts of emotion. In reality, she was little more than a turtle, withdrawing into the dented carapace of its shell.

Calla saw through her sister’s detachment and placed her hand on Vivi’s back, as if calming a spooked creature. “It’s alright. We’ll go in together.”

Inside the house, they paused and took stock. Their eyes ran past the moth-eaten upholstery, the cracked windowpanes. Vivi could see now how she’d overlooked the tapestry. Without the shield of curtains—long shredded by vermin and natural decay—sunlight had worn away at the tapestry’s fabric, reducing the figures to knots of frayed thread.

If Vivi had found the tapestry decades ago, she might have salvaged something in it. Stitched the tears in the fabric, mended the loose wefts. But now it was worth nothing at all. The conservator in her clenched in helplessness.

“Help me with this,” Vivi said, gripping the edges.

They tore down the tapestry. It slumped to the ground, releasing a thick cloud of buff-tinted dust. The wall behind it bore a square of paler wood where the sun and dust hadn’t touched. Vivi knocked on the hollow spot.

“Ready?” Calla asked.

Her father had been so close to his grandmother’s offering. Only a few more steps, a little more reach, and he could have been knocking on the wall in their place. AndTâmhad been so close to being known. The dissonance between desire and fate struck a rough chord in Vivi’s ear.

Here, on the cusp of revelation, she found herself hesitating. A part of her was afraid that finding the offering would erase all the echoes in her mind. Once, she’d have exulted at the prospect of freedom from her past. Now she found that she didn’t want to lose those voices that had become as familiar as her own.

“It’s okay,” Calla said. She smiled, but unconvincingly. “Whatever we find. Even if there’s nothing there. We’ve made it this far.”