Chapter 8 #2
Vivi picked up the language easily, but Calla struggled over the intonations. The more Calla wrestled with the Vietnamese
words, the more they shut her out, so that her halting sentences flattened and spread like the fields of oats they passed
on the way to school each day. Tu?n became frustrated at his youngest daughter’s Americanness, her unavoidable distance from his homeland. There was a fist on
the table, apple juice all over the floors. Snow gathered like dandruff on the windowsills. Calla cried and Vivi stared at
the twisting flames of the fireplace, wanting so badly to loan whatever parcel of knowledge she could to her sister.
“I really don’t remember,” Calla finally admitted. “But the altar is still there. We could go to Deer Creek and look.”
Vivi ignored the suggestion. Deer Creek was out of the question. “But then how do the Allards and Blancs fit into this? There’s
too much we don’t know. Maybe we just need to let Samuel figure it out. Maybe we’re in over our head.”
What she didn’t say was that while they were at Rathmore, an email came in from Abel, calling for a disciplinary meeting the
following week. The Forster board would be there. The lawyers too. Separately, Abel called her and left a message, more affable
in tone but no less firm. He said he’d always liked her; he thought highly of her work. He agreed that the overpainting was
a landmark discovery, but there was due process to consider. You couldn’t just do what you wanted with a painting on a hunch. In the end, Abel wanted to make this right. But that could only happen if Vivi returned to face the consequences.
Vivi had written Abel back, stating in no uncertain terms that she had deliberately flouted Samuel’s instructions, along with
museum procedure. She was the only one to blame. She was putting herself on administrative leave and would return soon. They
could decide her fate without her. Then she silenced her phone and threw it deep in her purse.
After all that, Vivi could understand why her sister had launched her own phone into the lake. Disappearing was one tool of
survival.
Calla jumped onto Vivi’s bed, upsetting her moat of paperwork. “Bee, don’t do that. This mystery doesn’t belong to them. It’s ours.”
“Just because Dad was in possession of some old artifacts? And Blue Mirror happened to be in my lab?”
“The universe wants us to find the offering,” Calla said stubbornly.
“How are you so sure?”
“Because, unlike you, I believe there is still magic out there, things we can’t explain. And we don’t need to. We just need
to seize the opportunities we’re handed. Easy as that.” Maybe that was the problem. Vivi still flinched from the world, as
if it were doling out punishments, while Calla stood with her arms open, ready to accept its gifts. Calla squeezed Vivi around
the shoulders in affectionate exasperation. “Stop thinking so hard. I’ll have enough faith for both of us. Show me what you
found.”
Vivi’s laptop was open to the booking website for Maison de Notre Rêve. In the 1950s, the estate had been sold by the Allards,
then converted into a luxury inn that catered to retirees hoping to fulfill their slumbering artistic dreams amid Arles’s
legendary sunrises. The tagline of the inn read: Never too late. Most of the exterior pictures had been taken from a distance in an attempt to capture the impressive Provencal backdrop. The
interior photos relayed polished wood floors with thick rugs and gigantic stone hearths, from which fires crackled and snapped,
as in a BBC period piece. Each suite boasted a balcony towering over gardens abloom with primroses and lavender. There were,
however, no photos of the servants’ cottage that Justine Allard mentioned.
“Maybe there’d be something in their archives,” Vivi mused. “Something about time or light. Or even a sundial on the property.”
“So let’s just go and look for ourselves. France and fancy-free, like we’ve always wanted!”
“We can’t ‘just go’ to Arles.”
“Why not?”
“Pick a reason. And, say Ly did live in the cottage at Maison de Notre Rêve. That doesn’t mean the ‘offering’ is there. Not to mention that offering
could be anything—a flower bush or a recipe for cheesecake or a collection of his moldy old brushes.”
“Why would he hide a recipe for cheesecake?” Calla giggled.
“Could have been a really good recipe. We need more to go on.”
“Hop to it, then. You’re getting close, I feel it.”
Bolstered by her sister’s faith, Vivi paged through the photos again. On a separate tab, she ran a search for Maison de Notre
Rêve, where it appeared among a handful of curated lists of recommendations from travel magazines. One called it “a place
for second chances”; another praised the chef’s thyme-scented crème br?lée. None mentioned the Allards or the history behind
the inn.
On the second page of search results, she found a long-abandoned, Y2K-era travel blog. There were blurry photos of the couple—the
Wandering Wilsons, placid-faced Californians who dressed as if they might be thrown onto a hiking trail at any moment—toasting
each other on the terrace of Maison de Notre Rêve. The slideshow on the post, set to an instrumental version of édith Piaf’s
“La Foule,” contained shots of flowering almond trees and medieval churches. A gazebo, a bench, various architectural details.
The Wilsons enjoyed their time so much, yes they did, and they’d visit France again, but they would recommend bringing bug
spray and patience, because the table service left something to be desired.
“Wait.” Calla stilled her hand as she flipped through the blog slideshow another time. “That bench.”
She scrolled back to the photo, which had been taken on the grounds of Maison de Notre Rêve at sunset. “What about it?”
“The carving. Can you read it?”
She squinted at the curved stone back. Après tout ce temps. “After all this time.”
“What’s the dot next to it? Zoom in.”
They could hardly make it out at first, but then they saw that it was a tiny carving: a single, perfect orb surrounded by
rippling waves of heat.
A high-pitched sound grew in Vivi’s ears. “A sun.”
“A fucking sun.” Calla dug her nails into Vivi’s skin. Vivi winced as Calla breathed, “This is it. This is where the offering
is. Remind me what Ly wrote about that chateau of his?”
“‘I’ve gone and left something at the Chateau des Miroirs, buried under the endless sun.’”
“Book the flight.”
“Button.”
“What are you so scared of?”
Vivi did not trust any of it. Blue Mirror, Ly, this hidden chateau. Her own father’s place in the weave of the mystery. Calla and Tu?n, both with their common brand of impulse and chaos, continued to draw Vivi away from the known and into those shadowy questions
that she could not navigate. It frightened her, that richly patterned dark. It frightened her because she craved it too.
Finally, she said, “Let’s just sleep on it.”
Calla pouted, then jumped back onto her own bed, flinging her hand dramatically over her eyes. “I’m going with or without
you.”
“You keep saying that.” Vivi turned off the lights and got under the covers, trying not to pay attention to the stains she’d
glimpsed.
After a few moments of tossing and turning, Calla asked, “Are you still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“The TA. He’s still a sloppy kisser.”
They snickered. Vivi wondered how it must feel for Calla to kiss another man after being married to Wayland for eight years. She almost said something about it. But Vivi didn’t want to disrupt the peace between them.
“What are you thinking about?” Calla asked.
Vivi sighed. “How stupid I was to give Quan the letter.”
“It’s okay. We’ll find something better in Arles.”
Persistent Calla, the only person whose tenaciousness rivaled Vivi’s own. Kind Calla, whose indefatigable hope sprouted like
the bunches of cilantro in their mother’s garden. Vivi smiled in the dark, her chest splitting with affection. “Goodnight,
Button.”
“’Night, Bee.”
For a moment, it was just as it used to be. Calla’s even breathing turning into soft snores. The scent of oranges winding
its trail toward Vivi from across the room. Cold air on their skin, worn sheets under them, a dangerous and breathtaking world
they’d only begun to consider.