Chapter 34
Three Years Later
The afternoon was breezy when there came a knocking on the shed door. It was so timid Vivi almost missed it. But she’d have
known that knock anywhere.
Months before, Samuel and Vivi had converted Tu?n’s shed into a studio. The first thing Vivi did was expand the windows so she could watch the world around her. As she worked,
she could see into the office where Sam did most of his writing. In the room beside it, the pompom hem of Phoebe’s curtains
bounced against the glass. Once, her bedroom had belonged to Vivi and Calla; now, it was home to a wide array of fantasy maps,
Narnia and Middle Earth, each more complex and lovely than the last.
“Come in,” Vivi said. On her wall, she’d hung the chatelaine that Samuel had given her. Its inset sapphire threw off a shower
of blue when the light hit it.
Phoebe poked her head in. “Daddy says I’m not supposed to bother you while you’re working.”
“I’m not, honey, just thinking.” She patted her knee and Phoebe bounded over, hopping right on top. She was eight now, small
but sturdy, with muscular legs made for running. The same age as Calla when the sisters had first begun their game.
“What’s that?” Phoebe pointed a stubby finger toward the pages in front of Vivi.
“A project. A daydream.”
She never wrote the book that Paul wanted. Vivi felt it would be a betrayal to reveal all of Tam’s secrets. But she wanted to leave something of her own behind. In between her freelance conservation work, she carved time
to paint her memories. The impression of them, at least.
May’s ghostly last kiss before she disappeared. Floating in the creek with Calla. Tu?n with his hair blowing behind him as he hopped from the truck. She didn’t know what the result of all this work would be,
if there was even a cohesive narrative to be found. But it felt to her like an act of conservation too, this breathing of
life into the discarded past.
Phoebe held up the topmost sketch, one of two male figures walking on a bridge, neither touching nor completely divided from
one another. “What’s your project about?”
Vivi gave a helpless shrug. “Family, maybe? Love, definitely.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, I will. Let’s take a walk.”
Spring had just begun sidling its way into the woods. There were green buds along the tips of the branches, yet the human
inhabitants still wore sweaters and huddled together on a giant bed at night. The pines had grown taller and statelier, as
they do.
Even though most of Samuel and Vivi’s work was still in Chicago, they spent long weekends and holidays out at the farmhouse.
Summers too. They watched the seasons drift across the landscape, brushing it with new colors, then snuffing those same colors
back to gray. Pentimento.
Everything had changed and, still, nothing had.
The farmhouse was no longer yellow. They sold the remaining furniture and refinished everything in a French country style.
They painted the shutters blue. Wallpapered every nook and cranny with arcane prints that Phoebe couldn’t stop examining.
When it came time to sort through Tu?n’s papers, Vivi hesitated, then stored everything without reading it. Maybe someday, she told herself. Maybe never.
Under their wresting, the old farmhouse finally released its pain but managed to retain the echoes of laughter and whispered
secrets and midnight sprees of inspiration. If Vivi looked across the way, she could see her neighbor Robin in the yard of
the blue colonial, scolding Baxter the dog. Robin had begun raising chickens, and Baxter terrorized them with an unholy glee
that was glorious to behold. Samuel bemoaned the extra noise but softened when Robin left a basket of eggs, still warm from
the coop, on their doorstep.
No more than a handful of steps from the shed, there stood a birdbath on a pedestal encircled with intricate stone roses.
It was a sort of housewarming—or homecoming—gift from Wayland. His last text message to Vivi had come from Beijing. He’d moved
from cults to corporate espionage. There were whispers about an Oscar nomination. He’d begun dating someone, but it was nothing
serious, he said.
Vivi once asked him whatever happened to Los Brillantes. He’d sent back a shrugging emoji.
What happens to all dreamers, V. They disappeared.
Six months after Vivi returned to America, she received a tearful phone call from Linh. Ki`êu had passed in his sleep, a smile drawn across his lips. Vivi was devastated that Samuel would never meet her uncle. But she
imagined the Nguy?n brothers reuniting within that glorious blue where hope still lived.
At the funeral in Long Xuyên, Vivi half expected Calla to appear. She saw a woman with shoulder-length hair among the mourners and startled, but it wasn’t
her. Calla was never one for a drawn-out goodbye. Samuel, next to her, squeezed her waist. Once, twice. I am here. I won’t leave you.
Calla was never far from Vivi’s thoughts. If Vivi woke in Deer Creek, she found herself turning to the opposite side of the
room, expecting a matching twin bed, a pair of dark eyes alight with adventure. Sometimes, while washing dishes by the window,
she’d see a wraith of a child hopping the fence, running like a golden arrow into the opening of the woods. She’d hear a clear
voice calling her name. Then the light would shift, the contours would sharpen, and Vivi would pull herself reluctantly back
to reality. Delusions, she knew, caught fast.
After her uncle’s funeral, she drove to Deer Creek to begin cataloguing some of the much-needed house repairs. She found,
crammed in the decrepit mailbox among the junk ads and catalogues still addressed to her father, a stiff envelope with postmarks
from Cam Ranh. There was no return address. She couldn’t open the envelope fast enough.
Inside, there was a small painting on thick-grained paper: two deer sprinting toward each other, limber legs kicking up clouds
of dust while their necks arched proudly toward the boundless sky. The piece was astonishingly hopeful, full of artful technique
and tender brushwork. No longer tainted by pain or cynicism.
Vivi didn’t bother to swipe away the tears; she let them cloud her vision until all she saw was the smudge of joy.
Since then, more paintings had arrived at the farmhouse. There was no regular rhythm to these deliveries; they seemed to come
from the sky, as if dropped by capricious, winged messengers. The postmarks came from Quito and Amsterdam, Bangkok and Istanbul.
Sometimes, the artist painted people in cafés; sad people, happy people, people in love. Those were Vivi’s favorites. Other
times, the artist painted startlingly realistic landscapes and it was like seeing the world through her eyes for a single,
dazzling moment. One day, Vivi thought she might have enough artwork to fill an entire museum.
There was never a return address on any of the envelopes and never a single word written on the paintings. But each was signed
the same way, with a tiny, red button on the lower righthand side, precise as a stamp.
As they walked in the woods, Vivi told Phoebe a story about two sisters who loved each other so much that they created a whole world only they could enter.
Like an abandoned garden or a lagoon hidden from sight.
Everyone around them aged, but the sisters stayed young forever.
Eventually though, they woke from the dream.
They saw that they’d missed out on all the things that mattered.
Their world was unchanging, but did they really want a world without change?
Without the specter of death, immortality could be so very tedious.
“So they left their secret world?” Phoebe asked. One of her front teeth had fallen out soon after her eighth birthday and
she lisped just slightly through the gap. “That’s so sad. Who would leave such a perfect place?”
“They can return anytime.”
“How will they find their way back?”
“They each carry a map inside of them.”
The two arrived at the edge of the creek, now drying up, going the way of all the other forgotten creeks of the town. Phoebe
dragged her sneaker through the mud. Vivi couldn’t find it in her to stop her, even though she was staining her socks. Her
Yaa regularly scolded them for the state in which she appeared. A wild child, a dirt-speckled sprite, alive to all the countless,
unseen wonders around her.
As Vivi watched Phoebe play, she noticed Samuel making his way through the trees with his careful steps, that tremor of hesitant
delight in his gaze, as if he couldn’t quite believe that this was their life now.
“Thought you two might be here,” he said. “Special delivery for you.”
He held out an envelope. There was no return address, only a postmark from—of all places—Latvia. Vivi laughed and shook her
head in response to Samuel’s questioning look. An inside joke.
This envelope was unlike the others, much smaller, padded rather than stiff, and light, so very light. Vivi tore it open.
Out dropped a silver ring with twin antler prongs.
“I was wondering when I’d see this again.
” She held it to the light. The ring still needed a cleaning, now more than ever.
She imagined it flashing through a flamenco on the cobblestoned streets of Valencia; shimmering within the clear waters of a natural spring; warmed by the midnight glow of an island bonfire.
“This ring has been more places than I have.”
“Do you have regrets?” Sam asked.
“Not a single one.”
“There’s something else in there.”
A slip of paper floated from the envelope, landing in the dirt. Vivi picked it up and read the words scrawled in all-too familiar
handwriting. They were the only two words that could summon so much history.
Vivi smiled. She folded the note and pocketed it. Someday. Someday she’d go seeking again. Not out of fear or duty, but out
of curiosity and love, when the missing became too much. For now, she’d stay and build a home that Calla might someday wish
to return to.
“What’s that?” Phoebe ran to her side. Vivi showed her. “Does that ring belong to one of the sisters in the story?”
“To both of them.”
“Can I try it on?”
Vivi wiggled the ring onto Phoebe’s thumb. Samuel admired it too, when Phoebe shyly splayed her hand in front of him. The
antlers locked protectively around Phoebe’s soft flesh, like a vow. Vivi thought for a moment, then leaned down, whispering
in Phoebe’s ear.
“Will you keep it safe for me? I think it might actually be the key to those sisters’ secret world.”
Phoebe nodded solemnly, grave in the face of this wonderful responsibility. She slid one hand into Vivi’s, the other into
Samuel’s. The three fell into step under the pines, silent and alert, listening for the persistent old shades who shared the
woods with them.