"Your Honor," I began, ready to list a dozen promises. He put up his hand.

"I have made my decision, and nothing you say will change that," he said firmly. And then he smiled and added, "I will expect an invitation to a wedding."

I gasped with joy, but Judge Barrow became serious again.

"You may and must become yourself again, madame." Tears of happiness flooded my face. Beau and I embraced.

"I have given orders for your child to be returned to you. She will be brought here momentarily. The legal ramifications resulting from your previous marriage, straightening out the identities . . . I leave all that to your high-priced attorneys."

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said through my tears. Beau shook his hand and we left the office.

Monsieur Polk was waiting for us in the corridor. "I must confess," he said, "I had my doubts as to the veracity of your story. I am happy for you. Good luck."

We stepped outside to wait for the car that would bring Pearl back to us. There were still people who had been in the courtroom lingering about, discussing the shocking events. I spotted Mrs. Thibodeau, one of Grandmère Catherine's old friends. She had trouble walking now, but she hobbled her way toward us and took my hand.

"I knew it was you," she said. "I told myself Catherine Landry's granddaughter might have been a twin, but she had lived most of her life with Catherine and she had her spirit in her. I looked at your face in that courtroom and I saw your Grandmère looking back at me and I knew it would turn out right."

"Thank you, Mrs. Thibodeau."

"God bless you, child, and don't forget us."

"I won't. We'll be back," I promised. She hugged me and I watched her walk way, my heart heavy with the memory of my Grandmère walking alongside her friends to church.

The peekaboo sun slipped out from under the mushrooming clouds and dropped warm rays around us as the car with Pearl in it was driven up. The nurse in the front seat opened the door and helped her out. The moment Pearl saw me, her eyes brightened.

"Mommy!" she cried.

It was the best word in the world. Nothing filled my heart with more joy. I held out my arms for her to run to me and then I flooded her faces with kisses and pressed her close. Beau put his arm around my shoulders. All around us, people watched with smiles on their faces.

As we started from the courthouse, I saw the Tates' limousine drive away. The windows were dark, but as the sunlight grew stronger, the silhouette of Madame Tate became clearly outlined. She looked as if she had turned to stone.

I felt sorry for her, even though she had done a very mean thing. She had lost everything today, much more than her vengeance. Her illusionary life had been shattered around her like so much thin china. She was going home to a darker, more troubled time. I prayed that somehow she and Octavious could find a renewal and a peace now that the lies were stripped away.

"Let's go home," Beau said.

Never did those words mean as much to me as they did now.

"I want to make one stop first, Beau," I said. He didn't have to ask where.

A little while later, I stood in front of Grandmère Catherine's tombstone.

A true traiteur has a very holy spirit, I thought. She lingers longer to look after the loved ones she has left behind. Grandmère Catherine's spirit was still here. I could feel it, feel her hovering nearby. The breeze became her whisper, its caress, her kiss.

I smiled and gazed up at the light blue sky streaked with thin wisps of clouds now. Mrs. Thibodeau was right, I thought. Grandmère had been with me this day. I kissed my fingers and touched her stone and then I returned to the car and to Beau and to my darling Pearl.

As we drove away, I gazed out the window and saw a marsh hawk strutting on a cypress branch. It watched us and then it lifted into the wind and soared beside and around us for a while until it turned and headed deeper into the bayou.

"Good-bye, Paul," I whispered. But I'll be back, I thought.

I'll be back.

Epilogue

My dreams of having a glorious wedding were still not to become a reality. The publicity and all the commotion surrounding the custody hearing continued to hover about us when we returned to New Orleans. Beau thought it was better for us to have a small ceremony away from the din, and since his parents were not taking it all very well anyway, I couldn't disagree.

We debated for days about whether or not we should sell the house in the Garden District and build a new house just outside of New Orleans. Finally we both came to the same conclusion: We were happy with our servants and we wouldn't find a more beautiful setting. Rather than move, I embarked on the task of redecorating, tearing the rooms apart, floor to ceiling, and replacing the drapes, wall hangings, flooring, and even some of the fixtures. It was as though I were caught in a maddening frenzy to purify the house and purge it of any and all traces of my stepmother, Daphne.

Of course, I kept all the things that I knew had been precious to Daddy and I didn't change a thing in the room that had once been Uncle Jean's. It remained a shrine to his memory, something I knew Daddy had wanted. I put all of the things that even smelled of Daphne into the attic, burying away clothing, jewelry, pictures, mementoes, in large trunks. Then I gathered Gisselle's things together and gave much of it away to thrift shops and charities.

With the rooms repainted, new drapes on the windows, the changes in the artwork, the house took on my and Beau's identities. Of course, there were still memories lingering like cobwebs, but I believed, as did Beau, that time was the best vacuum cleaner and these troublesome memories would someday become vague and insignificant.

After I had done what I wanted with the house, I directed my energies back into my artistic work. One of the first pictures I drew and then painted was a picture of a young woman sitting in a gazebo with a newborn baby in her arms. The setting placed her in a home and on grounds like ours in the Garden District. When Beau looked at the picture, he told me he thought I had done a self-portrait, and then, a few weeks later, I woke with the symptoms of pregnancy and realized that the inspiration for the picture had come from a deeper realization inside myself.

Beau swore it meant I had some of Grandmère Catherine's traiteur powers.

"Why can't it be so? Your people believe it's inherited power, right?" he said.

"I never felt anything like that, Beau, and I never even dreamt of healing people. I don't have that sort of mystical insight."

He nodded and thought a moment and then said a startling thing. "Sometimes, when I'm with Pearl and she's jabbering away in her baby language, I see her fix intently on something, and suddenly her face seems years older than four. There's an awareness in her eyes. Do you ever feel that when you're with her?"

"Yes," I said, "but I was afraid to even mention anything like it for fear you would laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing. I'm wondering. You know," he said, "she's even beguiling my parents these days. Mother tries not to show it, but she can't help but dote on her, and my father . . . when he's with her, he's like a little boy again."

"She has her way with them."

"With anyone," Beau said. "I think she's charmed. There. I've said it. Just don't tell any of my friends," he added quickly. I laughed. "Next thing you know," he said, "you'll have me believing in some of those voodoo rituals you and Nina Jackson used to practice."

"Don't discount anything," I warned.

He laughed again, but two weeks into my ninth month, he managed to surprise me with a wonderful present. He had located Nina and he brought her to our house to see me.

"I have a surprise visitor for you," Beau said, coming into the sitting room first.

Then he reached around the door and brought Nina forward. She didn't look very much older, although her hair was completely gray.

"Nina!" I struggled to my feet. I was so big, I felt like a hippopotamus rising out of a swamp. We embraced.

"You be big, all right," Nina said. "And close. I can see it in your eyes."

"Oh, Nina, where have you been?"

"Been travelin' a bit up and down the river. Nina be retired now. I live with my sister."

She sat and talked with me for an hour. I showed her Pearl and she ranted and raved about how beautiful she was becoming. She told me she thought she was a special child, too. And then she told me she was going to light a blue candle for my new baby so the baby would have success and protection.

"It don't be long," she predicted. She reached into her pocket and produced a camphor lump for me to wear around my neck. "It keep germs away from you and your baby," she promised. I told her I would wear it even in the hospital.

"Please, don't be a stranger. Come see us again, Nina."

"Be sure I will," she said.

"Nina," I asked, taking her hand into mine, "do you think the anger I threw into the wind when I went to see Mama Dede with you about Gisselle has blown away?"

"It be blown from your heart, child. That's what matters most."

We hugged and Beau took her home.

"That was a wonderful present, Beau," I told him when he returned. "Thank you."

"I see she left something," he said, eyeing the camphor lump around my neck. "Figured she would. To tell you the truth," he admitted, "I was hoping she would. Can't take any chances."

We laughed about it.

Four days later my labor began. It was intense, even more so than it had been with Pearl. Beau was at my side constantly and was even there with me in the delivery room. He held my hand and encouraged my breathing. I think he felt every stick of pain I felt, for I saw him wince each time. Finally my water broke and the baby started to enter this world.

"It's a boy!" the doctor cried, and then screamed, "Wait!"

Beau's eyes widened.

"It's another boy! Twins!" the doctor added. "I thought it might be. One was hiding the other, covering his heartbeat with his own.

"Congratulations!" he said, and the nurses held two blond, blue-eyed baby boys in their arms.

"We're not giving either of them away," Beau joked. "Don't worry."

Twins, I thought. They're going to love each other from day one, I pledged, day one.

Pearl was overwhelmed with the news that she would have not one baby brother, but two. Our first great task was going to be finding names for them. We had already discussed the possibility of a girl and then a boy, thinking the boy would be called Pierre, after Daddy. I knew what I wanted to do, but I wasn't sure how Beau would feel. He surprised me in the hospital room afterward by suggesting it himself.

"We should call our second son Jean," he said.

"Oh, Beau, I thought so, but . . ."

"But what?" He smiled. "I told you. I'm a believer now. It was meant to be."

Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

Beau had a photographer waiting at the house the day we brought the twins home. We had pictures taken of the five of us. We were quite the little family now. We hired a nurse to help with the twins in the beginning, but Beau thought we might keep her on longer.

"I don't want you neglecting your art," he insisted.

"Nothing's more important than my children, Beau. My art will take a backseat," I told him. I wanted to be close to my boys and make sure they were taught to love and cherish each other. Beau understood.

A week after I had returned from the hospital with our twins, I sat out in the gardens, relaxing and reading. Pearl was upstairs in the new nursery, intrigued and fascinated with her two infant brothers.

"Pardon, madame," Aubrey said, coming out to me, "but this just arrived special delivery for you."

"Thank you, Aubrey." I took the envelope. When I saw it came from Jeanne, I sat back, my fingers trembling as I tore it open. There was a photograph within and a note.

Dear Ruby,

Mother insisted every iota of anything that reminds us of you be thrown out. I couldn't find it in my heart to throw this away. Somehow, I think, Paul would have wanted you to have it.

Jeanne

I looked at the picture. I couldn't remember who had taken it, one of Paul's school friends, I thought. It was a picture of the two of us taken at the fais dodo hall when Paul had taken me to the dance. That had been my first real date, and it was before I had learned the truth about ourselves. Both of us looked so young and innocent and hopeful. We had nothing ahead of us but happiness and love.