She was silent a moment and then she fixed her wise eyes on me. "What really made you change your mind about the baby, Gabrielle? I'm sure it wasn't just because they have all that money."

"No."

"Well?" Mama pursued.

"Madame Dumas said something that made me question why I wanted the baby so much, Mama. She said if I thought by keeping the baby, I was keeping a hold on Pierre, I was wrong."

Mama nodded.

"And then I thought, if I was doing that, I was being selfish and not thinking of the baby as much as I was thinking of myself. No bird, no nutria, not even an alligator, thinks of itself before it thinks of its babies."

Mama smiled. "I used to worry about your being out there in the swamp so much, but I see you got the best education from the best teacher," she said. She thought a moment. "That man will be back to be sure he gets his money. Keep him out of my sight.

"I know what I'll do," she said, and went to her cupboard to get a statue of the Virgin Mary. She took it outside and set it down in the middle of the top step. "The moment he sees that," she predicted, "he'll stop dead in his tracks."

Now that I had made my decision about the baby, a weight seemed to be lifted from my shoulders. However, my world still remained changed, and as time went by, I became even less and less energetic, dozing and sleeping longer and more frequently. My swelling continued. Mama had me taking different herbal drinks, but I still bloated and looked twice as big as I had during my first pregnancy at every step of the way. Mama was disappointed that none of this lessened during my second trimester when a pregnant woman usually felt better.

But Mama was heavily involved and distracted by Maddie Baldwin's delivery at the start of my own seventh month. Just as she had predicted, Maddie had a hard time of it, and after the baby was born, Mama said it was a very sickly infant. She didn't think he would last a week. Six days later, the baby died. It laid a heavy pall over everything we both did for days afterward. Mama always blamed herself, thinking there was something she could have done, something she could have added to the treatment and diet.

It seemed we were stuck on a merry-go-round of sadness these days, all the gloom somehow finding its way to our doorstep. It was like being in a storm that would never end. And then, a little more than two weeks later, a ray of sunshine broke through the clouds of despair.

I had finished eating a little lunch. There was the usual afternoon lull, but a wave of high clouds kept it from being too hot, and there was a cool breeze from the Gulf. So I decided to take a walk along the canal. I had stopped looking for it so long, I almost missed it when I turned the corner toward the path, but there on the dock post was Pierre's blue cravat. The surprise almost had me paralyzed. For a moment I thought I was seeing things; I was a victim of my own vivid, hungry imagination, but when I drew closer, I realized it was true.

I felt an aching in my heart, making it thud louder, making my blood race. As quickly as I could, I went to my canoe. My hands shook with excitement when I grasped the pole. My legs were trembling. I hadn't poled my pirogue for some time now and my palms had grown soft. The pole burned my skin because of my hurried efforts, but I could think of nothing else but Pierre. As the canoe moved toward the Daisys' dock, I turned and gazed ahead in anticipation, impatient with the few minutes it would take to bring me closer.

I didn't see him on the landing, but after I tied the canoe and stepped out, I saw him sitting on a wooden box right in the middle of the debris.

"Pierre!" I cried, and he turned. He stood slowly and looked my way. He was wearing a light blue suit, but he was also wearing his palmetto hat. He looked tanned and healthy and never more handsome. He started toward me and I quickened my pace, nearly stumbling over the overgrown weeds. In moments we were in each other's arms.

"Gabrielle, my Gabrielle," he said, and followed it with his lips over my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks, and then against my lips. "I'm sorry," he said as he held me to him, raining kisses. "I'm sorry."

"Where have you been, Pierre? Why didn't you come to me before this?" I asked, my eyes flooding with tears of happiness.

He let go of me and stepped back, his eyes down, his head lowered. "Because deep inside, I guess I am a coward, I am weak, I am selfish," he declared.

"No, Pierre . . ."

"Yes," he insisted. "There's no way to sugarcoat it. Your father appeared that day, wild, angry. I tried to say something, to explain and to make promises, but I saw he was not a man with whom words would work, so I ran from him. I stood by and watched him set fire to our love nest and I did nothing. When other people began to arrive, I fled to New Orleans, crawled back behind the safety of my walls and gates and left you here to bear the brunt of it all. You have every right to hate me, Gabrielle."

"I could never hate you, Pierre."

"Haven't you suffered a great deal?"

"Only because I haven't seen or heard from you," I said, smiling.

He shook his head. "You're far too good for me. I'm sure you've borne insults, and your father . . ."

"He's out of our house. He lives in the swamp," I said. "He and Mama fought terribly."

Pierre widened his eyes.

"If it wasn't this, it would have been something else," I said sadly. "Mama and Daddy have been drifting apart for a long time."

"I see. I am sorry. Shortly after your father came here and I ran home," he continued, "I told my father everything and then he and Daphne discussed it."

"He and Daphne? Not you?"

"Not right away. Daphne has sort of stepped in to look after my father since my mother died. She's actually closer to him than I am these days, and especially now," he said with more sadness than bitterness.

"You know she came here to see me?"

"Oui. She enjoyed telling me about her conversation with you. I feel even more like a cad. Here I had gone and made all these promises to you about our baby, how I was going to take care of you and provide, and then she surprises me by going to see you and gets you to do this thing. But that's Daphne," he said. "She's a remarkable woman who finds it easy to take charge of everyone's life, not just her own."

"She wants to be the mother of your child very much," I said.

He smirked. "What Daphne wants, she usually gets, one way or another."

"I had the feeling she was doing this for your father as much as she was for herself and you," I told him.

He raised his eyes again and nodded. "Yes," he said. He turned away and gazed into the cypress trees. "I haven't been completely truthful with you, Gabrielle," he said in a voice so weak and troubled, I couldn't help but tremble in expectation. "I let you think of me as a fine gentleman, a man of character and position, but the truth is, I don't deserve to stand in your presence, and I certainly don't deserve your love, or anyone's love for that matter."

"Pierre . . ."

"No," he said, pulling his head back to gaze up at the sky. "I want you to understand why I care so much about my father's happiness, even more, please forgive me, than I do yours and certainly my own."

He turned back to me.

"My brother's accident was no accident. Yes, we drank too much and we shouldn't have been out in that sort of weather, and yes, he should have known all this better than me, for he was the sailor.

"But he was everything in my father's eyes, even though he was younger. He was more of a man's man, you see, an athlete, charming, handsome. He could get more with his smile and twinkling eyes than I could with all my intelligence and knowledge.

"Even Daphne, who was my fiancée at the time, was more infatuated with him than she was with me. Ours was more of a marriage of convenience, the logical couple, but with him she was romantic, even radiant; with him . . . she was the lover," he said.

"And so, when we were out there on that lake and the opportunity came to do him harm, I did and immediately regretted it. But it was too late. The damage was done. Only I had struck a blow that reached even more deeply into my parents' hearts than Jean's. My mother suffered, had heart trouble, became an invalid, and died. My father went into deep depressions, and in fact, it was only Daphne who could bring him out of them.

"She was the one who suggested we come to the bayou to hunt. It was almost as if she knew I would find you. Of course, that's ridiculous, but still . . . Anyway, when she presented the idea to me in her usual businesslike manner, and when she told me how much my father wanted it, I couldn't stop her. I couldn't care more about my promises to you. I'm sorry. I've gotten you into a much deeper mess than you ever imagined.

"I deserve your disdain, not your love," he concluded.

"That will never be," I said.

"I won't be able to come back to see you again," he warned. "And certainly I won't be able to bring our child. It wouldn't be fair to Daphne."

"I know."

"I've never known anyone as generous and loving as you, Gabrielle. I wish you could hate me. It would be easier to live with myself."

"Then you are doomed to suffer with yourself forever and ever," I told him.

He smiled. "Look at you," he said with a small laugh. "You're very pregnant," he added.

"Am I ugly now?"

"Far from it. I wish I could be there with you, holding your hand, comforting you."

"You will be," I said.

"I promise, I'll spoil our child something awful, just because whenever I look at him or her, I will see you," he vowed.

I nodded, my own tears burning under my eyelids.

"I'd better go," he said, his voice cracking.

We simply stared at each other.

"Promise you'll send word to me if you need anything, ever," he said.

"I promise."

He stepped toward me and we embraced. He kissed me and held me for a long moment.

And then he turned and walked away, into the dark path under the cypress, disappearing just as I imagined my ghost lover would. It seemed centuries ago when, on our way home from school, I had told Yvette and Evelyn about the myth.

But it wasn't a myth for me any longer.

For me, it had come true.

Epilogue

I don't remember poling home that day. One minute I was saying good-bye to Pierre forever, and the next minute I was sitting on Mama's rocker, staring out at the road, watching the sun sink below the crest of the trees and the shadows creep out of the woods and into my heart.

When Mama stepped out on the galerie, she was surprised to find me sitting there.

"I've been looking for you, honey. Where have you been?"

I smiled at her, but I didn't answer. She tilted her head for a moment, studying my face, and then her eyes filled with alarm.

"What's wrong, Gabrielle?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing, Mama," I said, and held my smile.

Mama said I moved around the house like a ghost, drifting from one place to the other after that. She said I was so quiet, she thought I was walking on air. Suddenly she would turn and find me beside her.

She told me I became a little girl again, confused about time, easily hypnotized by something in Nature. She said I would sit for hours and watch honeybees gather nectar or watch birds flit from branch to branch. She swore that one day she looked out and saw me approach a blue heron. It didn't flee. She claimed I was inches from it and it had no fear. She said she had never seen anything like it.

I remembered none of this. Time drifted by as anonymously as the current in the canal. I stopped distinguishing one day from the next, and always had to be called to the dinner table. I wasn't very much help to Mama either, barely doing any of the work. If I started to do something in the kitchen, she would chase me away and tell me to rest.

It really was difficult for me to move around anyway; my stomach had gotten so big. I thought I would just explode. Mama examined me almost every day, sometimes twice, her face full of concern. Occasionally my underthings were spotted with blood and I began to have what Mama called false labor pains.

Daddy came by often during my last month. He would just wait outside, fuming. Finally, one day, while I was in the rocker, Mama stepped out to speak with him. She folded her arms under her breasts and kept her head up, her eyes cold, looking through him rather than at him.

"I'll let you know when to send for them," she said. "It's what Gabrielle wants or I wouldn't do it. You're to keep them out of the shack, hear? I don't want them settin' foot on these steps, Jack. I'm warning you. I'll have the shotgun loaded and you know I won't hesitate. After the delivery, I'll bring the baby out myself."