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"Yes," I said after taking a deep breath. I turned to the house. It resembled a Greek temple. Across the upstairs gallery ran a diamond-design iron railing. On both sides of the house, wings had been constructed to echo the predominant elements of the main building.

Daddy stopped at the front and we sat in the car staring up slate steps to the portico and lower gallery. The windows were boarded. The vines that ran along the scrolled gates had gone wild and crisscrossed themselves, choking out the weaker sections so that they draped brown and dead over the iron works.

"Doesn't look like anyone's been here for ages," Daddy said, discouraged.

We got out of the car and started up the steps. We walked between the great columns, and Daddy tried the front door. It wasn't locked, but it was warped, so he had to push hard to open it. We paused in the Spanish-tiled entryway. The foyer was designed to take away the breath of visitors the moment they set foot in this mansion, for it was not only vast and long but so high-ceilinged that our footsteps and our voices echoed.

Above us hung the once dazzling chandeliers, the teardrop bulbs now as dull as unpolished rock. The furniture had been covered but no one had cleaned or dusted for years. Great cobwebs sailed over us from every corner. Mirrors were caked with dust, and there were rodent droppings everywhere. The interior had a stale, musty odor, especially with the afternoon sun cooking the stagnant air.

Before us was the circular stairway, twice as wide and as elaborate at the one in the House of Dumas. We walked slowly down the corridor, looking through each doorway. All of the rooms in the mansion were vast, only now the drapes looked weighted with age and dirt.

"I had forgotten how big this house was," Daddy said in a whisper. "Anyone in here?" he called. His voice reverberated and died somewhere deep in the house, probably as far as the kitchen. We waited a moment, and then Daddy suggested we go upstairs.

There were birds in what had been Paul's bedroom. They had come through an open window and built nests over the headboard. When we entered, they fluttered about madly, worried about their eggs. We looked into the adjoining bedroom, the one that had been Mommy's, but there was no sign of her or of anyone being in there recently. Daddy and I checked the other rooms, pausing at the nursery. But again we saw no sign of Mommy.

"Do you recall this room?" Daddy asked.

"Not very well. But I remember there was a music box on the dresser with a ballerina twirling. Mommy or Uncle Paul always turned it on after I crawled into bed."

"I don't remember that. Must have been left here." He gazed around and then said, "There's only one other place to look."

I knew where he wanted to go. We went up the rear stairway to the enormous attic, with its hand-cut cypress structural beams, which had served as Mommy's studio. There were large windows looking out over the fields and canals, but none on the side that faced the oil rigs. Even now the great skylights provided illumination and made the studio bright and airy.

I knew that Daddy had put all of his hopes in this room. Surely we would find Mommy hiding here; but again we found nothing, no sign of her or of anyone else. Some of her tripods were up, but they looked as if they had been left that way for years.

"Where can she be, Daddy?" I moaned.

He shook his head. As he gazed around the studio, his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he had a faint smile on his lips.

"What is it, Daddy? Why are you smiling?"

"It seems like yesterday," he said.

"Wh

at does?"

"When Gisselle and I came to visit your mother, Ruby brought me up here. We realized how much we still loved each other, and we made plans to meet in New Orleans."

"Maybe she went back to New Orleans, Daddy. Maybe all she wanted to do was go to the shack and leave Jean's picture there," I suggested.

He nodded hopefully. "Maybe. I'll find a phone, and we'll call Jeanne. That's all I know to do around here."

I followed him out and down the stairs. Waiting for us at the bottom were two men. I recognized one of them as the young man who had looked at me so intensely back at the restaurant. The other was a much older, stouter man with large dark eyes and puffy red cheeks. The tip of his chin was red, too. He wore dark overalls and suspenders. Both men wore white helmets, only the younger man had his tilted back and to the side like a cowboy hat.

"Who the hell are you people?" the older man demanded.

"I'm Beau Andreas, and this is my daughter, Pearl," Daddy said quickly.

"Pearl!" the younger man exclaimed. "That's number twenty-two."

"What?"

"He means oil well number twenty-two. Are you the owner?" he asked me. "Pearl Andreas?"

"Yes," I said.

The younger man whistled, smiled, and stared at me. He was a few inches taller than his companion. He wore his hair long enough to cover his ears and the nape of his neck. Right now there was an impish twinkle in his dark eyes and a small, tight smile on his lips. Although he looked strong, with his broad shoulders and muscular arms, there was a gentle quality in his face, a softness in his features that put me at ease.