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"You can cut hair, too?" Beau asked, his eyes wide with amazement.

"Do you fish and hunt as well?" Gisselle inquired, not disguising her sarcasm.

"I've fished, helped harvest oysters, but I've never hunted. I can't stand to see birds or deer shot. I even hate seeing the alligators shot," I said.

"Harvested oysters?" Gisselle said, shaking her head. "Meet my sister, the fish lady," she added.

"When did you first learn what had happened to you as a baby?" Beau asked.

"Just before my grandmere Catherine died," I replied.

"You mean the woman you thought was your grandmother," Gisselle reminded me.

"Yes. It's hard to think like that after so many years," I explained, more to Beau, who nodded with understanding. "And did you have a mother and a father?"

"I was told my mother died when I was born and my father ran off."

"So you lived with these grandparents?"

"Just my grandmother. My grandfather is a trapper and lives in the swamp away from us."

"So just before she died, she told you the truth?" Beau asked. I nodded.

"How terrible of them to keep the secret all these years," Gisselle said. She gazed at me for a reaction.

"Yes.'

"Lucky your fake grandmother decided to tell you or you would never have known your real family. That was nice of her," Beau said, which fired up Gisselle.

"These people she lived with are no better than animals, stealing someone's baby and keeping her! Claudine Montaigne told me about these Cajuns who live in a one-room house, everyone in the family sleeping with everyone else. To them incest is nothing more serious than stealing an apple!"

"That's not so," I said quickly.

"Claudine wouldn't lie," Gisselle insisted.

"There are bad people in the bayou just like there are bad people here," I said. "She might have heard of them, but she shouldn't judge everyone the same. Nothing like that ever happened to me."

"You were just lucky," Gisselle insisted.

"No, really . . ."

"They bought a kidnapped baby, didn't they?" she pursued. "Wasn't that terrible enough?"

I looked at Beau. His eyes were fixed intently on me, waiting for my response. What could I say? Put-away thoughts. The truth was forbidden. The lie had to be upheld.

"Yes," I muttered, and shifted my gaze down to my entwined fingers. Gisselle sat back, contented. There was a moment of silence before Beau spoke.

"You know, you two are going to be the center of attention at school next Monday," he said.

"I know. I can't help being nervous about it," I confessed.

"Don't worry, I'll pick the both of you up in the morning and escort you around all day," he promised. "You'll be a curiosity for a w

hile and then things will settle down."

"I doubt it," Gisselle said. "Especially when everyone learns she's lived like a Cajun all of her life and cooked and fished and made little handicrafts to sell by the road."

"Don't listen to her."