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"It's meant to be. I want to pluck happiness out of the jaws of sadness, drive the monster away and keep us protected forever and ever, shielded from the miseries, the jealousies, the evil, that seems to seep into everyone's life, even the richest and most respected people. No one will have the ecstasy we will have, Gabriel. I swear."

"You overwhelm me with your love for me," I said. "It scares me because I don't know if I can keep such a pledge, Pierre. I think my mother already knows about us."

"If she's truly a woman with vision, she will see how full your heart is and how good our love is and she will not want us to part."

"But you're married. We can't be lovers forever."

"We'll find a way, somehow," he said. "For now, let's not think about it. Let's not think about anything that takes from our love. Let's be

deliberately blind and deaf to anything but ourselves. Can you do that?"

He didn't wait for my reply. He brought his lips to mine and then he kissed my chin and my breasts, laying his head in my lap. I stroked his hair and gazed down into his handsome face and pleading eyes and ordered the voices inside me that wanted to warn me to be silent.

Be still my heart, I thought, and listen only to my love's vow.

I lay back on the pillow. It started to pour, the drops tapping on the tin roof. He raised himself slowly and then brought himself to me so we could make love again to the rhythm of the rain.

It was still raining when I left the shack to pole my pirogue home. Pierre wanted to drive me, but I told him it was far from the first time I poled in the rain, even at night. He walked down to the dock with me and we kissed as we parted. He stood there, smiling, the drops trickling over his cheeks, soaking him, but him acting as if it were the brightest, driest day. I pushed off and waved and, after a moment, lost sight of him in the darkness. He said he was going to drive back to New Orleans tonight and he would let me know when he would be able to return to our love nest.

Mama and Daddy weren't home when I returned, which made it easier for me. I didn't like lying to Mama, but I had a story already prepared. I was long in bed and even asleep when they came home. I woke to the sounds of Daddy's laughter and Mama telling him to hush up. He knocked into a chair and Mama chastised him again. Then she helped him up the stairs and into bed. I heard her come to my doorway and sensed she was standing there awhile, but I pretended to be asleep.

Daddy slept late the next morning. When I went down to breakfast, Mama was up, sitting at the table, her hands cupped around a mug of steaming coffee. She gazed into the dark liquid as if it were a crystal ball.

"Morning, Mama," I said, and shifted my eyes quickly to avoid her penetrating gaze when she raised her head. It was as good as a confession. She waited for me to get some coffee and a biscuit before she spoke.

"You went out after your daddy and me left last night, didn't you, Gabriel?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Where did you go?"

"Just for a walk and then a short ride in the pirogue," I said. I put some jam on my biscuit.

"You met that man someplace, didn't you, Gabriel?" she asked directly. My heart stopped and then fluttered. "You can't lie to me, Gabriel. It's written in your face."

"Oui, Mama," I confessed. She was right: Keeping the truth from Mama was like trying to hold back a twister.

"Oh, honey," she moaned. "After what you've been through, you've suffered, to go and start with another married man."

"We love each other, Mama. It's different and it's not like anything I've ever felt before," I protested.

"How would you know?" she asked with a stern face. "You've never really had a boyfriend."

"It can't be this good with anyone else."

"Of course it can. You're just feeling your first real excitement, and with a very sophisticated, rich city man who probably has a half dozen young mistresses," she declared.

Such an idea had never occurred to me.

"No, Mama, he said . . ."

"He'd say anything to get you where he wants you, Gabriel." She leaned toward me so I couldn't look away from those all-knowing eyes. "And he would make any promise to get what he wants. If you believe him, it's because you want to, first, and second, because he's done it so many times before, he's good at it," she concluded.

I stared, thinking. Then I shook my head. "He can't be that way; he can't," I insisted, as much to myself as to her.

"Why not, Gabriel?"

"I feel him," I said, putting my hand over my heart, "deeply in here, My feelings have never betrayed me before," I insisted, building my own courage. "Since I was a little girl, I have known what is true and what is not. My animals . . ."