"Take my hand." He seized mine into his and pulled me to my feet. "That's it. Now face . . . that sliver of a moon up there. Go on. Ready? Repeat after me. I, Ruby Dumas. Go on, do it," he said.

"I, Ruby Dumas . . ."

"Do hereby pledge to be the best friend and companion Paul Marcus Tate could have or want."

I repeated it and shook my head.

"And I promise to devote myself to my art and become as famous as possible."

That was easy to say.

"That's all I will ask of you, Ruby," he whispered. "But I have more to ask of myself," he added, and then he looked up at the moon. "I, Paul Marcus Tate, do hereby pledge to love and protect Ruby and Pearl Dumas, to take them into my special world and make them as happy as it is possible to be on this planet. I pledge to work harder and keep all that is ugly and unpleasant from our doorstep and I pledge to be honest and truthful and understanding of any and all Ruby's needs, no matter what I might feel."

He kissed me quickly on the cheek.

"Welcome to the land of magic," he said. We both laughed, but my heart was pounding as if I had really been part of some sacred and important ceremony. "We should have something . . . a toast to our happiness."

"I found a little of Grandmère Catherine's blackberry brandy in a jar at the bottom of a closet," I said. We went inside and I poured the few precious drops into two glasses. Laughing, we tapped our glasses and swallowed the brandy in a gulp. It did seem fitting that we top our pledge with something my Grandmère had made.

"No ceremony, nothing any priest or judge could say, will top this," Paul declared, "for this comes from the bottom of our hearts."

I smiled. I didn't think I could feel so good so soon after my ordeal with Buster Trahaw.

"How should we get married?" I wondered, and thought about his parents again.

"A simple ceremony . . . Let's just elope," he decided. "I'll come by tomorrow and we'll drive up to Breaux Bridge. There's a retired priest there who will marry us, legal and all. He's an old friend of the family."

"But he'll want to know why your parents aren't at our sides, Paul, won't he?"

"Leave it up to me," he said. "I'm to start taking care of you from the moment I wake up tomorrow until the day I die," he said. "Or as long as you'll have me around to do so," he qualified. "Be ready at seven. Just think," he said, "all the old biddies who have been quacking about us will finally stop."

Paul remained with me talking about the house, the things we had to buy and do even after we moved in. He was so excited, I barely got in a word. He talked until I grew so tired, I couldn't keep my eyes from shutting.

"I'd better get going and let you get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow." He kissed me on the cheek and then I watched him go off toward the canal to take his boat home.

Before I went back into the house, however, I walked out to the mailbox and took back the letter to Daphne. I wouldn't mail it, but I couldn't get myself to tear it up. If I had learned anything in my short life, it was that nothing was forever, nothing was certain. I couldn't close all the doors. Not yet.

But at least tonight, I thought, I would go to sleep easily, dreaming of that great attic and my wonderful studio and all the exciting paintings I would do in the days to come. What a great place for Pearl to grow up in, I thought when I looked in on her. I fixed her blanket, kissed her cheek, and went to bed looking forward to my dreams.


3

  My True Wonderland

Pearl's baby babble woke me. It was a heavily overcast day, so there was no warm sunlight to slip through the curtains and caress my closed eyelids until they fluttered open. As soon as I awoke, the significance of what I was about to do returned. I'm going to elope, I thought. Questions rained down from everywhere. When would I actually move Pearl and myself into Cypress Woods? How would we announce our marriage to the community? Had he informed his family by now? What, if anything, did I want to take from the shack? What kind of a wedding were we about to have?

I rose, but I had the strange sensation that I was caught in a dream. Even Pearl had a distant, quiet look in her eyes and was more patient than normally, not crying for her breakfast, not demanding to be plucked out of her crib and held.

"It's a big day for you, my precious," I told her. "Today I'm giving you a new life, a new name, and an entirely different future, one I hope is full of promise and happiness.

"We've got to pick out a nice dress for you to wear. First, let me feed you, and then you will help Mommy choose her own wedding dress, too.

"My wedding dress," I muttered, my eyes suddenly filling with tears. It was in this shack, in this very room that Grandmère Catherine and I talked about my future wedding.

"I always dreamed," she had said, coming over to me to sit beside me and stroke my hair, "that you would have the magical wedding, the one in the Cajun spider legend. Remember? The rich Frenchman imported those spiders from France for his daughter's wedding and released them into the oaks and pines where they wove their canopy of webs. Over them, he sprinkled gold and silver dust and then they had the candlelight wedding procession. The night glittered all around them, promising them a life of love and hope.

"Someday you will marry a handsome man who could be a prince, and you, too, will have a wedding in the stars," Grandmère had promised.

How sad she would be for the now. How much I was feeling sorry for myself. A young woman's heart should be filled with so much excitement on the morning of her wedding day that she would be afraid she would simply burst, I told myself. Every color should be brighter, every sweet sound, sweeter. It should seem like every single creature that lived around her was delighted, too. There should be happy, deliriously excited voices around her, and everywhere she looked, she should fix her eyes on some preparation, some activity related and solely de-voted to the wonderful ceremony she was about to undertake with the man she loved.

And love . . . it should have blossomed and overwhelmed her. She would stop for a moment and wonder if it was possible to ever again be as happy and content as she was. Could any event bring her as much joy? She should be surrounded by dozens of friends, each and every one electrified, thrilled, the whole bunch of them chattering away, no one particularly listening to anyone else, but everyone listening to everyone, a cacophony of laughter, giggles, shrieks, and exclamations.

The kitchen should be filled with the sounds of clanking pots, nervous cooks, aromas of wonderful fish and chicken dishes, cakes and pies. Orders should be shouted across rooms, cars pulling up and driving off, their drivers assigned various errands. Little children would be charged with some of the electricity, making mischief and being shooed from one place to another. The older women would be pretending to be annoyed and concerned but stopping every once in a while to recall their own special day, their own excitement, and now feeling overjoyed that they were sharing in hers, drawing from it like a bee drawing pollen from a flower and turning that excitement into honey-filled memories and moments of their own pasts. She should see it on every woman's face when they finally set eyes on her in her wedding dress.

I continued to envision my dream wedding. The limousine would be waiting outside, its engine idling like a horse anxious to get galloping. The door would be flung open. Everyone would start cheering and clapping as I made my way down the gallery steps and into the car. And then the whole entourage of friends and relatives would follow behind as I was brought to the steps of the church where inside, my wonderful, loving husband-to-be stood shifting his weight from one leg to the other nervously, flashing handsome smiles at his own parents and relatives but watching that doorway for signs of my arrival.

And then the music would begin and everyone would sit solemnly, but be eager to set eyes on me starting down the aisle toward the altar where the holy sacrament waited. My feet would never touch the ground. I would walk on a shelf of air and glide slowly toward the vows.

When I closed my eyes and thought of all this, my pictures were as vivid as my paintings, but I surprised myself when I saw myself in the wedding sequence I had conjured, and when I lifted my eyes, I saw not Paul waiting, but Beau . . . my precious love . . . Beau, at last.

I sighed deeply. It was not Beau who would be coming to fetch me shortly, I reminded myself. Another shivering thought came: I was probably not even in his thoughts this day, the day I would take the vows that would tear me away from him forever. Pearl's wail reminded me, however, that I was not doing this for myself. I was doing it for her and for the promising future and the security it would bring to her.

I chose a simple light pink cotton dress with a square collar and a skirt that fell an inch or so above my ankles. I still wore the locket Beau had given me more than a year ago just before I had left for the Greenwood School in Baton Rouge, but it was wrong to wear it now. I took it off and buried it under some of my other precious things in Grandmère Catherine's old oak chest.

I had a bright pink outfit for Pearl. It had a white bow at the collar. After I fed and dressed her, I placed her in the crib, dressed myself, and then sat down and brushed my hair, deciding I would simply tie it with a ribbon and let it lie as softly as possible over my shoulders and down my back. I had let it grow long, and when I brushed it out, it reached my shoulder blades. I put on a little lipstick, found a bonnet that had once belonged to Grandmère Catherine, so I felt I had her with me, and then went out on the gallery with Pearl to wait for Paul.