"Daddy?"

He didn't respond.

"Daddy?" I called, a bit more frantic. A few moments later he came down the stairs slowly. In his hands was the picture of Jean that Mommy had torn off the photograph of him and Pierre together. It looked as if candle wax had dripped over it.

"She was here," Daddy said in a hoarse whisper. "You were right."

Excited by the discovery, we searched the property for more evidence of Mommy's presence, but there was nothing else to be found and no trail to lead us anywhere. Most of the land around the property was heavily overgrown, and Daddy thought we weren't properly dressed to go traipsing through marshland.

"Too dangerous. She couldn't have gone that way anyhow," he said.

"Where should we look for her, then?"

"There's only one other place I know. Cypress Woods," he said with a deep sigh. "She's going back through her past, a journey I hoped we wouldn't have to make."

We returned to our car, and Daddy sat thinking a moment.

"Let's go into town and get something to eat first," he suggested. "Town's not far, but Cypress Woods is the other way. It might be hours and hours before we have another chance to get a bite or something to drink."

"All right, Daddy," I said. I wasn't as hungry as I was thirsty. Just walking through the shack and around it for a little while was enough to get us hot and sticky. Our clothes looked pasted on us. It was that humid.

Some of the other shacks we saw along the way toward the town also looked deserted, but most were well kept, the grounds trim. We pulled into the parking lot of the first restaurant we saw. It advertised crawfish, "All you can eat." Because it was summer, there were few tourists at the restaurant. Nearly all of the patrons paused and looked up from their large bowls of crawfish when we entered. Although they didn't appear unfriendly, they did study us with some suspicion. One woman with long black hair and dark eyes paused and craned her neck like a bird around the man sitting in front of her to gape at us. I smiled at her, and she nodded.

A group of men all dressed in jeans and T-shirts, some with their forearms streaked with grease and oil, rose from a table to our right and started out, laughing as they walked. They all wore high boots. Every one of them glanced at us, but the youngest-looking man flashed a warm, soft smile and fixed his dark eyes on me for a moment longer. He tipped his hat as he went by, hesitating as if he wanted to say something.

"Come along, Jack. That's too rich for your blood," one of the older men said. Embarrassed, he hurried out the door and into their laughter.

We took our seats and a young girl in a red apron with her hair tied in thick knots came to take our order. Daddy had a chicken and seafood gumbo and I ordered jambalaya.

I saw a poster advertising a fais dodo on Saturday night with music by the Cajun Swamp Trio.

"What is that?" I asked. "Fais dodo?"

"That's a dance and big feed," she said with her hand on her hip and her shoulder up. "You ain't ever been to one?"

"No."

"Where you from?"

"We're from New Orleans," Daddy said, smiling.

"Oh. Well, you should come," she said. "You can do the two-step." She leaned toward me and added, her eyes shifting toward the door, "I know some boys who'd like to see you there."

"We're not staying," I said quickly.

Daddy laughed. He ordered a mug of beer for himself and I had iced tea.

"So," he said "What do you think of your mother's world so far? You don't remember much, obviously."

"It's interesting," I said in a loud whisper. "But so different."

Daddy nodded and smiled at a memory. "When I first set eyes on your mother, I thought she was Gisselle. It was during Mardi Gras, and we were all getting into our costumes. I met her in front of the house, thinking Gisselle had dressed up like a poor girl. I should have realized Gisselle would never do anything like that, even for a costume party. I kept insisting she was Gisselle because I didn't even know Gisselle had a twin. After your mother's continued protests, I realized she was someone else, and I looked at her more closely. She was so fresh and natural, timid, but not afraid to say what she thought. Sometimes," he said after a long pause, "I wonder if she wouldn't have been better off if she'd remained here in this world."

"But what about her grandfather, and the terrible thing he was doing, selling her to a man for his wife?" I reminded him.

"Yes, that's true. Every place has its problems, I guess."

"Daddy, don't you think we should call or go see Aunt Jeanne?"

"Maybe after we check Cypress Woods," he said. "I'm not anxious to run into Gladys Tate."

"Why does Aunt Jeanne's mother hate us so, Daddy? Is it just because of their losing the trial?"

"No. Gladys blamed your mother for what happened to her son Paul. After his death she started the custody battle even though she knew you weren't Paul's real daughter. She did it for revenge. She never wanted Paul to be with your mother, of course, and from what Ruby has told me, I understand she was never very pleasant to either of you after you moved to Cypress Woods."

"Aunt Jeanne told me her mother was crippled up with arthritis these days. She doesn't get around much."

"Yeah, well, hate twists and turns your insides until you become something even you despise," Daddy said. "It's best we avoid her."

So much of Mommy's past was dark and unhappy. I understood why she had resorted to voodoo rituals and good-luck charms and why she believed that old curses followed in her shadow. Poor Mommy, I thought. She was in such torment.

Our food was delicious, but neither Daddy nor I had the appetite we expected. We were both thinking only about Mommy now. I hoped we would find her soon.

The roof of the mansion my uncle Paul had named Cypress Woods rose over the sycamore and cypress trees, looming higher and higher as we approached from the long driveway. The once beautiful grounds were overgrown, the flower beds choked with weeds, the fountains dry and littered with discarded junk here and there, and the gazebos had grass growing through the floorboards, weeds invading everywhere.

Off to the right were the canals and the swamps. A pirogue, tied to the dock, dipped and fell with the water. A large egret stood on the bow, its chest out as if it claimed the canoe. To the west we saw the oil wells and the rigs, and immediately visions from my recurring nightmare flashed in my mind. To me it was a bad omen. I leaned down and touched the good-luck dime Mommy had given me.

"Are you all right?" Daddy asked. He knew the oil rigs were always in my nightmare.

"Yes," I said after taking a deep breath. I turned to the house. It resembled a Greek temple. Across the upstairs galerie 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 galerie. 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.