At any rate, there was no time to question or argue the issue, because as they rounded a bend in the bayou there came the sudden deafening explosion of a shotgun-firing at them.

SERENA HAD NO TROUBLE MANAGING A SCREAM THIS time. She shrieked, dropping to her knees on the floor of the pirogue and covering her head with her arms as buckshot hit the bayou in front of them, spewing muddy water and bits of shredded lily pad everywhere.

Her first thought was that they were being set upon by one of the honest men Lucky had been poaching from. Perhaps even the rightful owner of the crawfish squirming in the onion sacks two feet from her nose. She expected to hear another volley of shots and wondered if Lucky had a gun tucked away someplace to defend them with. But the initial boom faded away. In the ensuing silence, she lifted her head a few inches and peeked out between her fingers.

Gifford stood on the bank, legs spread, the smoking gun cradled loosely in his big hands. He was a tall, well-built man who didn't look anywhere near his age except for his thick head of snow-white hair, one lock of which insisted on tumbling rakishly across his broad forehead. With his square shoulders and trim waist, he still looked fit enough to wrestle a bear and win. His bold features were set in a characteristically fierce expression-bushy white brows lowered, square chin jutting forward aggressively. His nose was large and permanently red from years spent in the fields under the relentless southern sun.

«Goddammit, Lucky!» he bellowed, his voice a booming baritone that rivaled the shotgun for volume. «I thought you were that bastard Burke!»

«Naw,» Lucky called back calmly, poling the boat forward as if getting shot at didn't affect him in the least. «You might wanna shoot me anyway, though, when you see what I brought you.»

Serena rose up on her knees, snapping her head around to give him the evil eye before turning back toward her grandfather. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, hanging on to the side of the pirogue with the other to steady herself. Conflicting emotions shoved together in her chest like a logjam as she looked at the man who had essentially raised her. With adrenaline still pumping through her veins and the sound of the shotgun blast still ringing in her ears, anger took precedence for the moment.

The pirogue slid in beside a weathered dock with gnarled pilings and pitted planks. Serena didn't even wait for the boat to settle. She clambered out of it, awkward in her haste as she pulled herself up onto the rickety wharf. The pirogue scooted away as she pushed off from it and she slipped and hit her shin but managed to keep from falling back into the muddy shallows. Dirty, disheveled, with blood seeping into the previously immaculate white cotton of her pant leg and her hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders, she stormed for shore, limping.

«Dammit, Gifford, what the hell do you think you're doing? Shooting at people! My God!»

Gifford scowled at her. «Jesus Christ. What the hell kind of language is that for a lady to use?»

«The kind I learned from you!» Serena shot back. She planted herself in front of him, her hands on her hips, staring up at him with as much defiance as she could muster.

«Well, hell,» Gifford muttered. There wasn't any way around that one. He cracked the shotgun open and extracted a shell, which he slipped into the breast pocket of his faded chambray workshirt. «I'll bet you don't use that kind of language up in Charleston.»

«I'm not up in Charleston.»

«For once,» he said with a snort. «What are you doing out here?» he asked, frowning down at Serena again. «I sure as hell never expected to see you riding around the swamp in a pirogue.»

«Believe me, it's not my idea of fun,» Serena said, shooting a glare Lucky's way. «I can think of a lot better things to do with my free time and much more pleasant company to do them with.»

«She takes exception to my temperament,» Lucky said with a sardonic smile as he approached, an onion bag of crawfish swinging from his fist.

«Among other things,» Serena muttered.

Lucky stopped beside her, dropped the bag at his feet, and lit the cigarette dangling from his lip, his eyes on Serena the whole time.

He tilted his head back and blew a thin stream of smoke into the air. «Guess I'm gonna have to go back to charm school for a refresher course,» he drawled laconically.

«Don't you believe him, Miz 'Rena,» Pepper Fontenot said with a gravelly chuckle as he ambled toward them from his lawn chair. Pepper was a thin, wiry man with the same pitch-dark skin and light eyes as his sister, the formidable Odille. He had somehow managed to sustain a very merry personality despite having lived with Odille his entire life, and wore his wide smile as comfortably as he wore his faded old coveralls. He slapped Lucky on the shoulder. «He charm the hide off a gator, dis one, if he be of a mind to.»

Serena arched a brow at Lucky. «He must not have been of a mind, then.»

«Mebbe it was the company,» Lucky said through his teeth.

Quelling the juvenile urge to stick her tongue out at him, Serena turned back toward her grandfather. «You might tell me you're glad to see me,» she said, not quite able to hide her hurt at his cool reception.

«I might say it once I find out what you're doing here.»

«What I'm doing here!» she exclaimed, splaying a hand across her chest. «I'm here because you took off without a word of explanation to anybody. I come down for a visit and the first thing I'm told is that you moved yourself out here two weeks ago and haven't been heard from since. What was I supposed to do? Say, 'Oh, gee, too bad I missed him' and just go on with my vacation? My God, Gifford, you could have been dead for all we knew!»

«Well, I'm not,» he snapped. «If that's all you came to find out, you can go on home now. You aren't going to inherit for a while yet if I can help it.»

«What kind of a rotten thing is that to say?»

«It's the kind of thing a man starts saying when he's nigh onto eighty with a bum ticker and a couple of ungrateful granddaughters.»

He snapped the shotgun closed with a decisive click, turned, and walked away.

Serena stood there, dumbfounded, watching him walk up the slight incline toward the cabin. Every time she saw Gifford in the flesh she was stunned by how badly she wanted his love and approval and how badly it hurt when he didn't offer them freely. It was as if the instant she encountered him, the child in her revived itself.

She was tired and frustrated, hungry and dirty. All she wanted to do was snuggle into her grandfather's embrace and let go of the determination that had gotten her this far. She wanted to be able to tremble and have Giff soothe her fears away as he had when she'd been a little girl, but that wasn't an option. She wasn't a child anymore, and Gifford hadn't been sympathetic to her fear of the swamp for a long, long time.

When she hadn't gotten over it after what he thought was a reasonable amount of time, his understanding had metamorphosed into a subtle disapproval and disappointment that had colored their relationship ever since. He thought she was a coward. Watching him walk away, she wished he could have realized how much courage it had taken her to get this far.

«Yeah, there's just nothin' quite so heartwarmin' as a family reunion,» Lucky muttered, his eyes also on Gifford's back as the old man walked away.

Serena glared at him. «Butt out, Doucet.» She stomped after her grandfather, her espadrilles squishing in the damp, spongy dirt that constituted the front yard.

The cabin was a simple rectangular structure covered with tan asphalt shingles. It was set up a few feet off the ground on sturdy cypress stilts to save it from the inevitable spring flooding. The roof was made of corrugated tin striped with rust. A stovepipe stuck up through it at a jaunty angle. The front door was painted a shade of aqua that hurt the eyes. There were no curtains at the two small front windows.