Saturday wasn’t any better for sleeping in, either, but I did manage to do a complete run over the top of the hill and to the end of the ridge. After I got back, I even finished most of the exercises, despite a wind that promised freezing temperatures later, underscored by the clear winter blue of the sky.
The snow by the stone fences remained, now topped with an icy crust that would preserve it for the rest of the winter as more and more snow piled onto it over the weeks and months ahead.
Later, following a more leisurely than normal breakfast of apple pie and Imperial Russian tea, I showered, dressed in a warm green flannel shirt and wool trousers, and went to work on drafting my final exams, trying not to think about Llysette and the evening ahead.
Sometime in late morning, after two exams, with two to go, I shook my head, turned off the difference engine, and grabbed my winter parka. The reliable Stanley started without a hitch, even though I hadn’t plugged in the heater.
I did use four-wheel drive on Deacon’s Lane, just in case, but didn’t see or sense any black ice. My first stop was Samaha’s.
Louie wasn’t behind the counter at Samaha’s when I picked up the paper; his wife Rose stood there instead. She actually smiled.
“Good morning, Doktor Eschbach.”
“Good morning.” I smiled back.
“You be having a good day, now.”
“I hope to.” Although I hoped to have a good day, or a good evening, David and the dean notwithstanding, my stomach was still tight. I just folded the paper without looking at it and walked across the square to the post centre. The sky was still clear blue, and cold, but the lack of wind made the day seem warmer than it really was.
Unfortunately, on the steps up to the post centre I almost ran into the dean herself, wearing a heavy black coat and matching scarf and gloves. Her scarf bore an oversized golden cello pin. I stepped back.
“Doktor Eschbach, I am glad to see you up and around. David had told me of your illness, and I certainly wouldn’t want one of our rising stars laid low, if you know what I mean. I do hope that we’ll be seeing some special announcements before too long.” She smiled and batted her eyelashes. “We all will be so pleased.”
“I am sure that matters will be resolved in the most satisfactory way possible, Dean Er Recchus, and I do appreciate your interest.” Like a loaded gun at my temple I appreciated it, but I bowed and smiled again.
She inclined her head, with an even broader smile, and continued down the steps to her steamer.
My postbox contained three circulars, the NBEI bill, and a reminder that I needed a dental examination. The way things were going I needed a lot more than my teeth examined. I scooped up the envelopes and cards and walked slowly back to the Stanley.
I drove around the square on the way back and waved to Constable Gerhardt, who smiled and returned the wave, looking as clueless as ever.
Back home, I put the steamer in the barn, and even remembered to plug in the heater, since I would be heading back out to watch Llysette’s directorial efforts that evening.
By midafternoon, with breaks for lunch and this and that—developing exams was always a lengthy and painful process—I ran off the last exam on the printer, the Environmental Politics 2B exam, and took a deep breath. I flipped off the difference engine and reread each of them a last time. I’d proof them once more in a couple of days, but the more times you read them, the more likely you are to catch stupid mistakes. Professors make stupid mistakes. That I was continuing to learn.
“Do you know, I would quietly slip from the loud circle?”
I looked up at the ghost floating by my elbow. “I didn’t know you were interested in environmental politics or tests.”
“I saw you pale and fearing. That was in dream, and your soul rang.” Carolynne’s words were soft, faint.
“I’m sorry. You told me, but … I’m sorry. You deserve better.”
Was she paler than usual? I walked behind the couch and pressed the boss on the mirror. Had the watch tampered with the lodestone when they had searched the house? I swung out the mirror, but the lodestone appeared unchanged.
“Only a brief time, and I will be free.”
“Free?” I shook my head. “I’m not about to stop the lodestone. That would be murder of sorts, and you—no one deserves that. You’ve suffered enough.” I eased the mirror back into position.
“How we push away the person who loves us! No grief will soften us cold ones. What we love is taken away.” For a moment she almost looked real in the high-necked recital dress, and I thought I could see colors. First she seemed pale, then more real. Was I losing it? How much was in my mind?
I swallowed hard. “Is it always that way? Do all ghosts feel as you do? I never
thought about it, but you could as well ask if all people feel as I do. Thoughtless of me.”
“I live by day, full of faith.”
Faith, for a ghost? “And by night?” I asked as I turned on the hall light and walked toward the kitchen, since I needed something to eat before I got dressed for the evening.
“And every night I die in holy fire.”
I pulled out the butcher’s knife and started to slice some ham off the joint to go with the cheddar. Carolynne drifted toward the door, then slipped out of sight. I looked at the knife. I couldn’t very well avoid knives, but I could understand her revulsion at the blade.
After I cleaned up the dishes and retrieved a bottle of wine from the cellar for later, I went up to the bedroom to dress. First I tried the light gray suit, but that didn’t seem quite right. So I settled on the dark gray pinstripe, the one I’d worn the day I’d resigned as Minister of Environment. The suit seemed looser. Had I lost weight, or was I just in better shape?
“How I loved you even as a child,” offered Carolynne, in words that felt more sung than spoken as she appeared in the doorway.
“You are a shameless ghost.”
“Ways will I elect that seldom any tread.”
“Sorry.”
“Never will love be satisfied. The heart will become more thirsty and hungry.”
“Are you talking about me, or you?”
“Will she change what she enjoyed?”
“She? Llysette? Are you talking about Llysette?”
“Your splendor is dying on yonder hill.” She winked out, probably going back to her lodestone for a recharge, or meal, or whatever.
I shivered at the warning, for it was clearly a warning. Why was I doing this? Was it a last attempt to do what was right? Was that the reason I’d kept persisting with the ghost caricature of justice and mercy? After everything, could I do less than try to set things right?
My stomach tightened more, and my heart raced. Was I having a heart attack? No … just an anxiety attack. I took a deep breath.
Before I left the house, I quickly pulled one of the disassociators out of the closet and tucked it in the foot well of the difference engine stand, in case I needed it for demonstration purposes later.
When I got to the university, I parked the Stanley at the end of the row that held Llysette’s Reo, and took just about the last space in the faculty car park, although a number of the cars did not have faculty tags. After locking the steamer, I walked down and across to the main entrance. Under the heavy overcoat I was actually too warm, and I wiped my forehead before I walked up the stone steps into the building, unbuttoning the overcoat as I did. I did keep an eye out, just in case I
ran into one of vanBecton’s “legacies.” Then again, if they were good, I probably wouldn’t see them until it was far too late. And, who knew, I wondered if that might have been better. I tried to keep upbeat and shook my head, pushing away my fears.
I was earlier than usual, maybe twenty-five minutes before the curtain; except, even in Dutch New Bruges, the curtain never rose on schedule. Only a scattering of people crossed the foyer toward the ramps. There wasn’t a wait at the box office, and I showed my faculty card and paid my two dollars.
“It’s supposed to be good, Doktor Eschbach.”
“I hope so.”
After climbing the ramps to the main door of the theatre, I took the program from the usher, a woman student I’d never seen, and glanced at the title page:
HEINRICH VERRÜCKT
OR
THE TRAGEDY OF HENRY VIII
BY
LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN
AN OPERA IN THREE ACTS
I paused at the back of the theatre, two-thirds of the former gymnasium. The renovation had been thorough enough to put in inclined seating, a full stage, and some acoustical renovation, including dull-looking hangings, but Llysette had still complained that the sound reverberation was uneven and that she had to watch for dead spots on the stage.
I settled into a seat halfway back on the left side, right off the aisle, and wiped my forehead again. I was definitely not in top shape, however much I had played at Spazi agent in the weeks preceding. It was a miracle I hadn’t gotten killed.
While I waited, I read through the program. I didn’t really know any of the cast, except by name. By the time the lights went down, Llysette’s players had almost a full house, even if two-thirds of the audience consisted of friends just wanting to claim they’d seen the opera.
The first act was all right—still some jitters in the cast even though Friday had been opening night—but they all settled down in the second act. The student who played Henry was good; he was a solid baritone, and he had Henry’s total arrogance down pat.
At the end of Act III, of course, Henry was imprisoned in the Tower, foaming at the mouth and singing fragments of the same aria that he used to proclaim himself as the supreme head of church and state. Beside him were the ghosts of Anne and Catherine, who continued to plead endlessly in their separate songs. None of the three heard the others, just as they hadn’t all along. In the foreground, Mary
lifted the cross and sang almost the same words as Henry, thanking God for delivering the crown to her. Yet it wasn’t chaotic, but a deeper harmony that was almost eerie.
The curtain fell, and the applause was instantaneous. I applauded with the rest. Especially with a student cast, Llysette had done a magnificent job.
As I clapped, my eyes saw a familiar figure down the aisle—Gertrude, the zombie lady. She wasn’t applauding, but sat there wracked with sobs. I stopped applauding before the others, puzzling over her reaction. Gertrude, for whom every day was a good day, sobbing? Gertrude attending an opera? Especially an opera by Beethoven?
What had touched her? In a way I envied her, even as I pitied her. That direct expression of feeling was so foreign to all of us more sophisticated souls.
After the initial crowd dispersed, I made my way backstage, noting that I didn’t see Dean Er Recchus; but, then, she would have made her presence known on opening night.
Again I realized that I should have brought Llysette chocolates, but I hoped she understood that I had had a lot on my mind in the past several weeks.
I still had to stand in line as a dozen or so admirers told Llysette what a wonderful job she had done. In a green velvet dress, she was stunning, as usual, and her warm professional smile was firmly in place as she responded to each compliment.
“Congratulations,” I finally said, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know how you did it, but it was wonderful.”
“The sound, how was it?”
“The acoustics? You had them standing in the right places. I could hear it all clearly.”
“That is good.” She shifted her weight from one foot to another, then returned a wave to one of the students, the girl who had played Anne, I thought.
“Are you about ready to go?”
Llysette pursed her lips and nodded. “I will just follow you. Tomorrow, I must sing for the Anglican-Baptists.”
“Again? You don’t want me to drive?”
“Better it would be for me to have my own vehicle, I think.”
After I helped her into her coat, and after we gathered up all her material, we walked out to the car park. I opened the Reo’s door, then set the heavy bag behind the seat, and kissed her before closing the door. Her cheek was already cold from the wind.
“You are always gallant.”
“I try.”
The Stanley was ready several minutes before the Reo. Before long Llysette would need to have the burner assembly retuned, I suspected, but I hadn’t said anything because she would have pointed out, most logically, that her income was far from astronomical, while steamer repairs were more than astronomical.
Once she waved, I pulled out of the car park—we were the last ones there—and headed down and around the square. We had to wait for a watch steamer to cross the River Wijk bridge, but saw no other cars on the road.
Llysette was out of the Reo by the time I had opened the car barn and pulled the Stanley inside, and her teeth were chattering even after we got inside the house. I hugged her for a moment, then turned on the kitchen lights. After her shivering stopped, I helped her out of the heavy coat and put it in the closet.
“I assume you would like some wine. Or would you like something warm like chocolate or tea?”
“The wine, I think, that would be good.”
“Do you want anything to eat?”
Usually she didn’t, at least not right after a performance.
“I think not, but you are kind to ask.”
I opened the bottle—still Sebastopol—and brought down two glasses. “We can go into the study.”
Llysette nodded and followed me.
As I passed the difference engine I flicked it on. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but a demonstration might not hurt. Then I set her glass on the low table in front of us and half-filled each glass. I bent down and let my lips brush her neck. “I missed you.”
“You also I missed.”
I shook my head. Where could I begin?
Llysette looked somberly at me. “You are serious.”
I nodded. “I’d like to talk about our future. It’s past time we laid the tarot cards down and set our own futures.” I sat next to her. I knew I was rushing things, but if I didn’t, I’d lose my nerve, and I was tired of living lies, even partial lies, that were tearing me apart.
“Tarot cards?”
“Fortune-telling cards. People believe them when they really need to plan their own futures.”
“An illusion that is. It is one all you of Columbia share, that of choice.” Llysette’s voice was sardonic.
“We can choose.” I didn’t want to ask her to marry me, not until I had explained. “Neither one of us is innocent.”
She stiffened.
“I have done terrible deeds, and so have you.” I frowned. “I don’t know whether it’s better to bury the past unrevealed or to face it and then bury it.”
Llysette put down the wine glass. She had not even taken a single sip. “Too much truth, I doubt it is good.”
“In that, we’re different, but I don’t know that I can be other than what I am. When I play at something else … Hell …” I took a deep breath. “All my life I’ve been talking around things, dealing in suggestions and implications, but I want to stop that with you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because neither one of us is innocent, and I don’t want to be tied up with a woman who wonders about my past, and I don’t want you to have to wonder whether something out of your past will separate us.” I could see her lips tightening. “Is honesty so bad?” I asked with a forced smile.
“Honesty? Johan, you do not wish to be honest with me. Yourself you wish to be honest with. An excuse am I. Never have you said you love me, except in the bedroom. That is honest?”
I took a deep breath. “I suppose not. But I am trying to change. And I do love you.”
“So … now it is convenient to admit that?”
I took a deep breath. “I am trying. It’s been hard for me. How do you think I feel about loving someone who committed a murder? You killed Miranda. Why, I don’t know, but I, fool that I am, shielded you. The timing I gave the watch was wrong, and you knew that. Doesn’t that show something? That I care, that I love you?”
“In sex and in murder, you love me?”
“I said I wasn’t perfect.” I tried to force a soft laugh, but my throat was dry.
Llysette stood and so did I.
“You do not understand, Johan.” She half-turned toward the window, to the almost ghostly light of the moon on the lawn outside.
I moved toward the desk, bending and tapping the keys on the difference engine to bring up the program.
“I think I might.” In fact, I was afraid I did understand, all too well, but I did not reach for the Colt in the drawer, the more fool I.
“No. No one understands.” Llysette turned, and I faced a Colt-Luger, a small one but with a long enough barrel to ensure its accuracy. She had it pointed at me, and the barrel was steady.
“Why?” My voice was surprisingly calm. At least the calm was surprising to me, in finding my lover with a gun designed to drill holes in me.
“Because you remember everything and have learned nothing, Johan. Power must be countered with power.”
“So … the poor psychic Miranda knew that you were an agent for the Austro-Hungarians … the convenient fiction of all that money from the Cultural Foundation.”
“The Foundation, it is real.”
I was very careful not to move, even though both my own Colt and the disassociator were almost within reach. I still had hopes. Stupid of me.
“You know I could have …” I swallowed. If I had turned her in, then the blame would have gone to Ferdinand, and if I hadn’t, I would have been framed, and the Speaker would have had a chain of evidence pointing straight to the President’s office. Either way, vanBecton would have gotten me, or Llysette, or both of us.
“You do not comprehend, Johan.”
“I understand everything—except why you agreed to serve Ferdinand.” I knew that, too, but I wanted to hear her explain it.
“Ferdinand’s doctors, they are masters of torture. To the last drop of pain they know what will free the soul and what will leave one tied to a screaming body. This I know. You do not.”
Thinking of those thin white lines on the inside of her thighs and under her pale white arms, I shivered. No wonder she would not speak of the scars or let my fingers linger there. And yet I had said nothing when it could have changed things. Why was I always too late?
“I need to show you something,” I said gently. “After all, that’s what Ferdinand hired you for, and what the New French were blackmailing Miranda to find out.”
“Miranda, she was not just a meddler?”
“Her son is being held in New France. He was an importer. She would have done anything, I think, to get him released. Could I sit down?”
The Colt-Luger wavered for a moment, but only for a moment. I slipped in front of the keyboard, keeping my hands very visible.
“How did you know this?” she demanded.
“Her other son told me about the detention. He also told me that she was a witch-psychic.”
“She was a witch. That I know. She said that she would tell you, and that you would turn me in. Because you were a Spazi agent still. I wanted to love you, Johan. I love you, and you said nothing. Why did you not tell me?”
“I told no one.”
“That, it does not change things.”
“I am trying to be honest. I retired from the Spazi years ago.”
“An agent, he never retires.”
She was right about that, and I was wrong. Lord, how I’d been wrong. “Let me touch the keyboard. Maybe this will help. First I’m going to make a ghost appear—even around you.”
Llysette raised her eyebrows, and I noticed the sheen of perspiration across her forehead. Damn vanBecton! What I’d done to him hadn’t been near enough. And Ralston—threatening her just to move me around.
“That is supposed to prove what?” The muzzle of the Colt-Luger didn’t waver, and she was standing just far enough away that I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“If you are going to shoot me, then you should have something to give to Ferdinand. This is what he wants. The way to make and unmake ghosts. I love you enough to give you that.” I lifted my fingers from the keys to the flimsy directional antenna. “Now I need to point this. I won’t direct it anywhere near you.”
“What are you doing?” she asked, adding in a colder tone, “It does not matter.”
“Creating a ghost.” I turned the trapezoidal tetrahedonal antenna in the general direction of the couch and the mirror and punched the last key to bring up the Carolynne duplicate. The white figure in the recital gown appeared before the love
seat, wavering more than I would have liked, but it was only a rough duplicate, a far too simplified version of the real singer, just a caricature of Carolynne.
Llysette looked at me. “I am waiting, Johan.”
“Don’t you see?”
“See what? That mist?”
Partial ghost-blindness? Was Llysette sensitive only to the strongest ghosts? She’d said ghosts didn’t appear around her, but had that just meant she did not sense them? Was that what the torture in Ferdinand’s hands had done? I was in trouble.
“Let me try again.” I swallowed and touched the keys to the difference engine and called up the justice-and-mercy ghost caricature, hoping my latest efforts had made it very strong indeed. My knee rested against the disassociator, but I didn’t want to think about that, not even then.
The wavering figure of justice appeared next to the faint duplicate of Carolynne, and I could feel that one-dimensional sense of justice—almost a cartoon version of the man with the scales in his hand.
“Justice must be done.” The ghost voice was a whisper, but a strong whisper. “Justice must be done.”
“Something there is. You make images … How will they help?”
I wasn’t sure anything would help. Was she programmed to kill me as a form of suicide? Or herself? Neither alternative was going to help us.
The justice figure drifted toward Llysette.
“Justice must be done …”
She edged back, as though even she could feel the merciless singleness of that judicial caricature.
“No! Stay away! Johan, I will kill you!”
I ducked and snatched for the disassociator.
“Johan!”
I swung the disassociator toward her and twisted out of the chair, just as a third flash of white appeared behind Llysette.
Crack. I could feel the first small-caliber shell rip through my jacket shoulder. I tried to drop behind the difference engine, but Llysette kept firing the damned Colt.
Crack! Crack!
“Llysette!”
“No! No one’s puppet … will I … be.”
Crack!
I pulled the spring trigger on the disassociator and held it, then jerked it sideways. Not another murder. Not another lover dying because of me. My head felt like it was splitting apart, like a crowbar was being jammed into my skull and twisted.
The lights went out, of course, even as the disassociator slewed sideways at the mirror and the huge lodestone behind it.
But even in the dimness I could see the stiffening of Llysette’s face, the faint flash of white as something—something vital?—left.
“Johan. Why have you killed me?”
The dead tone in the voice hammered at me in the darkness, and I looked at the barrel of the Colt.
Crack!
Her hand dropped, and another line of fire went through me, like the blade of a knife. Her Colt dropped on the floor with a muffled thump.
“No … no …” Llysette’s cry was more of a plea than a command. “Please, no … NO!!!”
I lost my grip on the disassociator, and I half tripped and half fell into darkness, my hands skidding across the carpet.
That darkness was punctuated with images: Elspeth lying pale between paler sheets and choking up blood; Waltar’s closed coffin; two zombie watch officers looking at me; Ralston sprawled across his steps; Gertrude sobbing at the end of the last act of Heinrich Verrückt; Llysette’s pale face and deader voice.
And the images spun, twirled on the spindle of that single line spoken by the caricature ghost of justice: “Justice must be done. Justice must be done.”
I lay there for a long time. A very long time.
“Johan … Johan …”
In the flickering light of a single candle, Llysette was bent over me, tears dropping across my face and bare shoulder, shivering even as she bound my wound. I did not recall turning over, and I shuddered. My shoulder seared with the movement.
“Johan, do not leave us …” Another tear cascaded across my cheek.
Us? My head ached. Why had I done it all? Had I really had to kill Warbeck? Or zombie all those people, especially the watch officers? But they would have killed me, and their guns had been ready. Why hadn’t I just told Llysette I loved her? Did I, or had it just been sexual attraction?
A stabbing sensation, almost burning as much as the gunshot wound, throbbed in my skull, behind my eyes. My head burned, ached, and the images flared …
… standing on a varnished wooden stage, limelights flooding past me, looking out into a square-faced audience, seeing not a single smile …
… the glint of an oil lamp on cold steel, and the heavy knife slicing through my shoulder, once, then again, and a man wrestling the blade away, trying to rise, watching blood well across a pale nightgown …
… drifting through an empty house, watching, waiting …
… a blond boy sitting before the bookshelves, slowly turning pages, his eyes flickering eagerly across the words, my eyes straining to follow …
… a man winding copper wire, glancing nervously toward the setting sun, fingers deftly working …
… a woman staring at me, and saying, “Leave the boy alone, or you’ll regret it. You understand, ghost hussy?”
… drifting through an empty house, watching, waiting, pausing by the covered shelves in the study …
… a sandy-haired man standing for hours, looking blankly out a window, then burying his head in his hands …
… listening to the sandy-haired man saying, “I know you’re a ghost, but using songs as riddles is hard on me. I’m tired. Can’t you say what you mean?” and singing back words he could only hear as cold words, “Ne point passer!”—feeling warmth, love, and anger, all at once …
The images kept slashing into me, like dreams, half pleasant, half nightmares, and above it all that same statement hammered at me: “Justice must be done. Justice must be done.”
Had anything I’d done been just? Yes … no … yes … no … both sides of everything whirled in my head, and each side drew blood.
The blackness or the words, or both, hammered me down again.
Sometime later I swallowed, my mouth dry, and opened my eyes. Llysette sat beside me on the floor, her eyes clinched tight, one hand on mine, and I tried to speak, and had no voice, only questions. She looked at me, and more tears fell, but she trembled, and did not speak, only wept and held my hand.
Why had I shut Judith and Eric out? Why had I used poor Carolynne like some experimental animal? And Branston-Hay, had I driven him to his death? And pushed the Spazi into burning his home? Guilt, like a breaker, crashed over me, and I dropped back into darkness.
Was this ghosting? Was I becoming a ghost myself, or a zombie? Why couldn’t I move? Was this death?
Llysette was still there when I awoke the second—or was it the third—time, and the candle was still flickering, though so low that wax lay piled on the desk. I was wrapped in blankets.
I wondered why a clean gunshot wound that hadn’t shattered bone or an artery—I’d have been dead long since—had floored me. I also wondered why she hadn’t shot me dead, or called the Spazi and revealed what she knew.
Instead, she bent down and kissed my forehead, which didn’t make any sense, not after she’d pulled the trigger in the first place. But she was trembling, and her face was blotchy, and for the first time she looked far older than her age.
My own vision blurred—with tears, relief. Was I still there? Was there a chance?
“Johan …” She shook her head, then closed her eyes for a moment, squeezing my hand gently. “Please, stay with us.”
Some of the pieces fit. In the mess, I’d fired the disassociator right into the lodestone behind the mirror, and that had disassociated something from Llysette. I’d seen something. That I knew. But I didn’t know what else that might have done or added to my own disassociation. I had suffered some form of psychic disassociation, perhaps extreme guilt.
And I’d gotten some of Carolynne—probably the duplicate version, although I didn’t understand how so comparatively few code lines held so much. Or was it only a framework, and were ghosts, even artificial ones, somehow creations of a merciful god merely tied to biologic or logic codes?
But if Llysette hadn’t gotten the integrity program, then why was she taking care of me? Why was she so upset? And why was she alive when her face had been so dead and she had cried that I had killed her?
I looked up. The difference engine was off, and there were no ghosts in the darkness.
Llysette’s voice trembled. “Loved you, she did.” She started to sing, brokenly, “Put out my eyes … can see you still … slam ear … can hear you yet … without feet can go to you at will …”
Then she just sobbed.
I did manage to struggle into a sitting position and hold my poor singer, even with the burning in my shoulder and my eyes.
“Loved you, she did, poor ghost,” she sniffed. “And I also, but not enough.” She sniffed again, trying to blot tears that would not stop and streaked mascara and makeup across her face. “Now, two parts, they make a whole … and we both love you, and you must not leave us, not when she loved so much.”
The words bubbled up on my tongue, but I could only speak them, not sing them. “I grieved … so much. I saw you pale and fearing. That was in dream, and your soul rang. All softly my soul sounded with it, and both souls sang themselves: I suffered. Then peace came deep in me …”
“And in me,” Llysette sang, a lullaby and a love song. “I lay in the silver heaven between dream and day …”
She began to cry again, and so did I, for I, too, was whole, out of many parts, as we shared the song I had never known till then, knowing that Carolynne had given us many songs.