15

In the morning everything moved faster than I expected. While Jilly and I were having breakfast and carefully avoiding any reference to the night before, Meryl, who had eaten earlier with Everett before he left for the office, came breezing in to say that Julian had called. He and Vivian were coming in and were going directly to the Quest bookstore, where they would meet Jilly and me.

“It seems a little odd,” Meryl said. “I don’t know why he doesn’t come here first to pick you up. Something’s going on. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, since you have your car and you can go over there as soon as you like and wait for them. If you have a chance, do find out what’s happening with Oriana.”

I didn’t care much for any of this. “What do you think is going on?” I asked.

Meryl glanced at Jilly and let my question go. “How are you feeling this morning, Jilly?”

She shrugged and stared past her aunt, clearly unwilling to talk about how she felt or what had happened last night. Whatever closeness had existed for a little while between Jilly and me was gone, and she had returned to her protective shell.

We left as soon as the shop might be open, and at least Jilly seemed to look forward to seeing Julian. She knew the way and could direct me. The front windows of the Quest bordered on a wide Main Street sidewalk in an older part of town. I was able to park in front of the store, and we went inside together.

The big square room was brightly inviting, with book stacks and tables well spaced. A long couch invited browsing, and one could sit at small tables and drink espresso if so inclined. It was a personal shop, where the visitor could feel welcome and at home.

I wandered among the stacks, reading some of the titles. There were volumes on every possible subject that might come under the heading of psi. That the shop was popular pointed to a rising interest in such matters—perhaps a turning away from grubby reality and a reaching out for a sense of wonder that had been lost in this century of science and the pragmatic.

Jilly had found a display of crystals, stones and pendants that absorbed her attention. I noticed a sign: Everything is in its place, and everything is on time. I wished I could believe that was true in my own life.

As I wandered about, I began to feel the “aura” of the shop reaching out to touch me. Perhaps all these millions of words on New Age thinking—that was really very old—sent their presence into the air. I wondered if some new road might open for me—some pathway to hope. Or enlightenment? Though I didn’t feel especially enlightened or hopeful. How could I entertain new thoughts when all the old ones possessed me and took up too much space with their density?

I helped myself to hot water and herb tea and sat down on the couch to dip into a book on “other lives.” The tea tasted pleasantly of apples and cloves.

A cheerful, knowledgeable young man behind the counter knew Jilly and they were talking easily about some interesting stones that had come in. So she would replenish her collection now, having left it at the feet of the “old men” yesterday.

The author of the book I’d chosen was a successful psychiatrist who treated his patients by regressing them into past lives to cure some of their present disturbances. One of the cases described a woman who suffered terrible pain in her neck. When the doctor took her back in time, it developed that she had been guillotined during the French Revolution. I wished the doctor’s patients well, but I stopped reading. One didn’t always return to being the Queen of Egypt, and there were clearly terrible dangers that might lie in the past. Whatever life one returned to, the person would have died—and not always pleasantly. I’d never want to go back. I didn’t want to know.

I was still trying to recover from reading about the lady with the pain in her neck when Julian and Vivian arrived. And I realized quickly why they’d wanted to come directly to the shop. While Vivian held the door open, Julian pushed Stephen’s wheelchair into the room. His sudden appearance left me feeling trapped and helpless—and as vulnerable as I knew Jilly to be. At least Oriana wasn’t with them.

Vivian left Stephen with a little pat on his shoulder and came to sit beside me. “Hello, Lynn. Believe me, this wasn’t Julian’s or my idea. He wouldn’t allow Paul or Emory to come along, and I don’t feel comfortable about this. Stephen’s planning something, but I don’t know what. I’m sorry, Lynn.”

I didn’t feel happy about this either. As I watched, Stephen wheeled himself over to Jilly.

“Where is my mother?” she asked.

“She has some things she wants to think about, and she thinks best when she’s dancing. So that’s what she’s doing now. Julian said you’d be here, so I decided to come along.”

Jilly continued to stare at her father doubtfully. He had probably let her down too often in the past year for her to feel trustful of his plans.

Stephen went on with more gentleness than I’d seen in him since I’d returned to Virginia. “There’s a place I’ve always wanted to show you, Jilly. But somehow I never got around to it. This morning is a good time—if you’d like to come.”

“Come where?”

“Let’s make it a surprise. You used to like surprises.”

Perhaps she’d had too many unpleasant ones lately, and she continued to look doubtful. “Can Lynn come too?”

“She’s going to drive us,” he said, calmly assured.

He hadn’t seemed aware of me, but now I was part of his plan, whatever it was. I didn’t want to go anywhere with Stephen, and I looked at Julian for help.

He betrayed me without turning a hair. “I’m sure Lynn will be glad to drive you, Stephen. Her car’s right out in front.”

No one waited for me to agree, and there seemed no way out of whatever tormenting web Stephen had begun to weave. His wheelchair was to be left behind, and he would use his crutches on this expedition. A bit belatedly, Julian spoke to me as Vivian held open the door and Stephen swung himself out to the sidewalk.

“Don’t worry, Lynn. This will be fine. The feeling I have is right, and it will be good for Stephen to do something that includes Jilly.”

I wondered how good it would be for me. I seemed to have lost my power of will. Perhaps because, basically, I didn’t want to oppose whatever was about to happen—thus leading with my chin again.

Stephen put himself into the front seat of my car, and Jilly, cheering up, got into the back. Once more Stephen directed me. I knew very quickly where we were going, and dreaded what might happen.

Stephen spoke to his daughter over his shoulder. “You’ve been to Monticello, Jilly, but I never got around to showing you the university Thomas Jefferson created. When I met Lynn—long before I met your mother—she was going to classes there, and I was taking a special architectural course. We met at some university function. I’ll show you where we used to walk together in those days.”

I had nothing to contribute to this conversation. I didn’t want to hear what he planned. I simply drove, turned the right corners, and found a parking place that would accommodate Stephen’s handicap. Then I sat waiting, not watching as he struggled out of the car, since he never wanted help. Jilly hovered anxiously to hand him his crutches. There was no way to stop what was going to happen, and I knew how filled with pain this experience would be for me.

The Rotunda seemed even more beautiful than I remembered, its great white dome, white columns, and wide white steps commanding attention from all who approached. The building had been patterned on a smaller scale after the Pantheon in Rome, and now it stood against a blue November sky on a day almost like the spring days I remembered in this place. There were trees everywhere, and I knew how glorious they would look in springtime blooming.

We made our approach from the side, so that Stephen needn’t mount the many steps to the entrance. Inside, we stood looking up into the domed vault of the Rotunda. A library ran around the inner dome, and there were lecture rooms circling below. From the round central room, graceful, curving stairways formed dividing wings above the entrance. A guided tour had gathered under the dome around Alexander Galt’s marble statue of Jefferson, so we stood a little apart, and I listened as Stephen talked to his daughter. Nothing must break this feeling between them, though all I wanted for myself was to feel nothing.

Stephen’s voice, soft now and private, ran on. “The university that Jefferson planned so beautifully in all its buildings opened its doors in 1825, Jilly. Just a year before Jefferson died. He considered it his proudest achievement. On the stone he arranged to have set at his grave at Monticello, he mentions his design of the university buildings, but not that he was President of the United States.”

“There was a fire in the Rotunda, wasn’t there?” Jilly asked. “Uncle Julian said it all burned down.”

“Yes—that was a tragic loss. It happened in 1885, and there was nothing left of the building except its charred, circular walls.”

“But they rebuilt, didn’t they?”

“Unfortunately, Stanford White, who was a famous architect of his time, was brought in, and he reconstructed the Rotunda after the fire. But not the way Jefferson had designed it. A lot of people were unhappy about that, but it wasn’t until recent years that money enough was raised so that the interior could be restored to the original plan—and that’s the way we can see it now.”

Jilly hung on her father’s words as she looked about, and it was good to see them together. Stephen moved himself along on his crutches, pretending that the effort caused him no struggle, and I followed, trying to keep myself empty of memory.

We went through to where we could look out upon the formal buildings that connected with the Rotunda at the south end. This was what Jefferson had named the Academical Village. Here, reaching down each side of the rectangle he’d called the Lawn, were the Pavilions that bordered it.

Now I had no shield against memory. How many times I had walked with Stephen across this great expanse of grass! I could almost smell the scent of blossoming trees. They’d been fully in bloom the last time I’d walked here before we were married.

Stephen propped himself on his crutches, explaining to Jilly.

“The five Pavilions on each side of the rectangle are connected by a colonnaded walk, and each was built in a different design of classic American architecture. The university professors used to live upstairs, with their classrooms and offices below. Each building has its own garden at the rear, running through to the Ranges that house dormitory rooms. Six buildings on this outer rim were known as ‘hotels,’ and they were used by students as dining rooms. Now these too are dormitories, since they aren’t large enough for the present population of the university.”

Trees abounded in all the small gardens—weeping willow, red oak, magnolia, chinaberry, tulip, crape myrtle, and many others. Towering above were English yew and Norway spruce. The individual gardens were separated by another inventive design of Thomas Jefferson’s—red brick “serpentine” walls that curved in beautiful symmetry.

Now, except for the evergreens, the trees were shedding their leaves, and I didn’t want to remember spring.

As we followed the sheltered brick walk behind columns on one side, Stephen made a suggestion to Jilly.

“The Edgar Allan Poe room is on ahead. Have you read any Poe stories, Jilly?”

Jilly had. She was a great reader and devoured every book that came her way. “Is his room as spooky as he was?” she asked her father.

“I don’t know how spooky he was—except in his imagination,” Stephen said. “He wasn’t here at the university very long. In fact, I believe he couldn’t pay what he owed and had to leave. Though now, of course, everyone’s proud of the fact that he attended the university at all. He even wrote some stories about that time in Virginia. If you go on ahead and watch for the sign, you can look through the door into his room. It’s been furnished as it might have been in Poe’s time, and once a year the room is opened to the public.”

The walk past the Pavilions on this side was long, and when Jilly ran ahead, Stephen stopped to lean against a wall. He’d hardly spoken to me since we’d left the bookshop, but now he was watching me.

“Do you remember, Lynn?”

“I don’t want to remember,” I told him stiffly. “That’s all lost in the years, and it has nothing to do with me anymore.”

He seemed to be musing aloud. “I haven’t been here for years. I wondered how I would feel coming back.”

I didn’t care how he felt, I told myself. I had enough to do to hold on to myself and keep my own feelings in check. It was cruel of him to bring me here, and I couldn’t bear to think of that young woman I had been—so foolishly hopeful, so ready to believe in “forever after.”

“I didn’t expect to feel this way.” He spoke quietly. “Those were good times, Lynn. Lately I’ve begun to think about them. And about how young we were.”

“That’s pretty pointless,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right. Though I had this urge to go back and find something out today.”

Again, I didn’t want to know what he wanted to find out.

“What do you remember, Lynn, when you look around this place?”

I remembered everything. Memories choked me, silenced me.

“Do you know what I remember?” he said. “I remember us together crossing the Lawn—running.”

There was nothing I could say. Certainly not something false like of course you’ll run again.

“The doctors didn’t think I could manage on crutches,” he said. “I guess I’ve worked harder at it since you arrived. Yesterday I had to make myself do what they said couldn’t be done.”

“What difference could my coming make?”

“You aren’t sorry for me. You’re mostly angry and ready to accuse me—about neglecting Jilly. So maybe I had to show you. You acted as though my being in a wheelchair didn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. I’m sorry if I’ve been inconsiderate. I was only thinking about Jilly. Stephen, I don’t blame you anymore for what happened to us. I was too young to know how to hold a marriage together. And I was too wrapped up in my own hurt feelings.”

“You had every right.”

Down the walk, Jilly had found the Poe room and stood on the steps looking through the glass door. Her imagination would be working overtime and that was good.

“Oriana is leaving me,” Stephen said.

That shocked me. I’d heard a deep sadness in his voice, and suddenly all my unresolved emotions were choking me as I sat down on nearby steps leading into a Pavilion and braced myself with my hands about my knees.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not trying to lean on you. I just thought you ought to know. It’s been coming for a long time. I can’t blame her. I’m not the man she married—and she didn’t bargain for any of this. I’ve told her about Everett’s plans and the changes ahead, and it’s all too much for her to deal with. As long as we could hold to our pattern—with Oriana flying in for an occasional visit—she could put up with the way I am now. But when the house is closed it will make for a different sort of life. There’ll be no real place for her with me.”

Now I felt angry with Oriana, as well as Stephen and myself. “What about Jilly?”

“I’m not sure. Oriana can’t take her along on tour. She may have to stay with Meryl and Everett for a while, until we find the right school for her.”

I couldn’t bear to think of Jilly sleeping in that room at the back of Everett’s house, moaning in her sleep, with no one to hold and comfort her.

“Why can’t you stay at The Terraces and keep her there?”

“Everett thinks it’s not possible to hold on to the house, the way things are.”

“Is that really up to Everett? Can’t you get back into your own work in the firm? You don’t design houses with your legs, and you’re getting stronger all the time. There’s nothing wrong with your brain or your imagination—if you put them to work again.”

I knew I sounded angry and challenging, and I hadn’t any right to be either. Not anymore.

He smiled, almost in the old way. “Don’t think I haven’t considered that. But it has seemed too steep a hill to climb, on top of everything else. And I’m not sure Everett wants me back.”

“If he doesn’t want you, couldn’t you start your own firm? You would bring in the sort of clients who like your work. People you’d enjoy building homes for. If you get rid of Paul and Carla, and let Jilly go back to school, I’ll bet Julian and Vivian could still run the house.”

“It takes fire to fuel the imagination, Lynn. And the fire has gone out. I don’t know how to rekindle it.”

That made me impatient. “You’ve got it the wrong way around. First you furnish some sort of fuel. You do something to light the spark. It doesn’t even matter in the beginning if you really care. The fire comes later.”

He was watching me again, but in a different way. “You’ve changed a lot, Lynn.”

Of course I had changed! I had nothing to say to that.

He pushed out from the wall on his crutches and started after Jilly.

I felt pleased with myself for upsetting him, and guilty at the same time. It wasn’t fair to strike out at him because of that other Stephen Asche whom I had loved. It was certainly unfair to strike at the present man, whether I approved of him or not. I still cared about what would happen to him, and perhaps that was what hurt most of all.

We both reached Jilly at the same time, and Stephen told her curtly that we were returning to the bookstore. Jilly looked disappointed, but too quickly resigned to what was only to be expected.

“We can’t keep Vivian and Julian waiting there for us too long,” I told her, trying to soften Stephen’s words. It didn’t do much good, and we were all three unhappy as we returned to my car.

The drive back to the Quest was long enough for resentment to fester, perhaps in all of us. When we reached the store, however, Stephen made a decision. He told Julian he would return home in the van with him and Vivian. I was to take Jilly back to Everett’s and then we were to pick up our things and drive to The Terraces.

Julian offered no objection, and of course Vivian went along with whatever Julian decided. No one consulted either me or Jilly, and I drifted along with the arrangement, feeling both helpless and apprehensive. How safe was Jilly in that house? At least she wanted to go home now and be with her mother, having no idea of the change in her life that might lie ahead.

Meryl was home when Jilly and I arrived, and she didn’t like this switch in plans. However, since Everett was restive about having us in his house, she offered no resistance. Neither Jilly nor I talked about our trip to the university with Stephen.

By the time Jilly and I could be alone on the drive back to Nelson County, she had returned to her turtle shell and sat beside me in the front seat with that look on her face that shut everyone out.

I tried to talk to her. “I’m sorry your father got tired so quickly, but it was better for him not to do too much all at once. If you like, we can go back again sometime—just you and me.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

I dropped that subject and asked a question. “When you’re at home, Jilly, do you have those bad dreams—or only at your Aunt Meryl’s?”

“Carla doesn’t like me to have nightmares. Sometimes she gives me a pill to make me sleep.”

This was appalling—not just because of Carla’s actions, but because nobody apparently knew or cared. Perhaps it really would be better and safer if Jilly went to a good school, where she might make friends and where, at least, she would be safe from indifference and direct harm.

We didn’t talk after that, and I thought for the hundredth time of the boulder that had come tumbling down from the cliff, and of those spade marks I had seen in the dirt. But I couldn’t picture the hand that might have wielded that spade. If Jilly had any suspicion about this, I didn’t know how to break through the barrier she’d put up against me.

For the first time, I began to consider Oriana. Not as Stephen’s wife, but as Jilly’s mother. I had no real knowledge of her, except as a hazy, unreal figure dancing on a stage—a woman of great beauty and fascination who drew men to her. Men who had included the young husband of Lynn McLeod Asche. But what Oriana’s deeper relationship with Jilly might be, I didn’t know. Or what she was like as a woman.

When we reached the house I saw Julian’s van parked near the double garage—so they were well ahead of us. From the top floor I could hear Rimsky-Korsakov music and knew where to look for Oriana. Jilly’s face lighted up and she rushed off toward the stairs at once. Carla didn’t come looking for her, as she usually did, so perhaps she was upstairs watching her friend dance.

Sam carried our bags inside, and as I started up to my room, Paul came down.

He stopped beside me. “Home so soon, Lynn? I thought you’d have a long visit with the Asches. You and Jilly.”

I didn’t believe that he’d thought much about it at all. “I see you are still here,” I said.

He grinned. “Everett thinks it’s best if I stay on until Oriana leaves. Not to upset the status quo and all that.”

“Because Oriana might interfere with what Everett wants?”

“Not likely,” Paul said, and started past me down the stairs. Then he turned back. “If you see Carla, tell her Stephen wants her.”

“Isn’t she upstairs with Oriana?” I asked.

Paul shook his head. “There’s a dance session going on, so I backed off from asking for her. Nobody interferes when Madame is rehearsing.”

Nevertheless, I was going to interfere, whether anyone liked it or not.

I ran up the stairs and stood in the same place where I had watched Jilly dance. The music’s minor tones swelled, filling the long room. At the moment, Oriana, in a black leotard that displayed her lean, muscular dancer’s body, stood listening, her dark head tilted back, showing the clean line of her throat. Her hair had been pinned out of the way—not flowing as she wore it when she danced on a stage. Jilly was nowhere in sight, so perhaps she had been sent away.

Oriana was deep in concentration, perhaps creating her steps in her mind before her body moved. Her back was toward me, and I could stand in shadow for a moment watching, wondering whether I had better break in after all. The process of creation could be fragile and it took immense attention and concentration. Stephen had taught me that about his own work.

Slowly, as I watched, she began to move, her arms reaching high in supplication. Oriana had never had ballet training; in fact, she’d had very little dance training of any kind. She had watched and learned and trained herself, going her own way—though she was not one of the great originals. Traces of Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham crept into her dancing—all tuned to her own pseudo-oriental theme—so that in the end she danced herself, Oriana Devi.

I was about to steal away and wait for another time, when she made a swooping turn and saw me. For a moment she stood perfectly still, staring down the room, her arms held high and wide, palms turned up. Then she seemed to return to the everyday and spoke to me.

“Hello, Lynn. It’s time we talked.”

She flowed toward the tape recorder on the piano and stopped the music in the middle of a note. Then she picked up two cushions and placed them on the wide stones of the hearth. No fire burned there now, though logs had been set for the next use. This was where I’d sat so recently talking to Stephen. I sat down and she drew her cushion a little way off, so we wouldn’t be too close.

“I am going to leave Stephen,” she said.

So we were to be direct. “Yes, I know. He told me.”

“Of course you will go back to him.” She spoke calmly, with assurance.

All the resentment I’d been so foolish as to think I’d overcome surged up in me. Her words seemed outrageous, utterly callous. For Stephen’s sake I hated this—yet in the same instant hope that I’d never expected to feel again warmed some corner of my heart. Hope I dared not believe in or think about.

I simply stared at her.

She actually looked sad, regretful. “It would be so right. He still loves you—you must know that, Lynn. I was a—delirium, from which he’s recovered. As I have recovered.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. She couldn’t speak for Stephen.

“You moved in and took him. Deliberately. Just like that!”

“He was there to be taken. Life happens, and sometimes there’s very little we can do to change anything. It was written that Stephen and I would come together for a little while, and it was lovely while it lasted.”

“What about Jilly? Are you tossing her aside too?”

Oriana’s beautiful, long-fingered hands lifted in a gesture of helplessness. “What am I to do? If Stephen can’t keep her here—as apparently won’t be possible—then it’s best that she be placed in a good school. Everett will see to that.”

“Placed—as though she were a tape recorder you can place on a piano!”

She shook her head at me sadly. “Anger only destroys us, Lynn. Jilly will always be my daughter and that contact will never be broken.”

I hated the word she used—“contact.” But she was right that as usual my ready anger never did me any good. I tried to speak quietly, reasonably.

“What Jilly needs is love and understanding and a home. Everett’s about as loving and understanding as a shark, and he can’t be trusted to do what’s best for her.”

“If you would listen, Lynn, I could teach you some rhythmic movements that would relax you and quiet all those turbulent feelings that can destroy you.”

Reason came from a cool mind. The emotional part of me wanted to be angry. And she was helping me along! “Has anybody told you that Jilly and I were nearly killed yesterday?”

“You mean because of that rock that fell?”

“Someone used a spade to loosen it and roll it down to where we were. Someone who was watching and knew where Jilly would go. We barely escaped being crushed.”

“The gods were with you,” she said serenely.

My instinct was to get up and shake her. “How would you have felt if Jilly had been killed? What would you think of the gods then?”

Tears came into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks in great shining drops, astonishing me. “I would have grieved, of course. I grieve to even think of such a thing. She is very dear to me—my daughter. But it was not meant to happen. You were both protected.” Her tears stopped as quickly as they had fallen, and dried on her cheeks. There were no traces, no grooves, since she wore no makeup on her beautiful, clear skin.

I wouldn’t be deflected. “How could you send a woman like Carla Raines to take care of Jilly?”

“Carla is my friend, my protégé.”

“Did you know about her tie to Luther Kersten?”

“I remember Luther—a strange man. I never liked him. But I don’t try to choose friends for other people. Carla knew what he was like, but she loved him anyway. It can be like that sometimes, when we choose the wrong man.”

As she had chosen Stephen?

“Carla believes he was murdered,” I told her. “That’s why she wanted to come here to work—so she could find out the truth, if possible. Did you know about this?”

“I’m afraid not, Lynn. Truth is such a strange word—meaning so many different things to different people. I was here when Luther died, when Stephen was hurt—and Jilly. The karma was very bad then, and there was nothing I could do. It was all—”

“I know—all in the lap of the gods! They certainly let everyone down that time. So you ran away?”

“I returned to the solace of my dancing—where I could be healed and freed of all evil influence. Dancing, for me, requires a calm and lifted spirit.”

“Were you here when Larry Asche died?”

“Up at the Singing Stones? Yes, I was home at the time. That is a beautiful, sacred place. He must have brought something evil into it so that the Stones had to punish him.”

“Do you think it’s possible”—I was wondering out loud—“to get so deeply involved with psychic beliefs that everything can be turned around? So that even evil deeds can be excused?”

Her eyes widened as she looked at me, and she answered with a new uneasiness. “I’ve thought about that, Lynn. It’s something I must consult with my swami about.”

Dealing with Oriana was like dealing with thistledown. I’d had enough and I stood up. “I hoped that you might help with Jilly. You are Stephen’s wife, and you could oppose Everett. You must have some say about what happens in this house.”

“Everett says there isn’t enough money to keep up The Terraces. So it must be sold. Though he will pay for Jilly’s school, if I am not able to. My dancing entails great expense—musicians, a troupe, travel. I do well enough, but there’s not much left over. The movie I’ve been working on is being done by a small independent company. I signed the modest contract for the sake of future exposure.”

“Where will Stephen go?”

“Everett and Meryl will take him, of course. He’ll always have a home with them.”

Which I knew very well that Stephen would hate. If I stayed with Oriana a moment longer I might explode disgracefully. I didn’t want to be calm and resigned and accepting. I wanted to get out of hand and tear things apart!

“Maybe Stephen will surprise you,” I said. “Maybe he will choose a different course.”

Her expression didn’t change, and as I rushed off down the room, I heard the music start again, stirring the air with its exotic strains. When I glanced back, Oriana was moving once more with grace and confidence, as though nothing I had said had upset her deeply. How wonderful to be like that—to shed everything that might be unpleasant and return to a calm world where only the movements of the body mattered.

Or was it wonderful? It wouldn’t be for me. I’d rather go blundering along making a mess of things, even if I had to suffer for all the mistakes I’d made and was going to make. At least, I would be alive, and they would be my mistakes—not something that happened because I sat back and let fate take over. It was even possible that I might learn something from all those mistakes—though at the moment I wasn’t sure what.