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my trousers. So I sat on the stone wall, but Carolynne had not moved.
    “Carolynne …”
    She drifted across the stones until she stood almost by my shoulders. Her hair was in a bun, as always, and she wore what Llysette would have called a recital gown, an old-fashioned one that covered her shoulders and upper arms, the kind they still wear out in Deseret.
    “You used to talk to me.”
    An indistinct nod was her sole response.
    “I am an adult. Elspeth is dead, and so is Waltar. Whatever—however—my mother bound you, that should not hold you now.”
    Only the whisper of the breeze through the ancient oaks and the pines planted by the builder of the house, the English deacon, greeted my request. My father had said there was more to the story than her murder by the deacon’s wife, and more to Carolynne, and that someday he would tell me. But he died in a steamer accident while I was in Columbia, at my time of troubles, and he never did. He never left a note, not that I found, but Mother had sorted through his papers.
    “Please, gentle singer, why are you here? Why do you linger? Why do I dream of you?”
    Just a sense of tears, perhaps three notes sung so softly that even the breeze was louder, and she vanished, leaving me alone in the twilight on the old stones of the porch. For a time longer I watched the lights of the town, and some winked out, and some winked on, just like life.
    Finally, when the breeze turned even colder, I walked inside, closed the door, and went upstairs to go to bed alone.

CHAPTER FIVE

    G ood morning, Doktor Eschbach.” Marie Rijn swept into the house with her usual smile and bustle of gray working skirts.
    “Good morning, Marie. This time I do believe most of the dishes are clean, and—”
    “You leave me little enough to do, Doktor Eschbach. Be on your way, and leave my work to me.”
    “Things are fairly clean.”
    “Fairly clean is not clean, Doktor.” Marie insisted on re-cleaning everything until the house shone, and then, I think, she went home and did the same there. Good, clean Dutch stock.
    I shrugged. Being alone for the past three years, I’d had enough time to clean up and do laundry—especially at first, in the Federal District. Even if my efforts weren’t quite to Marie’s standards, my houses had been clean, probably because without sisters I had learned enough growing up. Besides, after the accident and Elspeth’s death, it had helped to keep busy. Yes, anything to keep busy.
    “As you wish, Marie.”
    “And for dinner, Doktor?”
    “Tonight for one. Perhaps two tomorrow night.”
    “Someday, will you marry the French woman?”
    “I have not thought that far ahead.”
    “But perhaps she has.” Marie gave me a sidelong look, one that warned me about scheming women preying on lonely men, as if I needed more warning. Still, Llysette had not pressed me, and she had shared my bed, offering warmth in a chill world.
    Although my breath steamed in the morning air as I opened the car barn, it was measurably warmer than when I had awakened and run to the top of Deacon’s Lane and along the ridge and back. The chill had been especially welcome after the run, when I had stepped up my exercises.
    I tossed my leather case into the Stanley and clicked the lighter plug, then sat and waited until the warning light flicked off before backing out of the car barn onto the hard bluestone of the drive. I put on the brake, closed the car barn door, climbed back into the steamer, and turned it around before heading down the long driveway to Deacon’s Lane.
    In the field across the lane from the house, Benjamin’s sons were harvesting the pumpkins that had grown between the last rows of corn. The squash had already come in. I waved, and Saul waved back, but Abraham didn’t see me.
    Most of the thin layer of frost had melted in the morning light by the time I drove across the River Wijk and stopped outside Samaha’s to pick up my copy of the Asten Post-Courier . The sign