While Margreet was enthusiastically working on her tapestry again, Lisa and Sjaak went out together to Action for a second USB stick.

When they were back home, Sjaak went to work at the coffee table, making a drawing of what he envisioned for the garden around the guest house, on the outside of the veranda and for flower pots in the empty corners on the veranda. At the same time, he made a shopping list of what he would need in the way of plants and garden soil.

The first thing he thought of were the lilacs he wanted to place at the porch entrances, outside the balustrade fence. He would want to put both a summer bloomer and a winter bloomer there, so they could enjoy the wonderful fragrance and the beautiful little flowers more often. In addition, he would buy several flowering plants, but also evergreens without flowers, so that there would be enough variety. He did not like flowerbeds with only the same flowers, he preferred variety. Because he had a clear idea in his mind of the colors he wanted, it wasn't difficult to determine which plants he wanted.

He put his drawing and his shopping list together in a compartment in the closet, so he could start with them when Huib had renewed the railing of the veranda. That had been Huib's last plan, a whole new railing on it. Huib and Sjaak together had concluded that the floor of the veranda was still fine. It only needed a treatment to prevent wood rot. Sjaak had offered to do that if they had a few days of dry weather. The guests would not sit on the veranda now, and he did not have much garden work in this period.

Huib had already made a sketch of how he wanted to saw the planks for the balustrade. It looked simple. Each plank would have a small bulge at different heights with a diamond shape above it. They looked like little vases, and because they would be at different heights, it would look nice and playful. Huib wanted to start when he had finished the hobby cabinet for Margreet.

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Meanwhile Lisa was busy with the two USB-sticks, on which she put all the data the judge and Ellen would need. She made cardboard labels, on which she had written "lawsuit Lisa Martens." She had punched holes in them, threaded a thick thread through them and tied them to the sticks. She put them in a drawer to keep them separate, so that she could give them to Ellen when she filed the report.

Then she picked up her violin and began to play a melody that kept recurring in her mind. After a few times she had it well in hand. She played it over and over again. From experience she knew she could use that piece of melody as a basis and as a kind of recurring refrain. Then she started to fantasize, let her violin sing the way she felt the melody coming up in herself.

Sjaak listened, heard how that one piece she had repeated over and over again, changed, developed into something completely new and then came back again. Each time it became a new melody based on the basic piece.

Sjaak thought about it, felt how he could put the bass notes under it, maybe even the chords. He sat quietly behind the piano, and the moment he sensed the chorus coming back, he softly struck the first bass note. His musical memory had not failed him. He had heard in his mind what note it should be, and he was pleased that he had hit just the right one. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lisa turn around. He looked at her and saw how surprised she looked and that she nodded to encourage him. Meanwhile she played on, fantasizing about it.

Sjaak noticed that he was also able to put the bass notes under the new sections. Gradually he became freer and began to play along carefully with his right hand. The music became fuller and happier, dancing around the room. They continued playing together for at least fifteen minutes before Lisa worked toward a conclusion.

"How cool was this! How wonderful that we can do this together like this, Sjaak!"

Lisa put her violin back on the rug and picked up her cello. "Shall we try it the other way around? Then you start playing the piano, and I'll try to put the bass notes under it or play a melody through it."

Sjaak smiled and nodded, putting his hands back on the keys, concentrating on his insides. It seemed empty, like there was no melody. This produced a small struggle within him, as Lisa was waiting for him. He realized that this was a point of wound, that apparently there was still something in him that depended on what others expected or seemed to expect from him.

Lisa saw that something was happening inside him. She laid her head against her cello and decided to wait quietly, realizing that he had to go through it. At the same time, that surprised her, that she realized it, that it was not a suspicion, but a certainty.

She looked up as Sjaak began to play, a quiet, calm melody in minor. She suspected he was playing in E minor and glanced along his arm to see what bass notes he was using. Her inner musical ear, which had always allowed her to pick up pitches, was still working fine; the key was right. Very softly she began to play along, at first very basic, only undertones, while she listened to the melody and tried to estimate what he had in mind, how it would go. She discovered that Sjaak also used a repeating piece, a refrain that kept returning. She used that recurring piece to expand her own play. Gradually she discovered how she could maintain that, even in the parts of which she had no idea how he would go on playing.

Things got more complicated when Sjaak started a new section, a new variation on the basic theme. He played at quite a faster tempo, which at first made it harder for Lisa to follow him, to keep playing along. But after a few seconds she already felt how this variation was roughly put together, and played through it freely.

Sjaak finally ended with a few solid final chords. Lisa sensed where he was playing towards, how he was approaching the end, and joined in with a few dancing tones. After he struck the last chord, she played two more tones, one low and one high, two tight strokes with a full volume.

Sjaak turned to her: "Genius Lisa, a genius ending! And how magnificent it was to be able to play together like that. Do you know what I remember now? I had a dream about years ago, that I was playing together with a string player. It was a dream that returned regularly, and I found that it was my desire to play together like that. But I had hidden that desire and that dream away deep, I think because I didn't feel myself capable of it. Something like that wouldn't be for me, right? And who would I play with? And now look at us, we're just doing it!"

As he spoke, he had stood up. He walked over to Lisa, put his hands on her head, hid his fingers in her hair. Holding the cello between them, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks and her lips.

Lisa answered his caressing kisses, enjoying this intimate moment. "We together," she whispered in between, "we together, in everything."

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