“ ‘Aunt Queen, if that’s how I called her up, then why didn’t she appear to you years ago when Ora Lee told you about her? Why didn’t she appear to you when you were a little girl and Manfred gave you the cameos?’

“ ‘I don’t have your gift for seeing ghosts, Quinn,’ she came back fast. ‘I’ve never seen a ghost, and you’ve seen plenty of them.’

“I sensed a hesitancy in her, a sudden sharp introspection. And I thought I knew what it was.

“ ‘You’ve seen Goblin, haven’t you, Aunt Queen?’ I asked her.

“And as I said these words, Goblin came and crouched down at the arm of her chair and peered at her. He was extremely vivid and solid. I was shocked by his proximity to her, and I loathed it, but she was definitely looking at him.

“ ‘Back off, Goblin!’ I said crossly, and he at once obeyed, very sad and nonplussed to have made me so short with him. He withdrew, throwing beseeching looks at me, and then he vanished.

“ ‘What did you just see?’ Aunt Queen asked me.

“ ‘What I always see,’ I responded. ‘My double. He’s wearing my jeans, just as neat and pressed, and he’s wearing a polo shirt same as me and he looks exactly like me.’

“She sat back, drinking her champagne slowly.

“ ‘What did you see, Aunt Queen?’ I threw the question back at her.

“ ‘I see something, Quinn, but it’s not like what you see. I see an agitation in the air; it’s like the movement or the turbulence that rises above a hot road in front of one’s car in the middle of summer. I see that and sometimes there’s a vague shape to it, a human shape, a shape of your size, always. The whole apparition is no more than, perhaps, a second. And what’s left is a feeling that something is lingering, that something unseen is there.’

“For the first time in my life, I was angry with Aunt Queen. ‘Why did you never tell me this!’ I demanded. ‘How could you go year in and year out and not tell me that you saw that much of Goblin, that you knew—.’ I was too out of sorts to go on.

“ ‘That’s about the extent of what I see.’ She went on as though I weren’t frothing at the mouth, ‘and I don’t, by any means, see it very often. Only now and then when your spirit wants me to see him, I suspect.’

“I was not only angry—fit to be tied—I was amazed. I had been in a constant state of amazement since Rebecca appeared to me, reeling from one revelation after another, and now this, to discover that all these years Aunt Queen had been seeing Goblin.