“ ‘You’re really with us, my little darling,’ she said. ‘You’re not distracted, talking to him. You’re not fearful of what he might do. You’re not always looking out of the corner of your eye.’

“She went on without any coaxing. ‘You’re much better this way, my sweet little boy. You’re infinitely better. I see it so plainly because I know you as no one else does. It’s time to put aside the things of childhood, and Goblin is of childhood.’ She looked kindly on me as she spoke these words.

“And thus it was that my correspondence with Goblin trailed off into silence, and my beloved spirit, my counterpart, my doppelgänger disappeared beyond my reach. And believe me, it was beyond my reach. I tried with some desultory messages to summon him from the shadows, but they failed.

“And as Blackwood Manor prospered with every blessing under Jasmine’s reign as Queen, as the carols were sung at Christmas, as the feasts were prepared at Easter, as the flowers bloomed in Pops’ beloved flower beds, we traveled on our circuitous odyssey and Goblin drifted beyond the pale.

“Of course I didn’t settle for only letters with Mona. Many a night I spent on the phone with her, and always we ended with passionate assurances that we lived only for each other—there was no question of it now, Ophelia Immortal and Noble Abelard would someday be in a chaste marriage (lust without penetration)—and our written correspondence became our fallback when odd hours kept us apart.

“Many times I got Michael or Rowan when I called, and I never failed to exact the confirmation that Mona’s condition was stable, that she had no need of me, and many a time, much to my amazement, Michael volunteered that the relationship had been a godsend because Mona had stopped her erotic roaming and was now ‘living’ for my E-mails and phone calls and spending all the rest of her life hard at work on the Mayfair Legacy, seeking to understand and participate in the investments, and also working on the family tree.

“ ‘She’s a bit scornful of her home teacher,’ Michael said. ‘I wish she’d read more books. But I do get her to watch classic films with me. That’s one good thing, don’t you think?’

“ ‘Oh, definitely,’ I said. ‘No one can move forward creatively until they’ve seen The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. Am I not profoundly right?’

“ ‘Yes, you are,’ he laughed. ‘And she does have them under her belt. Last night I got her to watch Black Narcissus.’

“ ‘Now that’s an eerie one,’ I said. ‘I bet she loved it.’

“ ‘Ask her,’ he said. ‘Here she is, Noble Abelard, give everyone there my love.’

“And so my life ran on for three blissful and action-packed years.

“I grew to be six feet four inches in height.