She crossed to the window and looked out. “Of course I am. I used to stand here and watch you and Carter going to the swimming pool at night. I always wondered what you were doing.”

“Talking,” I explained. “That’s where we went when Carter wanted to tell me something he considered serious.”

“I spent that entire summer trying to tease you up to this room, and now we’re here,” she said. The trace of a smile slipped over her lips. She looked around the room again and saw the candlesticks and the photograph of Amelita Galli-Curci. “The ceremony,” she said quietly.

“Yes. You know about it, don’t you?”

She nodded. “He would do it for me when I visited. He said you were the only other person who had ever seen it.” She turned back to me. “Do you have a picture of me?”

“Yes,” I said. “The one you gave me for the drawing I did. It’s in my briefcase, with the stone. Do you want to see it?”

She hesitated for a moment, then signaled a yes with her eyes.

I opened my briefcase and took out the photograph and stone and handed them to her. She closed her hand over the stone and gazed at the photograph.

“I was so young,” she whispered.

“We both were,” I said.

She smiled. “I still have the drawing you did. I had it laminated a long time ago.”

“I thought you may have burned it,” I told her.

She handed the picture back to me, but kept the stone, massaging it with her fingers. “Burn it? No. I would never do that. Sometimes I take it out and look at it and remember.”

“I’ve done the same thing,” I confessed. “I think Avrum taught us well.”

She looked at me. “It has nothing to do with Avrum, Bobo. Not for me.” There was surprise, and hurt, in her voice.

“I didn’t mean that I—”

She interrupted: “I’ve wondered about that, Bobo. It worries me sometimes. How much he might have manipulated you.”

“Avrum?” I said.

“Yes. I loved him dearly, as you did, but he was a manipulator. You do know that, don’t you?”

“He was just different,” I said. “He had an obsession. Most people didn’t understand that.”

A puzzled frown swept her face. “Obsession? It was more than that, Bobo. It was also deception.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” I replied.

“The story about the fisher boa that he made for her. Do you remember it?”

“Yes,” I answered with surprise. “But he told me I was the only one who knew that story. He made me promise—”

“No, not the only one,” she said. “He also told me, that same summer. I made the same vow you did—never to say anything about it, even to you.” She paused. “But it was a lie, Bobo. It didn’t happen.”