And so, my dear Constant Reader, I tell you this: You can stop here. You can let your last memory be of seeing Eddie, Susannah, and Jake in Central Park, together again for the first time, listening to the childrens’s choir sing “What Child Is This”. You can be content in the knowledge that sooner or later Oy (probably a canine version with a long neck, odd goldringed eyes, and a bark that sometimes sounds eerily like speech) will also enter the picture. That’s a pretty picture, isn’t it? I think so. And pretty close to happily ever after, too. Close enough for government work, as Eddie would say.

Should you go on, you will surely be disappinted, perhaps even heartbroken. I have one key left on my belt, but all it opens is that final door, the one marked unfound. What’s behind it won’t improve your lovelife, grow hair on your bald spot, or add five years to your natural span (not even five minutes). There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal “Once upon a time”.

Endings are heartless.
Ending is just another word for goodbye.