“I was just there and didn’t see an email. Let me check again. I’ll put you on speaker.”

“OK.”

I go back to his website and click on every button and link until, finally, at the bottom of his ‘about’ page, which is a rehash of the Wikipedia info, I see a basic contact form.

Want to get in touch? I might not be able to answer each and every message, and even if I do reply, it might take me a while to get to it, but here it goes.

And then the form is a three-field thing: name, email address, message.

“I found a contact form, not an email address.”

She groans. “It’s better than nothing and I know how much you hate waiting. It’ll buy us some time while I continue trying to get an actual email address for him. As an alternative, you can reach out to him via social. I’m sure he’s on there.”

“That’s a good idea,” I say and then stop. “What should I write in the form?”

She snickers. “Say who you are and tell him you met a man in Carmel last year and you don’t know his name and you’d like to get in touch. Ask if he can send you Max’s real name and his email address or something. Keep it short and simple.”

“That makes sense,” I say, feeling like I’m about to hyperventilate.

“OK, OK, I’ll talk to you later.”

“You call me the minute he replies, OK?”

“Don’t hold your breath. I don’t think Mr. Important checks that mailbox too frequently.”

“You never know,” says Alisa.

Twenty

‘Mr. Delphy’. ‘Dear Mr. Delphy.’ No. No dears. I keep writing and deleting, writing and deleting, until I finally manage to come up with a decent message and press ‘submit’ before changing my mind and starting over.

I should call Janice, but I keep putting it off.

Better yet, I should get on the road and drive to Hartford. It’s getting late.

Enough excitement for one day, I say to myself as I get onto FDR Drive before taking the exit toward New Haven.

I just entered Connecticut, and I’m about an hour from Hartford when my phone lets me know I have a new email. There’s a sign for a gas station and I pull in in a shady area next to a truck.

I click on my inbox, hoping but getting myself ready for a spam email.

From: [email protected]

To: Maya Maas

Subject: RE: contact details needed

Dear Maya,

Thank you for your message. We always appreciate when Ethan Delphy’s readers reach out as I know he loves to hear from his fans. I’m sorry to tell you that your request for information is not something we can help with. The author’s sources of inspiration and the people behind his characters cannot be disclosed.

I wish you a wonderful weekend, and thank you for being an Ethan Delphy fan!