I decided that I needed to meet Lost Boy. I told him that I had an active imagination, and I was afraid of concocting a story about us that wasn’t rooted in reality. He wrote back that he understood, and he’d like to meet me, as well.

“Very much so,” he typed.

I believed him but I was afraid that we’d get so comforted by our online connection that he wouldn’t want to risk destroying that by meeting.

I planned a trip to New Orleans in July, mostly so that I would be in driving distance of Morgan City, where most of his emails originated.