There's a distinct possibility that somebody, somewhere, aside from Mary and me, knows how the novel we're just completing turns out.

As we work, we e-mail bits and pieces in progress back and forth. Our desks nearly touch but it's easier to bridge the two foot gap by sending electronic impulses miles along wires than it is to transfer files on a disk.

Mary sent me the epilog yesterday. Or so she says. It never arrived at my computer. It never bounced back to her computer. It must have arrived...somewhere.

No one we correspond with has mentioned an inadvertant missive. Perhaps, by chance, Mary typed in a valid address for someone we don't know. Who may be very puzzled getting a note about demons and relics and Swedenborgianism. And perhaps a little frightened.

Luckily, we're not J. K. Rowling. If we were it'd be all over the web already and we'd have to rewrite the book.