It’s Reid as a small, small boy, maybe at five or six. His cheeks are pink, his hair closer to red than the reddish-blond it is now. I can’t see the blue of his eyes because he has them squeezed tightly shut, and that’s because his smile is so, so big, his top and bottom baby teeth showing, bright white and even, slim spaces between them. He looks small and joyful, full of a feeling too big for his body, and in his hands he clutches a miniature chalkboard bearing his name.

Written in bubble letters.

“I did this for all the kids on their first day of school,” Cynthia says, pointing to it. “Not very expert, compared to what you do!”

“No,” I say, transfixed by the image. “It’s wonderful.” I can’t help but laugh. “Bubble letters! It suits him.”

I never would have thought it, only a couple of months ago—serious, sans serif Reid. But it does suit him. Here, he looks fair to bursting with happiness, the colorful straps of his little-boy backpack like banners of celebration.

“He was so excited for school,” Cynthia says. “He couldn’t wait to start.”

Across the room, Reid clears his throat, and I look up to see him turning his teacup one-quarter. I remember that day in the city, another time when Reid offered something else of himself to comfort me. I was difficult in school, he’d said. I lower my eyes back to the picture, feeling a pang for the way this little boy’s excitement was quashed by everyone who didn’t try to understand him.

“He wanted to be a teacher,” Cady says. “Did he tell you that?”

She doesn’t say it as if it’s a test, as if it’s somehow the way she’s going to see whether I ought to be taken seriously here as a possible girlfriend to Reid. Still, it feels important, a piece of Reid’s history I’ve been missing.

So I look up at him, instead of answering her.

“You wanted to be a teacher?”

He shifts in his chair, that slight flush on his cheeks. “Yes.” He pauses, swallows. “Later, a . . . a professor.”

I notice Thomas, sitting in a chair matching Reid’s, take a sip of his tea before turning his sharp-edged profile to the window. For a fleeting moment I feel a stretch of time collapse, and I’m back in that Nolita restaurant, seeing the look on Reid’s face when he’d first told me about John Horton Conway and his math-making games.

“What changed?” I say.

Thomas looks back at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. For the most part, he’s been polite but cautious with me today, a fact that felt, if not wholly comfortable, at least familiar. It figures that the first noticeably positive response I’d get out of him would be for asking such a direct question.