I leave it on a throw pillow beside Sibby before I leave.

Outside the morning sky is clear. It’s already warm, but nothing like yesterday’s sweaty soup-fest, and I focus on the fresh air as I walk for blocks and blocks. All the signs are familiar to me, and I can’t think of a single game to play. I think of Reid that night at Swine, telling me he walked with a Meg-shaped shadow beside him, and once it’s in my head, it’s all I can imagine—my relationship to this city and its signs changed forever now, a memory of Reid with me in so many places.

He did give you signs, I keep thinking, each time I wrestle with the shock of what’s happened. His disdain for his work, his stress over it, his reluctance to talk about the details. His phone—the trouble it had caused to be away from it, even for his so-called sick day. His money people, math people frustration. His insistence that he would leave New York by the end of the summer, his seeming difficulty comprehending how he might stay.

But it’s the other signs I struggle to read without him here beside me. That last time I saw him, and the look on his face when he saw Avery. His determination when he came to see me at the shop, coded program in hand. Was it less amicable with her than he’d told me? Had he told everyone about what he had seen in my letters, and had he sought me out, at least at first, because he couldn’t get over her?

No, I think, almost desperately. No, you have other signs. Everything he and I shared. Every way he ever touched me. Every time he walked with me, made love to me. Those were signs, too. Remember them, I tell myself. Remember them while you wait.

But if I could only hear from him. Call, text, e-mail. Anything.

It’s what I’m thinking as I wind my way back home, my skin dewy with sweat now, my feet growing tired. I forgot my sunglasses, so now I squint against the brightening morning sun, and when I’m only a few buildings away from my own, the light grows almost blinding as it glints off the hood of a car that’s parked out front. I raise my hand to shade my eyes, annoyed. That’s a no parking zone; there are signs everywhere.