But when we sit at the gigantic island and Lark tells me about the work she wants me to do, something about her makes my smile start to feel frozen and awkward in a different way. She’s light, cheerful, a mode I know all too well and usually feel comfortable with, but everything she says seems littered with the name of her husband. Cameron wanted to leave LA because it was a wasteland. Cameron picked Red Hook because it’s “gritty.” Cameron wanted this house because its simplicity won’t interfere with his “process.” Cameron supports her acting but also doesn’t approve of the rom-coms she gets offered, and definitely doesn’t want her doing TV. Cameron wants kids, two boys. Cameron wishes she was a better cook.

So I low-key hate Cameron, which is awkward since Lark doesn’t want me to do only a custom planner for her. She also wants me to do two large walls in her house, because Cameron is into inspirational quotations (here’s hoping he’s not a fan of Bloom Where You’re Planted!). One of them is a larger-scale version of something I’ve done before, a narrow panel in the kitchen that they want done in chalk, but the other—which Lark leads me to—is a massive, high-ceilinged wall in the master bedroom that they want done in paint.

“I don’t usually work with paint,” I tell her as we stand in front of all the blank whiteness. This isn’t entirely true—about a year and a half ago I took a four-weekend sign-painting workshop in Williamsburg to get some practice with retro-style lettering and composition. I’d translated most of what I’d learned there into my regular ink-and-paper practice, but I’d also done a couple of painted signs for Cecelia and the shop, and one for little Spencer Whalen, mostly because I didn’t want Sibby to get in trouble if I’d said no to the request.

So I could probably do this, could brush up on my brush skills, and as long as they don’t want anything too complicated, it’d probably be fine, if more time-consuming than I’d hoped. But something makes me uneasy about it. At first I think it’s a whisper of my most recent outing with Reid, staring up at walls, even though those weren’t blank. After a few seconds, though, I realize it’s another type of familiarity. It’s the sense that if I do this job, I’ll want to say things I have absolutely no place saying. The sense that I’ll break my promise to myself—to Reid, not that I should care—if I take it.