“I did.” After a beat, he adds, “I like research. I did a lot of it, in graduate school.”

“You went to graduate school?”

“Yes. Masters and doctorate. Both in mathematics.” It’s not a boast, just a completion, an anticipation of the follow-up I would’ve certainly asked if he’d only said yes. I know I’m not great at numbers, and it’s not that I think he’s lying, but it’s hard to believe that Reid—who doesn’t look much over thirty—has both of those degrees. Maybe I am also not great at estimating age.

“Will it be helpful?” he asks, before I can follow up. “The picture, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. It’s amazing. I can’t imagine doing something this big.”

“You could, though. You could do it.”

I feel a warm flush of pleasure at his quick, unfiltered confidence in me, but deflate when I think of that big, blank wall in Lark and Cameron’s bedroom. “I like the scale I work in, usually. But these, they have something to teach me.”

“How do you mean?”

“They have to make such an impact, so quickly. Striking enough to make a pedestrian look up, but not so striking that they have to stop and decode it. Memorable but simple. There’s a real balance to that.”

Reid makes a slight humming noise, a thoughtful assent. “The librarian I spoke to—she had a lot of materials to recommend about sign painters. Books about the profession, and also some old volumes about the craft itself. I could send you her information. I should have done that.”

I’m quiet for a few seconds, and so is he. If I say, Yes, send it to me, I think this would end with an e-mail, or a text message, my last communication from Reid the name and number of a librarian. He wouldn’t push it. He thinks he’s done enough to end this. I wish you every success.

I hate thinking of him out there, miserable in his misunderstanding of this city.

“Reid,” I say, not ready yet to hang up, but also not ready yet to ask him what I want to ask him. I look down at the photograph, at the letters there. “Tell me one thing you like about it here. One thing.”

I hear him take a breath. A big inhale, a quick, almost frustrated-sounding exhale. Damn these earphones. They’re just as intimate.