So it’s a good thing Reid does, in fact, have a game in mind. This time, we’ll each pick a color, and then we’ll try to get as many letters of the alphabet as we can in that one color over the course of an hour. No limits on type of letter or sign, but we know the game—or each other—well enough now to know we’re both going to try finding the more interesting stuff. The hand-lettered, the hand-painted, the stuff that’ll give me something to draw about.

Reid offers me first pick and I choose blue, which gives me my first genuine smile of the afternoon because I absolutely know he was going to pick blue; I can tell by the look on his face when I say it. He chooses green, and I tell him that’s basically cheating because green is a version of blue, and he definitely does not like being called a cheater because he says, “Fine. I choose red, then.”

For the first couple of blocks, I tease him about that, too, because red is obviously the easiest color for sign-watching. He does the swoonsh and keeps snapping his photos, while I grumble about being the more nuanced competitor. We both get a win on the old, cracked-paint C.O. Bigelow sign, tall and huge on the side of a brick building, though Reid gloats about how the red paint is holding up better than the pale blue. “Gloating” for Reid basically involves him stating a fact, but still.

But we’re only a half hour in when I start to flag. That Advil I took must’ve been stale candy, because I’m pretty sure my uterus weighs thirty-five pounds and everything from my waistband down is uncomfortable. I am miserable and too far from home to do anything about it immediately. I definitely should’ve canceled, or at the very least picked red before Reid could and—

“Meg?” I hear him say.

I look up at him, realize I’ve missed something, and since Reid doesn’t talk much in general, it’s a real loss.

“I’m sorry. I zoned out.”

“We could stop.” Then he does that thing again, tugging down the sleeve of his unnecessary-for-the-weather jacket. Maybe the sleeve tugging is the same as Lark’s two fingers along her hairline, or maybe it’s the same as me wanting to lie down in the middle of this sidewalk to contemplate the various horrors and indignities of my childbearing years. “If this isn’t helping, I mean.”

My shoulders slump in defeat. I’ve done such a bad job of pretending today, of being my normal, cheerful self, and even the ideas I’m getting from the signs can’t compensate for the way I feel.