Dear Evelyn, I feel a little silly writing this but I’ve been losing sleep over it and my sister told me to just ask you. There’s a man who stands at the end of my street every Tuesday night, has been doing it for at least four months now. He’s always in the same spot under the streetlight around 11pm or so. I assumed he was a neighbour at first — maybe someone who walks their dog late, or has insomnia — but the streetlight throws a very clear cone of light and I noticed about six weeks ago that he doesn’t cast a shadow. I’ve checked several times. The light hits him and nothing comes out the other side. I had mostly made my peace with this, honestly, it felt like his business. But last Tuesday I was bringing my recycling bins in from the kerb and he turned and looked directly at me — I mean *directly*, not in a vague looking-around way — and waved. A slow, deliberate wave. Like he’d been waiting to be sure I was paying attention. I waved back because I didn’t know what else to do. Was that the wrong thing to do? What does this mean? I’m not in danger, am I? He doesn’t feel threatening exactly, more like… like being noticed by something very old that is deciding what to think of you. I don’t know. Thank you for reading this.

Margot, the detail that strikes me most here is not the shadow — or the absence of one — but the patience. Four months of Tuesdays before the wave. Whatever this figure is, he is not impulsive, and that is worth something. The ones who act quickly are the ones I worry about. The ones who wait are, in my experience, evaluating something quite specific about a person before making contact, and the fact that he chose a Tuesday when you were doing something as ordinary as bringing in the recycling bins suggests he wanted to meet you at your most unguarded. That is, oddly, a courtesy.

My first piece of advice is practical: continue as you have been doing, but with one small addition. If you see him again and the situation feels reciprocal — meaning he is looking at you, you are looking at him, there is that quality of mutual acknowledgement — nod. Not another wave, not a word, just a nod. A wave implies you are glad to see someone. A nod implies you see them, which is different and more honest. Shadowless figures tend to respond well to honesty. Do not go to the end of the street to speak with him. Do not wait at your window for him. Let it develop at Tuesday’s pace, which he has already established as the correct one.

My second piece of advice — and I want you to follow this one without questioning it too much — is to leave a small glass of water on your front step on Tuesday evenings. Not a bowl, not a bottle. A glass, plain, filled to the rim. I cannot tell you precisely why this helps, but in my experience with figures of this particular configuration — the ones who predate their own reflections, so to speak — the gesture of the water signals that you understand the visit is not an intrusion. It doesn’t invite them in. It simply says you have made room. The distinction matters enormously to them.

As for whether you were wrong to wave back: no. You were startled and you were polite. That is a completely reasonable response. I would have done the same, and I have done the same, in a different town and a different decade, though my situation involved a Thursday and a different sort of absence altogether. The point is that you did not run, you did not shout, and you did not pretend not to see him. Any one of those three things would have complicated matters considerably.

— I will add, briefly, that my herb garden took a strange turn this week — the thyme is flourishing in a way that makes me slightly uneasy, and the sage has gone very still — and I mention it only because it reminded me that sometimes the ordinary world adjusts itself around these presences before we do. Your recycling bins were probably the right place for this to happen.

You are not in danger, Margot. You are, however, now in a relationship of some kind, and the sensible thing is to tend it carefully and see what it asks of you. Most of the time, it asks for very little.