It was tentative. It was new. I didn’t put too much weight on it. But I felt it.
## What I Didn’t Know About How It Had Been Managed
In the weeks after the dinner, as Paige and I started talking with more honesty, I found out some of the specific mechanics of how the separation had been maintained. I want to be clear that she told me these things voluntarily, as part of what she described as wanting me to actually understand what had happened rather than just offering a general apology.
For the first year of her marriage, the main tool was simply distance and busyness. Columbus was two hours from Hartfield. Andrew traveled for work. The Lawsons were not people who made demands on their son’s time. So the practical occasions for a meeting between me and anyone in Andrew’s life were limited, and Paige had taken care to limit them further.
She had not attended any event where both I and the Lawsons might be present. This required some management — there were a couple of Andrew’s family events where I might theoretically have been included, and she had found reasons not to attend or not to invite me. She had also kept her conversations with Andrew about her family strictly general and brief. When he asked about her mother in the early months of their relationship, she had answered with the kind of responses that close doors: “I don’t really talk about it, it’s too hard.” He, being kind, had not pressed.