But Paige’s version of wanting more had a particular quality. It was not just about achievement or building a good life; it was about reframing her origin. The stories she told about her childhood changed over time. The details shifted. Carl’s work became vaguer. My work disappeared. The specifics of our Hartfield life became generalized or elided.
I noticed this too, and again I did not make a large thing of it.
I should have. I should have sat her down when she was in her mid-twenties and said: I notice you tell different stories about where you came from depending on the audience, and I’d like to understand why, and I’d like to tell you what I see from my end. I did not do that because I was afraid of the conversation, afraid of pushing her further away, afraid of being the overbearing mother who couldn’t let her daughter build her own life.
The restraint that felt like generosity was, I think now, also a failure.
## How the Separation Worked
By the time Paige met Andrew, she had been living in Columbus for three years, which is two hours from Hartfield. We saw each other approximately every two months, lunches or dinners that were pleasant if somewhat careful, conversations that ran along the surface of our actual relationship without quite reaching the ground.
Carl had been dead for four years by then. Paige’s grief about her father was real and I do not want to minimize it, but grief had also, in her case, allowed her to close certain doors. She did not have to manage me and Carl together anymore. She could tell the story of her family with him in it and me absent, or with both of us absent, without needing to account for me showing up and complicating the narrative.