It took me two days to ask the question I should have asked immediately: is his family also not coming, or is it only me?
I asked it by text, which was cowardice. She answered by text: “Both families are sitting this one out. We’ll do a proper thing later.”
The proper thing never happened.
What I did not know until Ruth Lawson told me: Andrew’s parents had not sat anything out. They had not been asked to sit anything out. They had been told, before the wedding and before the engagement, that Andrew’s girlfriend’s parents were deceased. They had offered condolences and they had not pressed because pressing felt cruel, and they had understood their son’s civil ceremony as the decision of two people who did not have parents to include.
Paige had not told them she was keeping the ceremony small. She had told them she had no one to invite.
## The Days Between the Meeting and the Dinner
Ruth Lawson called me three days after the planning meeting. She said she had talked with David, her husband, and then with Andrew, and that they wanted to reach out to me directly. She was calling before speaking with Paige because she thought I deserved to know what was being planned before it happened.
I thought about what that cost her. She was calling the woman her daughter-in-law had declared dead, to tell her she wanted to address the situation before cornering anyone. That was a particular kind of consideration.