There was no instant ease.

We were people with a family connection and very little shared practice at being together.

I asked about school.

He answered with the brief politeness children used when an adult asked a question too broad to interest them.

Then I asked about something he had mentioned in Nashville, and he began talking properly.

I learned a small fact about him that Patrick had never told me.

For once, I did not turn it into a calculation of what I had missed.