Mr. Faraway and I have some events coming up, that we will both attend, with our children. The first one is coming up in Seattle, and he mentions, in passing, that there is a part of it his children won’t be interested in. He’s thinking perhaps he will take them to this cool old library nearby, to check it out while the boring stuff is going on.

It sounds interesting, I say, but then the subject is dropped.

He starts trying to coordinate a lunch for the group at the same event, which quickly becomes complicated by various other adults’ dietary concerns and other schedule conflicts, and by the end, nobody quite knows whether something is or isn’t planned.

This becomes a problem when he suggests that perhaps he and I and one other adult could step away from the main group for a bit, get some coffee and attend to some needed paperwork.

One evening, he asks how far my house is from the old library – how long is the drive, he wants to know.

Twenty minutes or so, I tell him. Why?

He is in town on business a few days before the overly-complicated event, and it seems like a shame that I’ve never seen this library, especially since I don’t live all that far from it. Maybe, he says, we could get a cup of coffee nearby – so that he could show it to me.

It would be great, but realistically, it will be a two-hour lunch from a workday, and that’s a luxury I don’t have. I wish I could, I tell him.

It’s easier for me to get together with people after work, I say.

Oh. I have a business dinner that evening, he says. That wouldn’t work.

A few days later, he mentions the business dinner might not be happening after all. He’s not sure. If it doesn’t, though, maybe we can have that cup of coffee.

Do I know any places near there? he wants to know.

I suggest a couple of restaurants in the area, and a few days later, he lets me know that his  business dinner has been canceled, and we have plans to meet at a Japanese restaurant.

Mr. Faraway and I continue to chat most evenings. One evening, he mentions my Latvian family history, and sends me links to some eBay items he found – jewelry made out of antique Latvian coins. He seems to have this information very close at hand – as though he’s spent some time researching it, recently.

I joke: Sir, have you been jewelry shopping for me?

He’s mortified. He tries to talk about the details of the coin, about the details of Latvian history – about anything else he can think of. I didn’t save that very well, he says.

I smile and finally let him change the subject and get comfortable again.

He tells me he is meeting with his attorney again in a few days, which he does. He finally decides to give his wife a deadline: she can sign the agreement they made together but have left unsigned and unfiled, or he will simply proceed without her. He calls me on skype after the meeting, and I notice that he’s not sitting in front of over-stuffed bookcases this time, but he’s re-arranged the computer so that he’s sitting on a couch and there’s a nice clean living room behind him. He’s wearing the nice shirt and tie he must have worn to the meeting, and I think maybe he wants to create a certain impression, and if he does, then he’s succeeded.

He tells me how the meeting went. He’s still negotiating things, offering areas of discussion to someone who’s stopped talking. I tell him to stop it: If she has something to discuss, she can raise the issue herself.

He seems to think about that and realize maybe that’s right; I think maybe I am not the first person who has said that to him.

I have to cut the conversation short, to go get The Child, so we say goodbye.

But though he gets up to disconnect the call, he doesn’t do it right away. He stands there, looking at me on his computer monitor, beaming.

The next morning, I look over the records, and they’re still not making tons of sense to me. I can make out the names but that’s it; I don’t get it.

I email Mr. Faraway: Do you have Skype?  Can you explain this to me?

Sure, he says.

And as The Child sleeps late on a Sunday morning, we chat via webcam about old German towns and how to make sense of ancient Catholic church records. He’s in rumpled, comfortable clothes, and behind him is quite the mess of a bookcase; I joke about it and he says, I know, I know, and laughs. He keeps getting up and walking off camera, still talking – very nervous, very animated. He also keeps coming back, with more and more things he wants to tell me and show me.

But whenever I talk, he stops and listens.