The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

by Jennifer E. Smithwr

  “I’m afraid that hasn’t yet begun,” he tells her with a clipped accent. “It will be held in the Churchill Ballroom at six o’clock sharp.”

  “Right,” Hadley says. “But I’m actually just looking for the groom now.”

  “Ah, certainly,” he says, ringing up to the room and murmuring into the phone before setting it down again and giving Hadley a crisp nod. “Suite two forty-eight. They’re expecting you.”

  “I bet they are,” she says, heading toward the elevators.

  When she knocks on the door to the suite, she’s so busy preparing herself for Dad’s disapproving frown that she’s a bit surprised to find Violet on the other side instead. Not that there’s a lack of disapproval there, either.

  “What happened to you?” she asks, her eyes traveling all the way down to Hadley’s shoes before snapping back up again. “Did you run a marathon or something?”

  “It’s hot out,” Hadley explains, glancing down at her dress helplessly. She notices for the first time that, in addition to everything else, there’s a comma-shaped streak of dirt at the hem. Violet takes a sip of champagne from a glass wreathed in lipstick marks, surveying the damage from over the rim. Behind her, Hadley can see about a dozen people sitting on dark green couches, a tray of colorful vegetables on the table in front of them and several bottles of champagne on ice. There’s music playing softly from the speakers, something instrumental and vaguely sleepy, but above that, she can hear more voices around the corner.

  “I suppose we’ll probably need to sort you out again before the reception,” Violet says with a sigh, and Hadley nods gratefully as her phone—which she’s still clutching in one sweaty hand—begins to ring. When she glances at the name lit up on the screen, she realizes it’s Dad, probably wondering what’s taking her so long.

  Violet raises her eyebrows. “ ‘The Professor’?”

  “It’s just my dad,” she explains, so that Violet doesn’t think she’s getting strange transatlantic calls from a teacher. But looking down at the phone again, she feels suddenly deflated. Because what had once seemed funny now seems just a little bit sad; even in this—this smallest of gestures, this silliest of nicknames—there’s a sort of distance.

  Violet steps aside like the bouncer at some exclusive club, ushering Hadley inside. “We don’t have much time before the reception,” she’s saying, and Hadley can’t help grinning as she closes the door behind her.

  “What time does that start again?”

  Violet rolls her eyes, not even bothering to dignify this with a response, and then retreats back into the room, arranging herself carefully on one of the chairs in her wrinkle-free dress.

  Hadley heads straight for the small sitting room off to one side, which links the bedroom to the rest of the suite. Inside, she finds her dad and a few other people crowded around a laptop computer. Charlotte is seated before it, her wedding dress pooled all around her like some kind of sugary confection, and though Hadley can’t see the screen from where she’s standing, it’s clear that this is a show-and-tell of sorts.

  For a moment she considers ducking back out again. She doesn’t want to see photos of them at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or making funny faces on a train, or feeding the ducks at the pond in Kensington Gardens. She doesn’t want to be forced to consider evidence of Dad’s birthday party at a pub in Oxford; she doesn’t need a reminder that she wasn’t there, had in fact woken that morning feeling the significance of the day like a weight around her neck, which trailed her through Geometry and Chemistry, all the way through lunch in the cafeteria, where a group of football players had sung a jokey version of “Happy Birthday” to Lucas Heyward, the hapless kicker, and by the end of their awful rendition Hadley had been surprised to discover the pretzel she’d been holding was nothing more than a handful of crumbs.

  She doesn’t need pictures to know that she’s not part of his life anymore.

  But he’s the first to notice her standing there, her dad, and though Hadley is ready for any number of reactions—anger that she left, annoyance that she’s late, relief that she’s okay—what she isn’t prepared for is this: something behind his eyes laid bare at the sight of her, a look like recognition, like an apology.

  And right then, right there, she wishes for things to be different. Not in the way she’s been wishing for months now, not a bitter, twisted sort of wish, but the kind of wish you make with your whole heart. Hadley didn’t know it was possible to miss someone who’s only a few feet away, but there it is: She misses him so much it nearly flattens her. Because all of a sudden it all seems so horribly senseless, how much time she’s spent trying to push him out of her life. Seeing him now, she can’t help but think of Oliver’s father, about how there are so many worse ways to lose somebody, things far more permanent, things that can cut so much deeper.

  She opens her mouth to say something, but before the words can begin to take shape, Charlotte beats her to it.

  “You’re here!” she exclaims. “We were worried.”

  A glass breaks in the adjacent room and Hadley flinches. Everyone in the sitting area is looking at her now, and the floral-patterned walls seem much too close.

  “Were you off exploring?” Charlotte asks with such interest, such genuine enthusiasm, that it twists Hadley’s heart all over again. “Did you have fun?”

  This time, when she glances in Dad’s direction, something in the look on her face is enough to make him stand from where he’s been perched on the arm of Charlotte’s chair.

  “You okay, kiddo?” he asks, his head tilted to one side.

  All she means to do is shake her head; at most, maybe shrug. But to Hadley’s surprise, a sob rises in her throat, breaking over her like a wave. She can feel her face begin to crumple and the first tears prick the backs of her eyes.

  It’s not Charlotte or the others in the room; for once, it’s not even her dad. It’s the day behind her, the whole strange and surprising day. Never has any period of time seemed so unending. And though she knows it’s nothing but a collection of minutes, all of them strung together like popcorn on a tree, she can see now how easily they become hours, how quickly the months might have turned to years in just the same way, how close she’d come to losing something so important to the unrelenting movement of time.

  “Hadley?” Dad says, setting his glass down as he takes a step in her direction. “What happened?”

  She’s crying in earnest now, propped up by the doorframe, and when she feels the first tear fall, she thinks—ridiculously—of Violet, and how it’s one more thing they’ll have to worry about when trying to fix her again.

  “Hey,” Dad says when he’s by her side, a strong hand on her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she says. “It’s just been a really long day.”

  “Right,” he says, and she can almost see the idea occurring to him, the light going on behind his eyes. “Right,” he says again. “Time to consult the elephant, then.”

  15

  11:47 AM Eastern Standard Time

  4:47 PM Greenwich Mean Time

  Even if Dad still lived at their house in Connecticut, even if Hadley still sat across from him in her pajamas each morning during breakfast and called good night to him across the hall before bed, even then this would still fall under Mom’s job description. Absentee father or not, sitting with her as she cries over a boy is absolutely and unequivocally Mom Territory.

  Yet here she is with Dad, the best and only option at the moment, the whole story pouring out of her like some long-held secret. He’s pulled a chair up beside the bed and is straddling it backward, with his arms resting on the seat back, and Hadley is grateful to see that for once he’s not wearing that professorial look of his, the one where he tips his head to the side and his eyes go sort of flat and he arranges his features into something resembling polite interest.

  No, the way he’s looking at her now is something deeper than that; it’s the way he looked at her when she scraped her knee as a kid, the time s
he flipped her bike in the driveway, the night she dropped a jar of cherries on the kitchen floor and stepped on a piece of glass. And something about that look makes her feel better.

  Hugging one of the many decorative pillows from the fancy bed, Hadley tells him about meeting Oliver at the airport and the way he switched seats on the flight. She tells him how Oliver helped her with her claustrophobia, distracting her with silly questions, saving her from herself in the same way Dad once had.

  “Remember how you told me to imagine the sky?” she asks him, and Dad nods.

  “Does it still help?”

  “Yeah,” Hadley tells him. “It’s the only thing that ever does.”

  He ducks his head, but not before she can see his mouth move, the beginning of a smile.

  There’s a whole wedding party just outside the door, a new bride and bottles of champagne, and there’s a schedule to keep, an order to the day. But as he sits here listening, it’s as if he has nowhere else to be. It’s as if nothing could possibly be more important than this. Than her. And so Hadley keeps talking.

  She tells him about her conversation with Oliver, about the long hours when there was nothing to do but talk, as they huddled together over the endless ocean. She tells him about Oliver’s ridiculous research projects and about the movie with the ducks and how she’d stupidly assumed he was going to a wedding, too. She even tells him about the whiskey.

  She doesn’t tell him about the kiss at customs.

  By the time she gets to the part about losing him at the airport, she’s talking so fast she’s tripping over the words. It’s like some sort of valve has opened up inside of her, and she can’t seem to stop. When she tells him about the funeral in Paddington, how her worst suspicions had all turned out to be true, he reaches out and places a hand on top of hers.

  “I should have told you,” she says, then wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Actually, I shouldn’t have gone at all.”

  Dad doesn’t say anything, and Hadley is grateful. She’s not sure how to put the next part into words, the look in Oliver’s eyes, so dark and solemn, like the gathering of a distant storm. Just beyond the door there’s a burst of laughter, followed by scattered clapping. She takes a deep breath.

  “I was trying to help,” she says quietly. But she knows this isn’t entirely true. “I wanted to see him again.”

  “That’s sweet,” Dad says, and Hadley shakes her head.

  “It’s not. I mean, I only knew him for a few hours. It’s ridiculous. It makes no sense.”

  Dad smiles, then reaches up to straighten his crooked bow tie. “That’s the way these things work, kiddo,” he says. “Love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s completely illogical.”

  Hadley lifts her chin.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “It’s just that Mom said the exact same thing.”

  “About Oliver?”

  “No, just in general.”

  “She’s a smart lady, your mom,” he says, and the way he says it—without a trace of irony, without one ounce of self-awareness—makes Hadley say the one thing she’s spent more than a year trying not to say aloud.

  “Then why did you leave her?”

  Dad’s mouth falls open, and he leans back as if the words were something physical. “Hadley,” he begins, his voice low, but she jerks her head back and forth.

  “Never mind,” she says. “Forget it.”

  In one motion he’s on his feet, and Hadley thinks maybe he’s going to leave the room. But instead, he sits beside her on the bed. She rearranges herself so that they’re side by side, so that they don’t have to look at each other.

  “I still love your mom,” he says quietly, and Hadley is about to interrupt him, but he pushes ahead before she has a chance. “It’s different now, obviously. And there’s a lot of guilt in there, too. But she still means a lot to me. You have to know that.”

  “Then how could you—”

  “Leave?”

  Hadley nods.

  “I had to,” he says simply. “But it didn’t mean I was leaving you.”

  “You moved to England.”

  “I know,” he says with a sigh. “But it wasn’t about you.”

  “Right,” Hadley says, feeling a familiar spark of anger inside of her. “It was about you.”

  She wants him to argue, to fight back, to play the part of the selfish guy having a midlife crisis, the one she’s built up in her head for all these days and weeks and months. But instead, he just sits there with his head hanging low, his hands clasped in his lap, looking utterly defeated.

  “I fell in love,” he says helplessly. His bow tie has fallen to one side again, and Hadley is reminded that it is, after all, his wedding day. He rubs his jaw absently, his eyes on the door. “I don’t expect you to understand. I know I screwed up. I know I’m the world’s worst father. I know, I know, I know. Trust me, I know.”

  Hadley remains silent, waiting for him to continue. Because what can she say? Soon he’ll have a new baby, a chance to do it all over again. This time, he can be better. This time, he can be there.

  He places his fingers along the bridge of his nose as if trying to ward off a headache. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I know we can’t go back. But I’d like to start over, if you’re willing.” He nods toward the other room. “I know everything’s different, and that it will take some time, but I’d really like you to be part of my new life, too.”

  Hadley glances down at her dress. The exhaustion she’s been fighting for hours has started to creep in like the tide, like someone’s pulling a blanket up over her.

  “I liked our old life just fine,” she says with a frown.

  “I know. But I need you now, too.”

  “So does Mom.”

  “I know.”

  “I just wish…”

  “What?”

  “That you’d stayed.”

  “I know,” he says for the millionth time. She waits for him to argue that they’re better off this way, which is what Mom always says during conversations like these.

  But he doesn’t.

  Hadley blows a strand of loose hair from her face. What had Oliver said earlier? That her dad had the guts not to stick around. She wonders now if that could possibly be true. It’s hard to imagine what their life would be like if he’d only just come home like he was supposed to that Christmas and left Charlotte behind. Would things have been better that way? Or would they have been like Oliver’s family, the weight of their unhappiness heavy as a blanket over each of them, stifling and oppressive and so very silent? Hadley knows as well as anyone that even the not saying can balloon into something bigger than words themselves, the way it had with her and Dad, the way it might have with him and Mom, had things turned out differently. Were they really better off this way? It was impossible to know.

  But what she does know is this: He’s happy now. She can see it all over his face, even now, as he sits hunched on the edge of the bed like something broken, afraid to turn and face her. Even now, despite all this, there’s a light behind his eyes that refuses to go out. It’s the same light that Hadley’s seen in Mom when she’s with Harrison.

  It’s the same light she thought she saw in Oliver on the plane.

  “Dad?” she says, and her voice is very small. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

  He’s unable to hide his surprise. “You are?”

  “Of course.”

  They’re quiet for a moment, and then he looks at her again. “Know what would make me even happier?”

  She raises her eyebrows expectantly.

  “If you’d come visit us sometime.”

  “Us?”

  He grins. “Yeah, in Oxford.”

  Hadley tries to picture what their house might look like, but can only call to mind some English country cottage she’d probably seen in a movie. She wonders if there’s a room for her there, but she can’t quite bring herself to ask. Even if there is, it will probably belong to
the baby soon anyway.

  Before she can answer, there’s a knock on the door, and they both look over.

  “Come in,” Dad says, and Violet appears. Hadley’s amused to see that she’s swaying ever so slightly in her heels, an empty glass of champagne in one hand.

  “Thirty-minute warning,” she announces, waving her watch in their direction. Behind her, Hadley can see Charlotte lean back from where she’s sitting in an overstuffed armchair, surrounded by the other bridesmaids.

  “No, take your time,” she calls to them. “It’s not like they can start without us.”

  Dad glances over at Hadley, then gives her shoulder a little pat as he stands up. “I think we’re all sorted in here anyway,” he says, and as she rises to follow him out, Hadley catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, puffy eyes and all.

  “I think I might need a little—”

  “Agreed,” Violet says, taking her by the arm. She motions to the other women, who set down their glasses and scurry over to the bathroom as one. Once they’re all huddled around the mirror and everyone’s got some sort of tool—a hairbrush or a comb, mascara or a curling iron—Violet begins the round of questioning.

  “So what were the tears about, then?”

  Hadley would like to shake her head, but she’s afraid to move; there are too many people poking and prodding her.

  “Nothing,” she says stiffly as Whitney hesitates in front of her, a tube of lipstick at the ready.

  “Your dad?”

  “No.”

  “Must be tough, though,” says Hillary. “Watching him get married again.”

  “Yeah,” Violet says from where she’s stooped on the floor. “But those weren’t family tears.”

  Whitney rakes her fingers through Hadley’s hair. “What were they, then?”

  “Those were boy tears,” Violet says with a smile.

  Jocelyn is trying to get the stain out of Hadley’s dress with a mystifying combination of water and white wine. “I love it,” she says. “Tell us all about him.”

  Hadley can feel herself blushing furiously. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she says. “I swear.”