The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Jennifer E. Smith
PROLOGUE
There are so many ways it could have all turned out differently.
Imagine if she hadn’t forgotten the book. She wouldn’t have had to run back into the house while Mom waited outside with the car running, the engine setting loose a cloud of exhaust in the late-day heat.
Or before that, even: Imagine if she hadn’t waited to try on her dress, so that she might have noticed earlier that the straps were too long, and Mom wouldn’t have had to haul out her old sewing kit, turning the kitchen counter into an operating table as she attempted to save the poor lifeless swath of purple silk at the very last minute.
Or later: if she hadn’t given herself a paper cut while printing out her ticket, if she hadn’t lost her phone charger, if there hadn’t been traffic on the expressway to the airport. If they hadn’t missed the exit, or if she hadn’t fumbled the quarters for the toll, the coins rolling beneath the seat while the people in the cars behind them leaned hard on their horns.
If the wheel of her suitcase hadn’t been off-kilter.
If she’d run just a bit faster to the gate.
Though maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Perhaps the day’s collection of delays is beside the point, and if it hadn’t been one of those things, it would have just been something else: the weather over the Atlantic, rain in London, storm clouds that hovered just an hour too long before getting on with their day. Hadley isn’t a big believer in things like fate or destiny, but then, she’s never been a big believer in the punctuality of the airline industry, either.
Who ever heard of a plane leaving on time anyhow?
She’s never missed a flight before in her life. Not once.
But when she finally reaches the gate this evening, it’s to find the attendants sealing the door and shutting down the computers. The clock above them says 6:48, and just beyond the window the plane sits like a hulking metal fortress; it’s clear from the looks on the faces of those around her that nobody else is getting on that thing.
She’s four minutes late, which doesn’t seem like all that much when you think about it; it’s a commercial break, the period between classes, the time it takes to cook a microwave meal. Four minutes is nothing. Every single day, in every single airport, there are people who make their flights at the very last moment, breathing hard as they stow their bags and then slumping into their seats with a sigh of relief as the plane launches itself skyward.
But not Hadley Sullivan, who lets her backpack slip from her hand as she stands at the window, watching the plane break away from the accordion-like ramp, its wings rotating as it heads toward the runway without her.
Across the ocean, her father is making one last toast, and the white-gloved hotel staff is polishing the silverware for tomorrow night’s celebration. Behind her, the boy with a ticket for seat 18C on the next flight to London is eating a powdered doughnut, oblivious to the dusting of white on his blue shirt.
Hadley closes her eyes, just for a moment, and when she opens them again, the plane is gone.
Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?
1
6:56 PM Eastern Standard Time
11:56 PM Greenwich Mean Time
Airports are torture chambers if you’re claustrophobic.
It’s not just the looming threat of the ride ahead—being stuffed into seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube—but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm.
This is just one of the many things that Hadley’s trying not to think about as she stands helplessly before the ticket counter. The light outside was starting to disappear and her plane is now somewhere over the Atlantic, and she can feel something inside of her unraveling, like the slow release of air from a balloon. Part of it is the impending flight and part of it is the airport itself, but mostly—mostly—it’s the realization that she’ll now be late for the wedding she didn’t even want to go to in the first place, and something about this miserable little twist of fate makes her feel like crying.
The gate attendants have gathered on the opposite side of the counter to frown at her with looks of great impatience. The screen behind them has already been switched to announce the next flight from JFK to Heathrow, which doesn’t leave for more than three hours, and it’s quickly becoming obvious that Hadley is the only thing standing between them and the end of their shift.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” one of them says, the suppressed sigh evident in her voice. “There’s nothing we can do but try to get you on the later flight.”
Hadley nods glumly. She’s spent the past few weeks secretly wishing this very thing might happen, though admittedly, her imagined scenarios have been a bit more dramatic: a massive airline strike; an epic hailstorm; an immobilizing case of the flu, or even the measles, that would prevent her from flying. All perfectly good reasons why she might have to miss her father’s trip down the aisle to marry a woman she’s never met.
But being four minutes late to your flight seems just a little too convenient, maybe a tad suspicious, and Hadley isn’t at all sure that her parents—either of them—will understand that it wasn’t her fault. In fact, she suspects this might fall onto the very short list of things they’d actually agree upon.