The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(14)

She twists toward him again, searching his face. “Is that supposed to help?” she asks, though not unkindly. She’s simply trying to find the lesson in the story.

“No, not really,” he says with a sheepish grin. “I was just trying to distract you again.”

She smiles. “Thanks. Got anything else?”

“Loads,” he says. “I could talk your ear off.”

“For seven hours?”

“I’m up for the challenge,” he tells her.

The plane has leveled out now, and when she starts to feel dizzy, Hadley tries to focus on the seat in front of her, which is occupied by a man with large ears and thinning hair at the crown of his head; not so much that he could be called bald, exactly, but just enough to give a suggestion of the baldness to come. It’s like reading a map of the future, and she wonders if there are such telltale signs on everyone, hidden clues to the people they’ll one day become. Had anyone guessed, for example, that the lady on the aisle would eventually cease to look at the world through brilliant blue eyes, and instead see everything from behind a filmy haze? Or that the man sitting kitty-corner to them would have to hold one hand with the other to keep it still?

What she’s really thinking about, though, is her father.

What she’s really wondering is whether he’s changed.

The air in the plane is dry and stale, rough against the inside of her nose, and Hadley closes her sore eyes and holds her breath for a moment as if she were underwater, something not difficult to imagine as they swim through the borderless night sky. She blinks her eyes open and reaches out abruptly, pulling down the plastic window shade. Oliver glances at her with raised eyebrows but says nothing.

A memory arrives, swift and unwelcome, of a flight with her father, years ago, though it’s hard now to be certain how many. She remembers how he absently fiddled with the window shade, dropping it shut and then thrusting it open again, over and over, up and then down, until the passengers across the aisle had leaned forward with their eyebrows knit and their mouths pursed. When the seat-belt sign had finally blinked off, he’d lurched up from his seat, bending to give Hadley a kiss on the forehead as he scooted past her and out into the aisle. For two hours he’d paced the narrow path from first class all the way back to the bathrooms, stopping now and then to lean over and ask what Hadley was doing, how she was doing, what she was reading, and then he’d be off again, looking like someone impatiently waiting for his bus to arrive.

Had he always been so restless? It was hard to know for sure.

Now she turns to Oliver. “So, has your dad come over to visit you much?” she asks, and he looks at her with slightly startled eyes. She stares back at him, equally surprised by her question. What she’d meant to say was your parents. Have your parents come over to visit much? The word dad had slipped out nearly unconsciously.

Oliver clears his throat and drops his hands to his lap, where he twists the extra fabric of his seat belt into a tight bundle. “Just my mum, actually,” he says. “She brought me out at the start of the year. Couldn’t bear to send me off to school in America without making my bed first.”

“That’s cute,” Hadley says, trying not to think of her own mother, of the fight they had earlier. “She sounds sweet.”

She waits for Oliver to say more, or perhaps to ask about her family, because it seems like the natural progression of conversation for two people with nowhere to go and hours to spare. But all he does is silently trace a finger over the letters stitched into the seat in front of them: FASTEN SEAT BELT WHILE SEATED.

Above them, one of the blackened television screens brightens, and there’s an announcement about the in-flight movie. It’s an animated film about a family of ducks, one that Hadley’s actually seen, and when Oliver groans, she’s about to deny the whole thing. But then she twists in her seat and eyes him critically.

“There’s nothing wrong with ducks,” she tells him, and he rolls his eyes.

“Talking ducks?”

Hadley grins. “They sing, too.”

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “You’ve already seen it.”

She holds up two fingers. “Twice.”

“You do know that it’s meant for five-year-olds, right?”

“Five- to eight-year-olds, thank you very much.”

“And how old are you again?”

“Old enough to appreciate our web-footed friends.”

“You,” he says, laughing in spite of himself, “are mad as a hatter.”

“Wait a second,” Hadley says, looking at him with mock horror. “Is that a reference to a… cartoon?”

“No, genius. It’s a reference to a famous work of literature by Lewis Carroll. But once again, I can see how well that American education is working for you.”

“Hey,” she says, giving him a light whack on the chest, a gesture so natural she doesn’t even pause to think it over until it’s too late. He smiles at her, clearly amused. “Last time I checked, you’d chosen an American college.”

“True,” he says. “But I’m able to supplement it with my wealth of British intelligence and charm.”

“Right,” Hadley says. “Charm. When do I get to see some of that?”

He twists his mouth up at the corners. “Didn’t some guy help carry your suitcase earlier?”