The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(16)

That, it seemed to Hadley, was no way to live. Perhaps if there were more time, or if time were more malleable; if she could be both places at once, live parallel lives; or, simpler yet, if Dad would just come home. Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside of her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.

After returning home from the ski trip she’d tucked the book away on a shelf in her room. But it wasn’t long before she moved it again, stacking it beneath some others on the corner of her desk, and then again near the windowsill, the heavy volume skipping around her room like a stone until it eventually settled on the floor of her closet, where it had remained until this morning. And now here’s Oliver shuffling through it, his fingers tripping across pages that haven’t been opened in months.

“It’s his wedding,” Hadley says quietly. “My dad’s.”

Oliver nods. “Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m guessing it’s not a wedding gift, then.”

“No,” she says. “I’d say it’s more of a gesture. Or maybe a protest.”

“A Dickensian protest,” he says. “Interesting.”

“Something like that.”

He’s still idly thumbing through the pages, pausing every so often to scan a few lines. “Maybe you should reconsider.”

“I can always get another at the library.”

“I didn’t just mean because of that.”

“I know,” she says, glancing down at the book again. She catches a flash of something as he leafs through, and she grabs his wrist without thinking. “Wait, stop.”

He lifts his hands, and Hadley takes the book from his lap.

“I thought I saw something,” she says, flipping back a few pages, her eyes narrowed. Her breath catches in her throat when she spots an underlined sentence, the line uneven, the ink faded. It’s the simplest of markings: nothing written in the margin, no dog-eared page to flag it. Only a single line, hidden deep within the book, underscored by a wavery stroke of ink.

Even after all this time, even with all she’s said to him and all she still hasn’t, even in spite of her intention to return the book (because that’s how you send a message, not with some unmarked, underlined quote in an old novel), Hadley’s heart still flutters at the idea that perhaps she’s been missing something important all this time. And now here it is on the page, staring up at her in plain black and white.

Oliver is looking at her, the question written all over his face, and so she murmurs the words out loud, running her finger along the line her father must have made.

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

When she glances up, their eyes meet for the briefest moment before they both look away again. Above them, the ducks are dancing on the screen, splashing along the edges of the pond, their happy little home, and Hadley lowers her chin to read the sentence again, this time to herself, then snaps the book shut and shoves it back into her bag.

6

12:43 AM Eastern Standard Time

5:43 AM Greenwich Mean Time

Hadley in sleep: drifting, dreaming. In the small, faraway corners of her mind—humming, even as the rest of her has gone limp with exhaustion—she’s on another flight, the one she missed, three hours farther along and seated beside a middle-aged man with a twitching mustache who sneezes and flinches his way across the Atlantic, never saying a word to her as she grows ever more anxious, her hand pressed against the window, where beyond the glass there is nothing but nothing but nothing.

She opens her eyes, awake all at once, to find Oliver’s face just inches from her own, watchful and quiet, his expression unreadable. Hadley brings a hand to her heart, startled, before it registers that her head is on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, pulling away. The plane is almost completely dark now, and it seems everyone on the flight is asleep. Even the television screens have gone black again, and Hadley pulls her tingling wrist from where it was wedged between them and squints at her watch, which is still, unhelpfully, on New York time. She runs a hand through her hair and then glances sideways at Oliver’s shirt, relieved there’s no sign of any drool, especially when he hands her a napkin.

“What’s this for?”

He nods at it, and when she looks again, she sees that he’s drawn one of the ducks from the movie.

“Is this your usual medium?” she asks. “Pen on napkin?”

He smiles. “I added the baseball cap and trainers so that he’d look more American.”

“How thoughtful. Though we usually just call them sneakers,” she says, the end of the sentence swallowed by a yawn. She tucks the napkin in the top of her bag. “You don’t sleep on planes?”

He shrugs. “Normally I do.”

“But not tonight?”

He shakes his head. “Apparently not.”

“Sorry,” she says again, but he waves it off.

“You looked peaceful.”

“I don’t feel peaceful,” she says. “But it’s probably good that I slept now, so I don’t do it during the ceremony tomorrow.”

Oliver looks at his own watch. “You mean today.”