The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(32)

10

8:17 AM Eastern Standard Time

1:17 PM Greenwich Mean Time

Late last night, as she and Oliver had shared a pack of tiny pretzels on the plane, he’d been quiet, studying her profile for so long without speaking that she’d finally turned to face him.

“What?”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

She frowned. “That’s a question you ask a four-year-old.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “Everyone has to be something.”

“What do you want to be?”

He shrugged. “I asked you first.”

“An astronaut,” she said. “A ballerina.”

“Seriously.”

“You don’t think I could be an astronaut?”

“You could be the first ballerina on the moon.”

“I guess I’ve still got some time to figure it out.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“And you?” she asked, expecting another sarcastic answer, some invented profession having to do with his mysterious research project.

“I don’t know, either,” he said quietly. “Certainly not a lawyer, anyway.”

Hadley raised her eyebrows. “Is that what your dad does?”

But he didn’t answer; he only glared harder at the pretzel in his hand. “Never mind all this,” he said after a moment. “Who wants to think about the future, anyway?”

“Not me,” she said. “I can hardly stand to think of the next few hours, much less the next few years.”

“That’s why flying’s so great,” he said. “You’re stuck where you are. You’ve got no choice in the matter.”

Hadley smiled at him. “It’s not the worst place to be stuck.”

“No, it’s not,” Oliver agreed, popping the last pretzel in his mouth. “In fact, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”

In the hallway of the darkened church Dad paces restlessly, checking his watch and craning his neck toward the stairs every now and then as they wait for Charlotte to emerge from the basement. He looks like a teenager, flushed and eager for his date to arrive, and the thought crosses Hadley’s mind that maybe this is what he wanted to be when he grew up. Husband to Charlotte. Father to her baby. A man who spends Christmas in Scotland and goes on holiday to the south of France, who talks about art and politics and literature over slow-cooked meals and bottles of wine.

How odd that things turned out this way, especially since he’d been so close to staying home. Dream job or not, four months had seemed like such a long time to be away, and if it hadn’t been for Mom—who urged him to go, who said it was his dream, who insisted he’d regret passing up such an opportunity—Dad would never even have met Charlotte in the first place.

But here they are, and as if cued by Hadley’s unspoken musings, Charlotte appears at the top of the stairs, pink-cheeked and radiant in her dress. Without the veil, her auburn hair now hangs in loose curls to her shoulders, and she seems to glide right into Dad’s arms. Hadley looks away when they kiss, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. After a moment, Dad breaks away and sweeps an arm in Hadley’s direction.

“I’d like you to meet my daughter,” he says to Charlotte. “Officially.”

Charlotte beams at her. “I’m so pleased you could make it,” she says, pulling Hadley into a hug. She smells of lilacs, though it’s hard to tell whether it’s her perfume or the bouquet she’s holding. Taking a step back again, Hadley notices the ring on her finger, at least double the size of Mom’s, which Hadley still sneaks out of the jewelry box from time to time, slipping it onto her thumb and examining the carved faces of the diamond as if they might hold the key to her parents’ unraveling.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Charlotte says, turning back to Dad. “But you only get to take your wedding photos once.”

Hadley considers mentioning that this is in fact Dad’s second time around, but she manages to bite her tongue.

“Don’t listen to her,” Dad says to Hadley. “She takes this long even when she’s just going out to the market.”

Charlotte whacks him lightly with her bouquet. “Aren’t you supposed to act like a gentleman on your wedding day?”

Dad leans in and gives her a quick kiss. “For you, I’ll try.”

Hadley flicks her eyes away again, feeling like an intruder. She wishes she could slip outside without their noticing, but Charlotte is now smiling at her again with an expression Hadley isn’t quite sure how to read.

“Has your dad had a chance to tell you about—”

“The father-daughter dance?” Dad says, cutting her off. “Yeah, I told her.”

“Brilliant,” Charlotte says, putting an arm around Hadley’s shoulders conspiratorially. “I’ve already made sure there’ll be plenty of ice at the reception for when your dad steps all over our toes.”

Hadley smiles weakly. “Great.”

“We should probably get out there and say a quick hello to everyone before it’s time for photos,” Dad suggests. “And then the whole wedding party is going back to the hotel before the reception,” he tells Hadley. “So we just need to remember to grab your suitcase before we head over.”