The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(40)
Hadley remains rooted a safe distance away, her feet stuck to the sidewalk. Now that she’s here, this whole thing seems like the worst possible idea. She knows she’s always had a tendency to leap without looking, but she realizes now that this is not the kind of visit you make on a whim. This is not the end point to some spontaneous journey, but rather the site of something deeply sad, something irrevocably and horribly final. She glances down at her dress, the soft purple too cheerful for the occasion, and is already starting to turn away when she catches sight of Oliver across the lawn and her mouth goes dry.
He’s standing beside a small woman, his arm resting lightly around her shoulders. Hadley assumes the woman must be his mother, but when she looks closer the scene before her shifts and she realizes it’s not Oliver at all. His shoulders are too broad and his hair too light, and when she holds up a hand to shield her eyes from the slanted sun, she can see that this man is much older. Still, she’s startled when he looks over, his gaze meeting hers across the yard, and while it’s clear now that this is one of Oliver’s brothers, there’s also something astonishingly familiar in his eyes. Hadley’s stomach lurches and she stumbles backward, ducking behind a row of hedges like some kind of criminal.
When she’s safely out of sight, hidden to one side of the church, she finds herself just outside a wrought-iron fence woven with vines. On the other side is a garden with fruit trees and a haphazard assortment of flowers, a few stone benches, and a fountain that’s cracked and dry. She circles the perimeter, running a hand along the fence—the metal cool to the touch—until she reaches the gate.
Above her a bird cries out, and Hadley watches as it makes lazy circles in the crowded sky. The clouds are thick as cotton and laced in silver from the sun, and she thinks back to what Oliver said on the plane, the word taking shape in her mind: cumulus. The one cloud that seems both imaginary and true all at once.
When she lowers her eyes again, he’s there across the garden, almost as if she’s dreamed him into being. He looks older in his suit, pale and solemn as he digs at the dirt with the toe of his shoe, his shoulders hunched and his head bent. Watching him, Hadley feels a surge of affection so strong that she nearly calls out.
But before she can do anything, he turns around.
There’s something different about him, something broken, an emptiness in his gaze that makes her certain this was a mistake. But his eyes hold her there, nailing her to the ground where she stands, torn between the instinct to run away and the urge to cross the space between them.
For a long time they just stay there like that, as still as the statues in the garden. And when he gives her no sign—no gesture of welcome, no indication of need—Hadley swallows hard and comes to a decision.
But just as she turns to walk away she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish.
“Wait,” he says, and so she does.
13
10:13 AM Eastern Standard Time
3:13 PM Greenwich Mean Time
“What’re you doing here?” Oliver says, staring at her as if he’s not quite convinced she’s actually there.
“I didn’t realize,” Hadley says quietly. “On the plane…”
He lowers his eyes.
“I didn’t realize,” she says again. “I’m so sorry.”
He nods at the stone bench a few feet away, the rough surface still damp from the earlier rain. They walk over together, heads bowed, the mournful sound of an organ starting up inside the church. Just as she’s about to sit, Oliver motions for her to wait, then whips his jacket off and lays it on the bench.
“Your dress,” he says by way of explanation, and Hadley glances down at herself, frowning at the purple silk as if she’s never seen it before. Something about the gesture cracks her heart open further, the idea that he’d think of something so trivial at a time like this; doesn’t he know she couldn’t care less about the stupid dress? That she’d gladly curl up on the grass for him, make a bed out of the dirt?
Unable to find the words to refuse him, she sits down, brushing her fingers along the soft folds of his jacket. Oliver stands above her, rolling up first one sleeve and then the other, his eyes focused somewhere beyond the garden.
“Do you need to get back?” Hadley asks, and he shrugs, leaving a few inches between them as he joins her on the bench.
“Probably,” he says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
But he doesn’t move, and after a moment Hadley finds herself pitched forward as well, both of them studying the grass at their feet with unnatural intensity. She feels she probably owes him some sort of explanation for showing up here, but he doesn’t ask for one, so they just remain there like that, the silence stretching between them.
Back home in Connecticut, there’s a bird bath just outside her kitchen window, which Hadley used to look out at while doing the dishes. The most frequent visitors were a pair of sparrows who used to fight for their turn, one hopping around the edge and chirping loudly as the other bathed, and then vice versa. Occasionally one would dart at the other, and both would flap their wings and lurch backward again, making ripples in the water. But although they generally spent the entire time squabbling, they always arrived together, and they always left together.
One morning she was surprised to see only one of the birds. It landed lightly on the stone lip of the bath and danced around the edge without touching the water, rotating its rounded head this way and that with a sense of bewilderment so pitiful that Hadley had leaned to the window and peered up at the sky, though she knew it would be empty.