The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(9)

In the end, though, she hadn’t really had a choice.

“He’s still your father,” Mom kept telling her. “He’s obviously not perfect, but it’s important to him that you be there. It’s just one day, you know? He’s not asking for much.”

But it seemed to Hadley that he was, that all he did was ask: for her forgiveness, for more time together, for her to give Charlotte a chance. He asked and he asked and he asked, and he never gave a thing. She wanted to take her mother by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. He’d broken their trust, he’d broken Mom’s heart, he’d broken their family. And now he was just going to marry this woman, as if none of that mattered. As if it were far easier to start over completely than to try to put everything back together again.

Mom always insisted they were better off this way. All three of them. “I know it’s hard to believe,” she’d say, maddeningly levelheaded about the whole thing, “but it was for the best. It really was. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

But Hadley’s pretty sure she understands already, and she suspects the problem is that it just hasn’t fully sunk in for Mom yet. There’s always a gap between the burn and the sting of it, the pain and the realization. For those first few weeks after Christmas, Hadley would lie awake at night and listen to the sound of her mother crying; for a few days, Mom would refuse to speak of Dad at all, and then she’d talk of nothing else the next, back and forth like a seesaw until one day, about six weeks later, she snapped back, suddenly and without fanfare, radiating a calm acceptance that mystifies Hadley even now.

But the scars were there, too. Harrison had asked Mom to marry him three times now, each time in an increasingly creative fashion—a romantic picnic, a ring in her champagne, and then, finally, a string quartet in the park—but she’d said no again and again and again, and Hadley is certain it’s because she still hasn’t recovered from what happened with Dad. You can’t survive a rift that big without it leaving a mark.

And so this morning, just a plane ride away from seeing the source of all their problems, Hadley woke up in a rotten mood. If everything had gone smoothly, this might have translated into a few sarcastic comments and the occasional grumble on the ride to the airport. But there was a message from Charlotte first thing, reminding her what time to be at the hotel to get ready, and the sound of her clipped British accent set Hadley’s teeth on edge in a way that meant the rest of the day was as good as doomed.

Later, of course, her suitcase refused to zip, and Mom nixed the chandelier earrings she’d planned to wear for the ceremony, then proceeded to ask her eighty-five times whether she had her passport. The toast was burned and Hadley got jam on her sweatshirt and when she drove the car to the drugstore to pick up a mini bottle of shampoo, it began to rain and one of the windshield wipers broke and she ended up waiting at the gas station for nearly forty-five minutes behind a guy who didn’t know how to check his own oil. And all the while, the clock kept lurching forward toward the time when they’d have to leave. So when she walked back into the house and threw the keys on the kitchen table, she was in no mood for Mom’s eighty-sixth inquiry about her passport.

“Yes,” she snapped. “I have it.”

“I’m just asking,” Mom said, raising her eyebrows innocently, and Hadley gave her a mutinous look.

“Sure you don’t want to march me onto the plane, too?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Or maybe you should escort me all the way to London to make sure I actually go.”

There was a note of warning in Mom’s voice. “Hadley.”

“I mean, why should I be the only one who has to watch him get married to that woman? I don’t understand why I have to go at all, much less by myself.”

Mom pursed her lips in a look that unmistakably conveyed her disappointment, but by then, Hadley didn’t really even care.

Later, they rode the entire way to the airport in stubborn silence, an encore performance of the fight they’d been having for weeks now. And by the time they pulled up to the departures area, every part of Hadley seemed to be tingling with a kind of nervous energy.

Mom switched off the engine, but neither of them moved to get out of the car.

“It’ll be fine,” Mom said after a moment, her voice soft. “It really will.”

Hadley swiveled to face her. “He’s getting married, Mom. How can it be fine?”

“I just think it’s important that you be there—”

“Yeah, I know,” she said sharply, cutting her off. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“It’ll be fine,” Mom said again.

Hadley grabbed her sweatshirt and unbuckled her seat belt. “Well, then it’s your fault if anything happens.”

“Like what?” Mom asked wearily, and Hadley—buzzing with a kind of anger that made her feel both entirely invincible and incredibly young—reached out to fling open the door.

“Like if my plane crashes or something,” she said, not really even sure why she was saying it, except that she was bitter and frustrated and scared, and isn’t that how most things like that get said? “Then you’ll have managed to lose both of us.”

They stared at each other, the awful, unrecallable words settling between them like so many bricks, and after a moment Hadley stepped out of the car, swinging her backpack up onto her shoulder and then grabbing her suitcase from the backseat.