The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight (17 page)

Apparently, shock—or whatever this is she’s feeling—is among the more effective cures for claustrophobia. She’s just traveled unseeingly for half an hour, underground the whole time, and not once did she have to force her mind elsewhere. The location was beside the point; her head was
already
in the clouds.

She realizes she left the wedding invitation inside the book, and though she knows the hotel is near the church and therefore somewhere in the neighborhood, she can’t for the life of her remember the name. Violet would be appalled.

But when she flips open her phone to call her dad, Hadley notices there’s a message, and even before punching in her password she knows it must be from Mom. She doesn’t even bother listening, dialing her back right away instead, not wanting to risk missing her yet again.

But she does.

Once more it goes to voice mail, and Hadley sighs.

All she wants is to talk to Mom, to tell her about Dad and the baby, about Oliver and his father, about how this whole trip has been one big mistake.

All she wants is to pretend the last couple of hours never happened.

There’s a lump in her throat as big as a fist when she thinks of the way Oliver left her there in the garden, the way those eyes of his—which had studied her so intently on the plane—had been focused on the ground instead.

And that girl. She’s absolutely certain it was his ex-girlfriend—the casual way she’d sought him out, the comforting hand on his arm. The only thing she’s
not
certain about is the
ex
part. There was something so possessive about the way she looked at him, like she was laying claim to him even from a distance.

Hadley slumps against the side of a red telephone booth, cringing at how silly she must have seemed, seeking him out in the garden like that. She tries not to imagine what they must be saying about her now, but the possibilities seep into her thoughts anyway: Oliver shrugging in answer to the girl’s question, identifying Hadley as some girl he met on the plane.

All morning she’d been carrying with her the memory of the previous night, the thought of Oliver acting as a shield against the day, but now it’s all been ruined. Even the memory of that last kiss isn’t enough to comfort her. Because she’ll probably never see him again, and the way they parted is enough to make her want to curl up in a little ball right here on the street corner.

The phone begins to ring in her hand, and she looks down to see Dad’s number on the screen.

“Where
are
you?” he asks when she picks up, and she looks left and then right down the street.

“I’m almost there,” she says, not entirely sure where exactly
there
is.

“Where you have been?” he asks, and the way he says it, his voice tight, Hadley can tell he’s furious. For the millionth time today she wishes she could just go home, but she still has the reception to get through, and a dance with her angry father, everyone staring at them; she still has to wish the couple well and suffer through the cake and then spend seven hours traveling back across the Atlantic beside someone who will not draw her a duck on a napkin, who will not steal her a small bottle of whiskey, who will not try to kiss her by the bathrooms.

“I had to go see a friend,” she explains, and Dad grunts.

“What’s next? Off to see one of your pals in Paris?”

“Dad.”

He sighs. “Your timing could have been better, Hadley.”

“I know.”

“I was worried,” he admits, and she can hear the harshness in his voice beginning to subside. Somehow, she’d been so focused on getting to Oliver that it hadn’t really occurred to her that Dad might be concerned. Angry, yes; but worried? It’s been so long since he played the role of anxious parent, and besides, he’s in the middle of his own wedding. But now she can see how her leaving might have frightened him, and she finds herself softening, too.

“I wasn’t thinking,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“How long till you get here?”

“Not long,” she says. “Not long at all.”

He sighs again. “Good.”

“But Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you remind me where I’m going?”

Ten minutes later, with the help of his directions, Hadley finds herself in the lobby of the Kensington Arms Hotel, a sprawling mansion that seems out of place amid the crowded city streets, like it was plucked from a country estate and dropped at random here in London. The floors are made of black-and-white marble, alternating like an oversized checkerboard, and there’s a great curving staircase with brass railings that stretches up beyond the chandeliered ceiling. Each time someone enters through the revolving doors, the faint scent of cut grass drifts in, too, the air outside heavy with humidity.

When she catches sight of herself in one of the ornate mirrors hanging behind the front desk, Hadley quickly lowers her eyes again. Her fellow bridesmaids will be disappointed when they see that their hard work from earlier has been ruined; her dress is so wrinkled it looks like she’s been carrying it around in her purse all day, and her hair—which had been so perfectly styled—is now coming undone, stray wisps falling across her face, the bun in the back sagging badly.

The man behind the desk finishes a phone call, replacing the receiver with a practiced flick of his wrist, and then turns to Hadley.

“May I help you, Miss?”

“I’m looking for the Sullivan wedding,” she says, and he glances down at the desk.

“I’m afraid that hasn’t yet begun,” he tells her with a clipped accent. “It will be held in the Churchill Ballroom at six o’clock sharp.”

“Right,” Hadley says. “But I’m actually just looking for the groom now.”

“Ah, certainly,” he says, ringing up to the room and murmuring into the phone before setting it down again and giving Hadley a crisp nod. “Suite two forty-eight. They’re expecting you.”

“I bet they are,” she says, heading toward the elevators.

When she knocks on the door to the suite, she’s so busy preparing herself for Dad’s disapproving frown that she’s a bit surprised to find Violet on the other side instead. Not that there’s a lack of disapproval there, either.

“What happened to you?” she asks, her eyes traveling all the way down to Hadley’s shoes before snapping back up again. “Did you run a marathon or something?”

“It’s hot out,” Hadley explains, glancing down at her dress helplessly. She notices for the first time that, in addition to everything else, there’s a comma-shaped streak of dirt at the hem. Violet takes a sip of champagne from a glass wreathed in lipstick marks, surveying the damage from over the rim. Behind her, Hadley can see about a dozen people sitting on dark green couches, a tray of colorful vegetables on the table in front of them and several bottles of champagne on ice. There’s music playing softly from the speakers, something instrumental and vaguely sleepy, but above that, she can hear more voices around the corner.

“I suppose we’ll probably need to sort you out again before the reception,” Violet says with a sigh, and Hadley nods gratefully as her phone—which she’s still clutching in one sweaty hand—begins to ring. When she glances at the name lit up on the screen, she realizes it’s Dad, probably wondering what’s taking her so long.

Violet raises her eyebrows. “ ‘The Professor’?”

“It’s just my dad,” she explains, so that Violet doesn’t think she’s getting strange transatlantic calls from a teacher. But looking down at the phone again, she feels suddenly deflated. Because what had once seemed funny now seems just a little bit sad; even in this—this smallest of gestures, this silliest of nicknames—there’s a sort of distance.

Violet steps aside like the bouncer at some exclusive club, ushering Hadley inside. “We don’t have much time before the reception,” she’s saying, and Hadley can’t help grinning as she closes the door behind her.

“What time does that start again?”

Violet rolls her eyes, not even bothering to dignify this with a response, and then retreats back into the room, arranging herself carefully on one of the chairs in her wrinkle-free dress.

Hadley heads straight for the small sitting room off to one side, which links the bedroom to the rest of the suite. Inside, she finds her dad and a few other people crowded around a laptop computer. Charlotte is seated before it, her wedding dress pooled all around her like some kind of sugary confection, and though Hadley can’t see the screen from where she’s standing, it’s clear that this is a show-and-tell of sorts.

For a moment she considers ducking back out again. She doesn’t want to see photos of them at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or making funny faces on a train, or feeding the ducks at the pond in Kensington Gardens. She doesn’t want to be forced to consider evidence of Dad’s birthday party at a pub in Oxford; she doesn’t need a reminder that she wasn’t there, had in fact woken that morning feeling the significance of the day like a weight around her neck, which trailed her through Geometry and Chemistry, all the way through lunch in the cafeteria, where a group of football players had sung a jokey version of “Happy Birthday” to Lucas Heyward, the hapless kicker, and by the end of their awful rendition Hadley had been surprised to discover the pretzel she’d been holding was nothing more than a handful of crumbs.

She doesn’t need pictures to know that she’s not part of his life anymore.

But he’s the first to notice her standing there, her dad, and though Hadley is ready for any number of reactions—anger that she left, annoyance that she’s late, relief that she’s okay—what she isn’t prepared for is this: something behind his eyes laid bare at the sight of her, a look like recognition, like an apology.

And right then, right there, she wishes for things to be different. Not in the way she’s been wishing for months now, not a bitter, twisted sort of wish, but the kind of wish you make with your whole heart. Hadley didn’t know it was possible to miss someone who’s only a few feet away, but there it is: She misses him so much it nearly flattens her. Because all of a sudden it all seems so horribly senseless, how much time she’s spent trying to push him out of her life. Seeing him now, she can’t help but think of Oliver’s father, about how there are so many worse ways to lose somebody, things far more permanent, things that can cut so much deeper.

She opens her mouth to say something, but before the words can begin to take shape, Charlotte beats her to it.

“You’re here!” she exclaims. “We were worried.”

A glass breaks in the adjacent room and Hadley flinches. Everyone in the sitting area is looking at her now, and the floral-patterned walls seem much too close.

“Were you off exploring?” Charlotte asks with such interest, such genuine enthusiasm, that it twists Hadley’s heart all over again. “Did you have fun?”

This time, when she glances in Dad’s direction, something in the look on her face is enough to make him stand from where he’s been perched on the arm of Charlotte’s chair.

“You okay, kiddo?” he asks, his head tilted to one side.

All she means to do is shake her head; at most, maybe shrug. But to Hadley’s surprise, a sob rises in her throat, breaking over her like a wave. She can feel her face begin to crumple and the first tears prick the backs of her eyes.

It’s not Charlotte or the others in the room; for once, it’s not even her dad. It’s the day behind her, the whole strange and surprising day. Never has any period of time seemed so unending. And though she knows it’s nothing but a collection of minutes, all of them strung together like popcorn on a tree, she can see now how easily they become hours, how quickly the months might have turned to years in just the same way, how close she’d come to losing something so important to the unrelenting movement of time.

“Hadley?” Dad says, setting his glass down as he takes a step in her direction. “What happened?”

She’s crying in earnest now, propped up by the doorframe, and when she feels the first tear fall, she thinks—ridiculously—of Violet, and how it’s one more thing they’ll have to worry about when trying to fix her again.

“Hey,” Dad says when he’s by her side, a strong hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just been a really long day.”

“Right,” he says, and she can almost see the idea occurring to him, the light going on behind his eyes. “Right,” he says again. “Time to consult the elephant, then.”

11:47 AM Eastern Standard Time

4:47 PM Greenwich Mean Time

Even if Dad still lived at their house in Connecticut, even if Hadley still sat across from him in her pajamas each morning during breakfast and called good night to him across the hall before bed, even then this would still fall under Mom’s job description. Absentee father or not, sitting with her as she cries over a boy is absolutely and unequivocally Mom Territory.

Yet here she is with Dad, the best and only option at the moment, the whole story pouring out of her like some long-held secret. He’s pulled a chair up beside the bed and is straddling it backward, with his arms resting on the seat back, and Hadley is grateful to see that for once he’s not wearing that professorial look of his, the one where he tips his head to the side and his eyes go sort of flat and he arranges his features into something resembling polite interest.

No, the way he’s looking at her now is something deeper than that; it’s the way he looked at her when she scraped her knee as a kid, the time she flipped her bike in the driveway, the night she dropped a jar of cherries on the kitchen floor and stepped on a piece of glass. And something about that look makes her feel better.

Hugging one of the many decorative pillows from the fancy bed, Hadley tells him about meeting Oliver at the airport and the way he switched seats on the flight. She tells him how Oliver helped her with her claustrophobia, distracting her with silly questions, saving her from herself in the same way Dad once had.

“Remember how you told me to imagine the sky?” she asks him, and Dad nods.

“Does it still help?”

“Yeah,” Hadley tells him. “It’s the only thing that ever does.”

He ducks his head, but not before she can see his mouth move, the beginning of a smile.