The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(36)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

She reaches beside her for the copy of Our Mutual Friend and leafs through it absently. When it opens to one of the dog-eared pages, she notices that the corner of the fold reaches halfway down the page like an arrow, its point landing at the top of a line of dialogue: “No one is useless in this world,” it reads, “who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”

A few minutes later, when she makes her way back past the church, Hadley can see the family still huddled in the open doorway. Oliver’s back is to her, his jacket still resting on his shoulder, and the girl, the one who discovered them, stands just beside him. There’s something protective about the way her hand rests on his elbow, and the sight of it makes Hadley walk a bit faster, her cheeks reddening without her quite understanding why. She hurries past the pair of them, past the statue with its unwavering gaze, past the church and the steeple and the row of black sedans lined up and ready to lead them to the cemetery.

At the last moment, almost as an afterthought, she places the book on the hood of the car in front. And then, before anyone can stop her, she takes off down the road again.

14

11:11 AM Eastern Standard Time

4:11 PM Greenwich Mean Time

If she were pressed for any sort of specific information about her journey back to Kensington—at what point she switched tubes, who was sitting next to her, how long it took—Hadley would have had a difficult time coming up with answers. To say that the trip was a blur suggests that she could recall at least some of it, no matter how fuzzy, but when she finally steps out into the sunlight again at the Kensington stop, she’s struck by the uncomfortable sensation of having skipped through time like a stone.

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.