The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(4)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker about a passenger missing from his plane, and Hadley can’t stop the thought from tiptoeing into her head: What if she were to skip out on her own flight? But as if he can read her mind, the boy in front of her glances back to make sure she’s still there, and she realizes she’s grateful to have some company on this of all days, unexpected as it may be.

They walk past a row of paneled windows that face out over the tarmac, where the planes are lined up like floats in a parade, and Hadley feels her heart pick up speed at the thought of having to board one soon. Of all the many tight places in the world, the endless nooks and crannies and corners, nothing sets her trembling quite as much as the sight of an airplane.

It was just last year when it happened for the first time, this dizzying worry, a heart-thudding, stomach-churning exercise in panic. In a hotel bathroom in Aspen, with the snow falling fast and thick outside the window and her dad on the phone in the next room, she had the sudden sensation that the walls were too close and getting closer, inching toward her with the steady certainty of a glacier. She stood there trying to measure her breathing, her heart pounding out a rhythm in her ears so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of Dad’s muffled voice on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah,” he was saying, “and we’re supposed to get another six inches tonight, so it should be perfect tomorrow.”

They’d been in Aspen for two whole days, doing their best to pretend this spring break was no different from any other. They rose early each morning to get up the mountain before the slopes were too crowded, sat silently with their mugs of hot chocolate in the lodge afterward, played board games at night in front of the fireplace. But the truth was, they spent so much time not talking about Mom’s absence that it had become the only thing either of them could think about.

Besides, Hadley wasn’t stupid. You didn’t just pack off to Oxford for a semester, spend your days teaching poetry classes, and then suddenly decide you wanted a divorce without a good reason. And though Mom hadn’t said a word about it—had, in fact, grown nearly silent on the subject of Dad in general—Hadley knew that reason must be another woman.

She’d planned to confront him about it on the ski trip, to step off the plane and thrust an accusing finger at him and demand to know why he wasn’t coming home. But when she made her way down to the baggage claim to find him waiting for her he looked completely different, with a reddish beard that didn’t match his dark hair and a smile so big she could see the caps on his teeth. It had been only six months, but in that time he’d become a near stranger, and it wasn’t until he stooped to hug her that he came back again, smelling like cigarette smoke and aftershave, his voice gravelly in her ear as he told her how much he’d missed her. And for some reason, that was even worse. In the end, it’s not the changes that will break your heart; it’s that tug of familiarity.

And so she’d chickened out, instead spending those first two days watching and waiting, trying to read the lines of his face like a map, searching for clues to explain why their little family had so abruptly fallen apart. When he’d gone off to England the previous fall, they’d all been thrilled. Until then he’d been a professor at a small mid-tier college in Connecticut, so the idea of a fellowship at Oxford—which boasted one of the best literature departments in the world—had been irresistible. But Hadley had been just about to start her sophomore year, and Mom couldn’t leave her little wallpaper shop for four whole months, so it was decided that they’d stay behind until Christmas, when they’d join him in England for a couple of weeks of sightseeing, and then they’d all return home together.

That, of course, never happened.

At the time, Mom had simply announced that there was a change of plans, that they’d be spending Christmas at Hadley’s grandparents’ house in Maine instead. Hadley half believed her dad would be there to surprise her when they arrived, but on Christmas Eve, it was only Grandma and Pops and enough presents to confirm that everyone was trying to make up for the absence of something else.

For days before that, Hadley had been overhearing her parents’ tension-filled phone calls and listening to the sound of her mother crying through the vents of their old house, but it wasn’t until the drive home from Maine that Mom finally announced that she and Dad would be splitting up, and that he’d be staying on for another semester at Oxford.

“It’ll just be a separation at first,” she said, sliding her eyes from the road over to where Hadley sat numbly, absorbing the news one incremental thought at a time—first, Mom and Dad are getting divorced, and then, Dad isn’t coming back.

“There’s a whole ocean between you,” she said quietly. “How much more separated can you get?”

“Legally,” Mom said with a sigh. “We’re going to legally separate.”

“Don’t you need to see each other first? Before deciding something like that?”

“Oh, honey,” Mom said, taking a hand off the wheel to give Hadley’s knee a little pat. “I think it’s already been decided.”

And so, just two months later, Hadley stood in the bathroom of their Aspen hotel, her toothbrush in hand, as her dad’s voice drifted in from the next room. A moment earlier she’d been sure it was Mom calling to check in, and her heart had lifted at the thought. But then she heard him say a name—Charlotte—before lowering his voice again.

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “She’s just in the loo.”

Hadley felt suddenly cold all over, wondering when her father had become the kind of man to call the bathroom a “loo,” to whisper to foreign women on hotel phones, to take his daughter on a ski trip as if it meant something, as if it were a promise, and then return to his new life like it had never even happened.

She took a step closer to the door, her bare feet cold on the tiles.

“I know,” he was saying now, his voice soft. “I miss you, too, honey.”

Of course, Hadley thought, closing her eyes. Of course.

It didn’t help that she was right; when had that ever made anything better? She felt a tiny seed of resentment take root inside of her. It was like the pit of a peach, something small and hard and mean, a bitterness she was certain would never dissolve.

She stepped back from the door, feeling her throat go tight and her rib cage swell. In the mirror, she watched the color rise up into her cheeks, and her eyes felt blurred by the heat of the small room. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the sink, watching her knuckles go white, forcing herself to wait until he was off the phone.