The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight(7)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“What kind of research?”

“I’m studying the fermentation process of mayonnaise.”

“You are not,” she says, laughing, and Oliver frowns.

“I am,” he says. “It’s very important work. Did you know that twenty-four percent of all mayonnaise is actually laced with vanilla ice cream?”

“That does sound important,” she says. “But what are you really studying?”

A man bumps hard into the back of Hadley’s chair as he walks past, then moves on without apologizing, and Oliver grins. “Patterns of congestion in U.S. airports.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Hadley says, shaking her head. She looks off toward the busy corridor. “But if you could do something about these crowds, I wouldn’t mind it. I hate airports.”

“Really?” Oliver says. “I love them.”

She’s convinced, for a moment, that he’s still teasing her, but then realizes he’s serious.

“I like how you’re neither here nor there. And how there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be while waiting. You’re just sort of… suspended.”

“That’s fine, I guess,” she says, playing with the tab on her soda can, “if it weren’t for the crowds.”

He glances over his shoulder. “They’re not always as bad as this.”

“They are if you’re me.” She looks over at the screens displaying arrivals and departures, many of the green letters blinking to indicate delays or cancellations.

“We’ve still got some time,” Oliver says, and Hadley sighs.

“I know, but I missed my flight earlier, so this sort of feels like a stay of execution.”

“You were supposed to be on the last one?”

She nods.

“What time’s the wedding?”

“Noon,” she says, and he makes a face.

“That’ll be tough to make.”

“So I’ve heard,” she says. “What time’s yours?”

He lowers his eyes. “I’m meant to be at the church at two.”

“So you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I suppose I will.”

They sit in silence, each looking at the table, until the muffled sound of a phone ringing comes from Oliver’s pocket. He fishes it out, staring at it with a look of great intensity while it carries on, until at last he seems to come to a decision and stands abruptly.

“I should really take this,” he tells her, sidestepping away from the table. “Sorry.”

Hadley waves a hand. “It’s okay,” she says. “Go.”

She watches as he walks away, picking a path across the crowded concourse, the phone at his ear. His head is ducked, and there’s something hunched about him, the curve of his shoulders, the bend of his neck, that makes him seem different now, a less substantial version of the Oliver she’s been talking to, and she wonders who might be on the other end of the call. It occurs to her that it could very well be a girlfriend, some beautiful and brilliant student from Yale who wears trendy glasses and a peacoat and would never be so disorganized as to miss a flight by four minutes.

Hadley’s surprised by how quickly she pushes the thought away.

She glances down at her own phone, realizing she should probably call her mother and let her know about the change in flights. But her stomach flutters at the thought of how they parted earlier, the ride to the airport in stony silence and then Hadley’s unforgiving speech in the departures lane. She knows she has a tendency to shoot her mouth off—Dad always used to joke that she was born without a filter—but who could expect her to be completely rational on the day she’s been dreading for months?

She woke up this morning feeling tense all over; her neck and shoulders were sore, and there was a dull throbbing at the back of her head. It wasn’t just the wedding, or the fact that she’d soon be forced to meet Charlotte, who she’d spent so much energy pretending didn’t exist; it was that this weekend would mark the official end of their family.

Hadley knows this isn’t some Disney movie. Her parents aren’t ever getting back together. The truth is, she doesn’t even really want them to anymore. Dad’s obviously happy, and for the most part Mom seems to be, too; she’s been dating their town dentist, Harrison Doyle, for more than a year now. But even so, this wedding will put a period at the end of a sentence that wasn’t supposed to have ended yet, and Hadley isn’t sure she’s ready to watch as that happens.

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.