The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight

For Kelly and Errol

“
AND
O
THERE
ARE
DAYS
IN
THIS
LIFE
,
WORTH
LIFE
AND
WORTH
DEATH
.”

Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend

There are so many ways it could have all turned out differently.

Imagine if she hadn’t forgotten the book. She wouldn’t have had to run back into the house while Mom waited outside with the car running, the engine setting loose a cloud of exhaust in the late-day heat.

Or before that, even: Imagine if she hadn’t waited to try on her dress, so that she might have noticed earlier that the straps were too long, and Mom wouldn’t have had to haul out her old sewing kit, turning the kitchen counter into an operating table as she attempted to save the poor lifeless swath of purple silk at the very last minute.

Or later: if she hadn’t given herself a paper cut while printing out her ticket, if she hadn’t lost her phone charger, if there hadn’t been traffic on the expressway to the airport. If they hadn’t missed the exit, or if she hadn’t fumbled the quarters for the toll, the coins rolling beneath the seat while the people in the cars behind them leaned hard on their horns.

If the wheel of her suitcase hadn’t been off-kilter.

If she’d run just a bit faster to the gate.

Though maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Perhaps the day’s collection of delays is beside the point, and if it hadn’t been one of those things, it would have just been something else: the weather over the Atlantic, rain in London, storm clouds that hovered just an hour too long before getting on with their day. Hadley isn’t a big believer in things like fate or destiny, but then, she’s never been a big believer in the punctuality of the airline industry, either.

Who ever heard of a plane leaving on time anyhow?

She’s never missed a flight before in her life. Not once.

But when she finally reaches the gate this evening, it’s to find the attendants sealing the door and shutting down the computers. The clock above them says 6:48, and just beyond the window the plane sits like a hulking metal fortress; it’s clear from the looks on the faces of those around her that nobody else is getting on that thing.

She’s four minutes late, which doesn’t seem like all that much when you think about it; it’s a commercial break, the period between classes, the time it takes to cook a microwave meal. Four minutes is nothing. Every single day, in every single airport, there are people who make their flights at the very last moment, breathing hard as they stow their bags and then slumping into their seats with a sigh of relief as the plane launches itself skyward.

But not Hadley Sullivan, who lets her backpack slip from her hand as she stands at the window, watching the plane break away from the accordion-like ramp, its wings rotating as it heads toward the runway without her.

Across the ocean, her father is making one last toast, and the white-gloved hotel staff is polishing the silverware for tomorrow night’s celebration. Behind her, the boy with a ticket for seat 18C on the next flight to London is eating a powdered doughnut, oblivious to the dusting of white on his blue shirt.

Hadley closes her eyes, just for a moment, and when she opens them again, the plane is gone.

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

6:56 PM Eastern Standard Time

11:56 PM Greenwich Mean Time

Airports are torture chambers if you’re claustrophobic.

It’s not just the looming threat of the ride ahead—being stuffed into seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube—but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm.

This is just one of the many things that Hadley’s trying not to think about as she stands helplessly before the ticket counter. The light outside was starting to disappear and her plane is now somewhere over the Atlantic, and she can feel something inside of her unraveling, like the slow release of air from a balloon. Part of it is the impending flight and part of it is the airport itself, but mostly—
mostly
—it’s the realization that she’ll now be late for the wedding she didn’t even want to go to in the first place, and something about this miserable little twist of fate makes her feel like crying.

The gate attendants have gathered on the opposite side of the counter to frown at her with looks of great impatience. The screen behind them has already been switched to announce the next flight from
JFK
to Heathrow, which doesn’t leave for more than three hours, and it’s quickly becoming obvious that Hadley is the only thing standing between them and the end of their shift.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” one of them says, the suppressed sigh evident in her voice. “There’s nothing we can do but try to get you on the later flight.”

Hadley nods glumly. She’s spent the past few weeks secretly wishing this very thing might happen, though admittedly, her imagined scenarios have been a bit more dramatic: a massive airline strike; an epic hailstorm; an immobilizing case of the flu, or even the measles, that would prevent her from flying. All perfectly good reasons why she might have to miss her father’s trip down the aisle to marry a woman she’s never met.

But being four minutes late to your flight seems just a little too convenient, maybe a tad suspicious, and Hadley isn’t at all sure that her parents—either of them—will understand that it wasn’t her fault. In fact, she suspects this might fall onto the very short list of things they’d actually agree upon.

It had been her own idea to skip the rehearsal dinner and arrive in London the morning of the wedding instead. Hadley hasn’t seen her father in more than a year, and she wasn’t sure she could sit in a room with all the important people in his life—his friends and colleagues, the little world he’s built around himself an ocean away—while they toasted to his health and happiness, the start of his new life. If it had been up to her, she wouldn’t even be going to the wedding itself, but
that
had turned out to be nonnegotiable.

“He’s still your dad,” Mom kept reminding her, as if this were something Hadley might forget. “If you don’t go, you’ll regret it later. I know it’s hard to imagine when you’re seventeen, but trust me. One day you will.”

Hadley isn’t so sure.

The flight attendant is now working the keyboard of her computer with a kind of ferocious intensity, punching at the keys and snapping her gum. “You’re in luck,” she says, raising her hands with a little flourish. “I can get you on the ten twenty-four. Seat eighteen-A. By the window.”

Hadley’s almost afraid to pose the question, but she asks it anyway: “What time does it get in?”

“Nine fifty-four,” the attendant says. “Tomorrow morning.”

Hadley pictures the delicate calligraphy on the thick ivory wedding invitation, which has been sitting on her dresser for months now. The ceremony will begin tomorrow at noon, which means that if everything goes according to schedule—the flight and then customs, the taxis and the traffic, the timing all perfectly choreographed—she’ll still have a chance at making it on time. But just barely.

“Boarding will start from this gate at nine forty-five,” the attendant says, handing over the papers, which are all neatly bound in a little jacket. “Have a wonderful flight.”

Hadley edges her way toward the windows and surveys the rows of drab gray chairs, most of them occupied and the rest sprouting yellow stuffing at their seams like well-loved teddy bears. She props her backpack on top of her carry-on suitcase and digs for her cell phone, then scrolls through the contacts for her dad’s number. He’s listed simply as “The Professor,” a label she bestowed on him about a year and a half ago, shortly after it was announced that he wouldn’t be returning to Connecticut and the word
dad
had become an unpleasant reminder each time she opened her phone.

Her heart quickens now as it begins to ring; though he still calls fairly often, she’s probably dialed him only a handful of times. It’s nearly midnight there, and when he finally picks up, his voice is thick, slowed by sleep or alcohol or maybe both.

“Hadley?”

“I missed my flight,” she says, adopting the clipped tone that comes so naturally when talking to her father these days, a side effect of her general disapproval of him.

“What?”

She sighs and repeats herself: “I missed my flight.”

In the background, Hadley can hear Charlotte murmuring, and something flares up inside of her, a quick rise of anger. Despite the sugary e-mails the woman has been sending her ever since Dad proposed—filled with wedding plans and photos of their trip to Paris and pleas for Hadley to get involved, all signed with an overzealous “xxoo” (as if one
x
and one
o
weren’t sufficient)—it’s been exactly one year and ninety-six days since Hadley decided that she hated her, and it will take much more than an invitation to be a bridesmaid to cancel this out.

“Well,” Dad says, “did you get another one?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t get in till ten.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, tonight,” she says. “I’ll be traveling by comet.”

Dad ignores this. “That’s too late. It’s too close to the ceremony. I won’t be able to pick you up,” he says, and there’s a muffled sound as he covers the phone to whisper to Charlotte. “We can probably send Aunt Marilyn to get you.”

“Who’s Aunt Marilyn?”

“Charlotte’s aunt.”

“I’m seventeen,” Hadley reminds him. “I’m pretty sure I can handle getting a taxi to the church.”

“I don’t know,” Dad says. “It’s your first time in London….” He trails off, then clears his throat. “Do you think your mom would be okay with it?”

“Mom’s not here,” Hadley says. “I guess she caught the first wedding.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone.

“It’s fine, Dad. I’ll meet you at the church tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t be too late.”

“Okay,” he says softly. “I can’t wait to see you.”

“Yeah,” she says, unable to bring herself to say it back to him. “See you tomorrow.”

It isn’t until after they’ve hung up that Hadley realizes she didn’t even ask how the rehearsal dinner went. She’s not all that sure she wants to know.

For a long moment, she just stands there like that, the phone still held tightly in her hand, trying not to think about all that awaits her on the other side of the ocean. The smell of butter from a nearby pretzel stand is making her slightly sick, and she’d like nothing more than to sit down, but the gate is choked with passengers who’ve spilled over from other areas of the terminal. It’s Fourth of July weekend, and the weather maps on the TV screens show a swirling pattern of storms blotting out much of the Midwest. People are staking out their territory, laying claim to sections of the waiting area as if they plan to live there permanently. There are suitcases perched on empty chairs, families camped out around entire corners, greasy McDonald’s bags strewn across the floor. As she picks her way over a man sleeping on his backpack, Hadley is keenly aware of the closeness of the ceiling and the press of the walls, the surging presence of the crowd all around her, and she has to remind herself to breathe.

When she spots an empty seat, she hurries in that direction, maneuvering her rolling suitcase through the sea of shoes and trying not to think about just how crushed the silly purple dress will be by the time she arrives tomorrow morning. The plan was to have a few hours to get ready at the hotel before the ceremony, but now she’ll have to make a mad dash for the church. Of all her many worries at the moment, this doesn’t rank particularly high on Hadley’s list, but still, it’s a little bit funny to imagine just how horrified Charlotte’s friends will be; not having time to get your hair done undoubtedly qualifies as a major catastrophe in their books.

Hadley’s pretty sure that
regret
is too slight a word to describe her feelings about agreeing to be a bridesmaid, but she’d been worn down by Charlotte’s incessant e-mails and Dad’s endless pleas, not to mention Mom’s surprising support of the idea.

“I know he’s not your favorite person in the world right now,” she’d said, “and he’s certainly not mine, either. But do you really want to be flipping through that wedding album one day, maybe with your own kids, and wishing you’d been a part of it?”

Hadley really doesn’t think she’d mind, actually, but she could see where everyone was going with this, and it had just seemed easier to make them happy, even if it meant enduring the hair spray and the uncomfortable heels and the post-ceremony photo shoot. When the rest of the wedding party—a collection of Charlotte’s thirtysomething friends—had learned about the addition of an American teenager, Hadley had been promptly welcomed with a flurry of exclamation points to the e-mail chain that was circulating among the group. And though she’d never met Charlotte before and had spent the last year and a half making sure it stayed that way, she now knew the woman’s preferences on a wide range of topics pertaining to the wedding—important issues like strappy sandals vs. closed-toe heels; whether to include baby’s breath in the bouquets; and, worst and most scarring of all, lingerie preferences for the bridal shower or, as they called it, the hen party. It was staggering, really, the amount of e-mail a wedding could generate. Hadley knew that some of the women were Charlotte’s colleagues at the university art gallery at Oxford, but it was a wonder that any of them had time for jobs of their own. She was scheduled to meet them at the hotel early tomorrow morning, but it now looks as if they’ll have to go about zipping their dresses and lining their eyes and curling their hair without her.