The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight Read Online Free PDF

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.
    And so this morning, just a plane ride away from seeing the source of all their problems, Hadley woke up in a rotten mood. If everything had gone smoothly, this might have translated into a few sarcastic comments and the occasional grumble on the ride to the airport. But there was a message from Charlotte first thing, reminding her what time to be at the hotel to get ready, and the sound of her clipped British accent set Hadley’s teeth on edge in a way that meant the rest of the day was as good as doomed.
    Later, of course, her suitcase refused to zip, and Mom nixed the chandelier earrings she’d planned to wear for the ceremony, then proceeded to ask her eighty-five times whether she had her passport. The toast was burned and Hadley got jam on her sweatshirt and when she drove the car to the drugstore to pick up a mini bottle of shampoo, it began to rain and one of the windshield wipers broke and she ended up waiting at