"Come visit soon, okay?" he said, darting forward to give her a hug, and she nodded into his chest before pulling away. But she knew it would never happen. She had no intention of visiting him there. Even if she were open to the idea, as Mom and Dad both hoped she would be, the mathematics of it seemed utterly impossible to her. What was she supposed to do, spend Christmas there and Easter here? See her dad every other holiday and one week during the summer, just enough to glimpse his new life in fragments, tiny slivers of a world she had no part in? And all the while missing out on those moments of her mom's life—her mom, who'd done nothing to deserve to spend Christmas alone?
That, it seemed to Hadley, was no way to live. Perhaps if there were more time, or if time were more malleable; if she could be both places at once, live parallel lives; or, simpler yet, if Dad would just come home. Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside of her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.
After returning home from the ski trip she'd tucked the book away on a shelf in her room. But it wasn't long before she moved it again, stacking it beneath some others on the corner of her desk, and then again near the windowsill, the heavy volume skipping around her room like a stone until it eventually settled on the floor of her closet, where it had remained until this morning. And now here's Oliver shuffling through it, his fingers tripping across pages that haven't been opened in months.
"It's his wedding," Hadley says quietly. "My dad's."
Oliver nods. "Ah."
"Yeah."
"I'm guessing it's not a wedding gift, then."
"No," she says. "I'd say it's more of a gesture. Or maybe a protest."
"A Dickensian protest," he says. "Interesting."
"Something like that."
He's still idly thumbing through the pages, pausing every so often to scan a few lines. "Maybe you should reconsider."
"I can always get another at the library."
"I didn't just mean because of that."
"I know," she says, glancing down at the book again. She catches a flash of something as he leafs through, and she grabs his wrist without thinking. "Wait, stop."
He lifts his hands, and Hadley takes the book from his lap.
"I thought I saw something," she says, flipping back a few pages, her eyes narrowed. Her breath catches in her throat when she spots an underlined sentence, the line uneven, the ink faded. It's the simplest of markings: nothing written in the margin, no dog-eared page to flag it. Only a single line, hidden deep within the book, underscored by a wavery stroke of ink.
Even after all this time, even with all she's said to him and all she still hasn't, even in spite of her intention to return the book (because that's how you send a message, not with some unmarked, underlined quote in an old novel), Hadley's heart still flutters at the idea that perhaps she's been missing something important all this time. And now here it is on the page, staring up at her in plain black and white.
Oliver is looking at her, the question written all over his face, and so she murmurs the words out loud, running her finger along the line her father must have made.
"Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?"
When she glances up, their eyes meet for the briefest moment before they both look away again. Above them, the ducks are dancing on the screen, splashing along the edges of the pond, their happy little home, and Hadley lowers her chin to read the sentence again, this time to herself, then snaps the book shut and shoves it back into her bag.
