ODDS OF LOVE

Episode One

                                                                           .          SPENCER : The Past

Nine year old Spencer Alexander Norland was odd. 

Spencer knew that. 

Everyone in his life knew that. They pretty much told him that every day of his life that he himself considered to be cursed. They told him he was extraordinary. He was unique. He had an extremely high IQ : 410. They told him he was incredibly rare to have such an IQ. Nobody on earth had such a high level of intelligence everyone said. He could speak several languages : Spanish , French , German , Latin and , well , of course , English. To him learning the languages was easy as breathing. He had actually taught himself the first ( Spanish ) at the age of three. He was two when he first learned to read. He loved classical literature but his first love was mathematics. Numbers made sense to him in a way that even words did not. Numbers were a great comfort to the small skinny to the point of being fragile bony young boy with the constantly trembling hands and the way too big horn rimmed glasses who was seen as a living breathing machine to everyone in his life. His classmates. His siblings. His mother. Well almost everyone. Not his father. 

His father saw him as just his son. To Andrew Parker Norland he was no different than his older brother Richard or his younger sister Lorraine. Yet Spencer still felt special and very cherished around his father. He felt protected by his father. He felt needed. He felt cared for. He felt loved. 

Spencer's little lean pallid fingers with the chewed to a nub fingernails tapped out in a simple rhythm that had no real meaning upon the small curved window in his bedroom. His bedroom was his own haven and refuge from the world. It was filled with his math posters and an enormous amount of hardback books practically overflowing out of his many bookcases. But his room wasn't a haven today. Not today. Today it felt like a nightmare realm. Today he felt like he was trapped in a prison cell. 

His sky blue eyes with its long eyelashes blinked nervously behind his thick lensed glasses as he stared unrelentingly through the window down to the scene unfolding below. It was something he had dreamed he would ever see. Nor had the neighbors on their quiet serene upper class wealthy street in Arlington , Virginia as their pampered well manicured hands eagerly pulled back their own curtains to peer curiously out their own windows. 

His beautiful well dressed well mannered mother Doris Maye Van Buren Norland was now running along the well maintained emerald green front lawn in her satin bathrobe and silk nightgown , her finger pointing accusingly , her voice raised ever so very unappealingly. If anyone else had done such a thing his mother would lift her regal chin and call them vulgar and common and low class. His mother never screamed in public. Just in private. Doris was always telling the children to maintain their private faces and their public faces and how to keep them separate. 

Yet. There she was. Screaming. Yelling. With her mouth gaping wide open. Her lovely heart shaped face was now reddened in furious anger. She was screaming at his father. His father was pretending not to hear her. What were the odds , the chances , of such a scene ever having occurred ? , Spencer thought.  He watched as his father placed his golf clubs in the trunk of his expensive car. Then his suitcases. He had four bags. Spencer knew that. He counted them. 

One. 

Two.

Three.

Four.

His father was leaving. What were the odds of such a thing happening ? 

Andrew ignored his wife and looked up heavenward as though praying. Then he noticed his young son watching him. He attempted to smile at Spencer. The smile wavered though on his classically  handsome fine boned face. The smile looked fake which was odd on his father's face. He waved at his son. Spencer didn't wave back. He just stood there as still as a roman statue in an art gallery except for the constant uninterrupted tapping on the window pane. 

Doris saw their son as well. She smiled too but it was colder than his father's smile had been. She turned and smiled at his father. Her stiff shell pink lips moved quietly. Andrew seemed startled by whatever she had told him. 

" You wouldn't dare ! , " he heard his father scream at his mother. 

Doris just laughed at Andrew who now looked devastated. He looked his heart had just been ripped out of his chest. 

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Please , he pleaded within his head. Please. Please don't leave , Daddy. 

Tap.

Tap.

What were the odds ?