Free Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard Page B

window.
    â€œI’m just resting my eyes,” he said.
    Maggie turned down the radio.
    â€œNo, no,” he said, his eyes already closed. “I promise not to fall asleep.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it,” Maggie said. “Rest.”
    â€œJust my eyes,” he said. “I promise not to sleep.”
    He was out in five minutes. Maggie turned the radio off altogether. She liked the sound of the rain, the steady
thunk
of the wipers. She didn’t necessarily like driving in weather like this, but at the end of the day, she didn’t mind it. That’s just how she was. And if Mark was tired, she was happy to let him sleep. He’d been working nonstop all semester. This was his break. It was time for him to rest up, to get his energy back so he could write.
    The thing about Maggie: she would have made a good mom. People were always saying so. Her patients’ owners especially couldn’t believe she didn’t have children. “But the way you are with animals . . .” It was a constant refrain.
    Totally, totally, she’d thought about it. And why not? She was a woman: it was impossible not to have the discussion at some point or another. When they first started dating in fact, Mark had asked if she was interested, but the conversation hadn’t lingered on babies. Instead, it turned quickly to Maggie’s own mother. “There was so much disappointment in that house,” she’d told him. “But there were also these photos, photos from before me and my brother, and in them my parents looked happy. I don’t remember ever seeing them look happy around me.” Maggie didn’t think her parents’ miserable attitudes were her fault, but she understood that—rightly or wrongly—she and her brother had changed things. “You know they didn’t hug us?” she’d told Mark that day. “I can’t remember a single hug. What I’m getting at, I suppose, is if it happens, it happens. But if it doesn’t, I’ll be okay.” And it hadn’t happened, and Maggie really was okay. There were bound to be regrets one day. When she was Gwen’s age, for instance, she assumed she would experience a sort of homesickness for someone who never existed—a son, maybe a daughter. She’d miss the presence of youth in her life; miss getting to see that son or daughter fall in love for the first time. But Maggie also assumed that the homesickness would be infrequent, and the possibility of a future regret certainly didn’t seem reason enough to change one’s life now.
    She slapped the steering wheel. “A mother,” she said, though Mark was out cold, “what a strange thing to be.” She shook her head.
    Maggie glanced in the rearview. In the back, Gerome readjusted himself. His two yellow eyes glowed up at her. “Can you imagine?” she said to the dog. “Can you even imagine something so odd?”
    Gerome sighed. The yellow eyes disappeared into the darkness of the backseat.
    They were east of Xenia now, but they were no longer making good time. The rain had slowed everything down. At nearly every streetlight, she caught the red. They’d have to get a hotel eventually, but they wouldn’t hit the big chains for another hour or two. They were still four hundred miles from Charlottesville, still two and a half hours from West Virginia.
    â€œDamn it,” Maggie said.
    Mark shifted but didn’t wake. The wipers ticked right, left, right, left. A streetlight ahead turned from green to yellow to red.
    â€œMark,” she said.
    He smacked his lips and yawned.
    â€œMark,” she said again. Now she tapped him on the knee.
    â€œWe there?” His eyes were still closed.
    She laughed. “You’ve been out twenty minutes,” she said. “We’re definitely not there.”
    â€œWhat’s up?” He cracked his neck. He was slowly coming to.
    â€œWe