window.
âIâm just resting my eyes,â he said.
Maggie turned down the radio.
âNo, no,â he said, his eyes already closed. âI promise not to fall asleep.â
âDonât worry about it,â Maggie said. âRest.â
âJust my eyes,â he said. âI promise not to sleep.â
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 didnât necessarily like driving in weather like this, but at the end of the day, she didnât mind it. Thatâs just how she was. And if Mark was tired, she was happy to let him sleep. Heâd 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 patientsâ owners especially couldnât believe she didnât have children. âBut the way you are with animals . . .â It was a constant refrain.
Totally, totally, sheâd 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 hadnât lingered on babies. Instead, it turned quickly to Maggieâs own mother. âThere was so much disappointment in that house,â sheâd told him. âBut there were also these photos, photos from before me and my brother, and in them my parents looked happy. I donât remember ever seeing them look happy around me.â Maggie didnât think her parentsâ miserable attitudes were her fault, but she understood thatârightly or wronglyâshe and her brother had changed things. âYou know they didnât hug us?â sheâd told Mark that day. âI canât remember a single hug. What Iâm getting at, I suppose, is if it happens, it happens. But if it doesnât, Iâll be okay.â And it hadnât happened, and Maggie really was okay. There were bound to be regrets one day. When she was Gwenâs age, for instance, she assumed she would experience a sort of homesickness for someone who never existedâa son, maybe a daughter. Sheâd 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 didnât seem reason enough to change oneâs life now.
She slapped the steering wheel. âA mother,â she said, though Mark was out cold, âwhat a strange thing to be.â She shook her head.
Maggie glanced in the rearview. In the back, Gerome readjusted himself. His two yellow eyes glowed up at her. âCan you imagine?â she said to the dog. âCan you even imagine something so odd?â
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. Theyâd have to get a hotel eventually, but they wouldnât 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.
âDamn it,â Maggie said.
Mark shifted but didnât wake. The wipers ticked right, left, right, left. A streetlight ahead turned from green to yellow to red.
âMark,â she said.
He smacked his lips and yawned.
âMark,â she said again. Now she tapped him on the knee.
âWe there?â His eyes were still closed.
She laughed. âYouâve been out twenty minutes,â she said. âWeâre definitely not there.â
âWhatâs up?â He cracked his neck. He was slowly coming to.
âWe