Read Online Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard - Free Book Online

deal.”
    â€œA smoking deal,” she said. It was a phrase Mark’s parents used indiscriminately, on anything from a Parisian hotel room to a bundle of asparagus purchased at the local farmer’s market.
    Maggie put a hand on Mark’s knee, and he, without a moment’s hesitation, reached down and squeezed her fingers.
    See? That was just the thing. The thing that kept them together. He understood her. He, too, recognized that though they might approach their opinions—say, of Ohio or even the GPS for that matter—from different directions, ultimately those directions landed them in the same place, with the same result. Each knew that the other was theirs. Two brains thinking one thought. Two brains following one final wave of logic. She felt a nearly animalistic sense of intimacy at that moment.
    It was true, regrettably so, that in the last few weeks Maggie’s brain had been going out of its way to seek out extra tangents, to explore other prospects—darker, more disturbing possibilities—but that was her
brain.
That wasn’t her. And her brain was beyond her control.
You can do what you will, but you can’t will what you will,
another aphorism she’d been taught by her therapist.
    But therapists and aphorisms aside, the takeaway was this: Mark was hers and she was his, and everything, ultimately, in one way or another, would always work out between them.
    The radio went silent. There was another crack of lightning in the distance. Then there was static. Then, with no formality or warning, the radio issued several long low beeps. A tornado watch was underway in southeast Ohio.
    Â 
    In 1840 the Great Natchez tornado killed 317 people in Natchez, Mississippi. In 1925 the Tri-State tornado ran a path of 219 miles for nearly four hours, from Missouri to Illinois to Indiana. More than 600 people died. In 1989 roughly 1,300 people were killed by the Daulatpur-Saturia tornado in Bangladesh. Twelve thousand people were injured. Eighty thousand were left homeless.
    The tornado—that funnel-shaped weapon capable of moving at nearly 70 miles an hour with internal rotational winds of sometimes 250—is no laughing matter.

8
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Maggie pulled the car into a small Shell station. They were somewhere in New Lebanon—population 4,000—a place where US-35 felt more like a side street than a highway. Squat ranchers, secondhand shops, the occasional empty bank.
    Next to the station, thankfully, there was an overgrown field of grass. Maggie had only just turned on the windshield wipers. The rain wasn’t too bad yet.
    â€œI’ll walk him,” said Mark. “Unless you want to and then I’ll top up the tank instead.”
    â€œYour choice,” she said.
    Gerome was standing with his front paws on the center console. He was whining, asking a question—
whu, whu, whu
—whose end he couldn’t achieve. Gerome hated to get rained on probably as much if not more than Mark. They had that in common.
Smart boy,
thought Mark.
    â€œSmart boy,” said Mark, massaging the dog’s chin. “You think this is shit, too, eh?” He turned in his seat, dug around in the floorboard behind him, and found Gerome’s leash. The dog continued his plea.
    To Maggie, he said, “I’ll do it.” Mark’s knees were cramping; a short walk would do him good.
    Maggie got out and started the pump. After a second, she ducked her head back inside the car where Mark was still fidgeting with the leash. “You want anything? The card reader’s not working. I have to go in to pay.”
    â€œCoffee?” Mark said. “If it’s hot?”
    â€œYou got it.” She trotted off across the parking lot toward the store, the wind pushing her ponytail, her shirt, the hem of her shorts to the side. It seemed her clothes, the pieces of her, were aligned with the earth and not Maggie.
    Mark pulled down his