The Story of Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

go no farther.
    “Okay,” I said. “Can we at least sit by those rocks?”
    Nothing doing. You could tell when she had her mind made up.
    “Well, fine, then.” I picked her up, carried her over, and sat down on the sand with my back against a large flat boulder. Jupiter sat next to me. She liked to sit real close. I put my arm around her.
    “Good dog,” I said. “How’d you get to be so sweet, huh?”
    She looked straight out to the ocean. She looked like she was thinking important things. The direction of her life, maybe.
    “When you’re old, you know things,” I said to her. But she didn’t turn to look at me. She kept looking ahead, sitting still with her own weighty thoughts, or else keeping watch for a seagull or a far-off boat or an unfamiliar one of her kind that might wish to do me harm.
     
    The Bluff House got larger and larger again as we walked back, and when we were almost there, I could see people on the grass on the bluff, a bunch of people, and a dog running around. Cruiser, Dan Jax’s dog. I’d played with him a few times when we’d gone to Dan’s for dinner, but so far he and Jupiter had only watched each other through car windows. The idea of getting them together—it scared me. Cruiser was young and physical, with boisterous big-dog energy. He was strong. Three times Jupiter’s size, easy, with a thick neck and meaty haunches. His fur was a golden tan, with a splotch of white on his chest in the exact shape of the shield on Superman’s suit.
    Cruiser was a little out of control. He sort of reminded me of Kenny Yakimoro, our old next-door neighbor. Ben and I used to spy on him through our fence because he was always doing thrilling things we’d never be allowed to do. Shooting cap guns or playing war with Nathan Washelli, using real-looking plastic rifles. Kenny wasn’t a bad kid, but he was always in trouble for running in the halls, or for getting carried away and knocking someone’s lunch tray over. The kind of guy you wanted on your kickball team because he gave it everything he had. That was Cruiser.
    This—them, us, the families coming in over the week before the wedding—it was all Dan Jax’s idea. I guess I could see his thinking: If you want to introduce two dogs who are going to live together, you bring them to neutral territory first. You have them meet. You let them participate in mutual activities—a walk, say. A Frisbee toss. You let them hash itout, and before you know it, they’ve figured out how to deal with each other.
    Maybe I should just say right here that Jupiter wouldn’t fetch a Frisbee to save her life.
    Maybe I should also say that Cruiser wouldn’t be my choice for Jupiter if I was playing dog matchmaker. I’d choose another old girl that might want to lie in a shady spot when it got warm. Not a big guy who’d tear up that lawn with his strong black toenails, sending bits of grass and dirt flying as he covered the places where he’d lifted his leg to mark his territory.
    I could see two girls up on that grass too. We’d never met them before either. Dan Jax’s daughters, Hailey and Amy, eighteen and fifteen, lived in Vancouver, Canada. When our parents married each other ( if our parents married each other), only I would be moving into the new house in Seattle. Ben would be away at school, and I’d be home until college started in the fall, or maybe later, depending on where I finally decided to go. Up in Vancouver, Amy and Hailey would be in the relationship sphere of distant cousins, I thought. Children of your parents’ friends, maybe. Those people you mostly just heard about, listening with one ear until some jealousy-inducing words flew past. Harvard, fabulous job, moving into your old room.
    I could feel, right there, my attitude edge into something craggy and unwelcoming. I’d had bad experiences with steps. The word “step”—it’s perfect, isn’t it, for those people linked to us through remarriage? You step toward, you step away,