Free Best Staged Plans by Claire Cook Page B

atrophy.”
    Greg reached for my hand. “Of course we do. Talking to you is the best part of my day.”
    “After tennis,” I said.
    Greg grinned. “Okay, maybe it’s a tie.”
    “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives remembering. I want to make new memories.”
    “I hear you,” Greg said. “I’m just not sure it’s all about the house.”
    “Okay, so what’s it about?”
    Greg leaned forward. “I think we need another dog. Or maybe a cat. But definitely a new pet. Something to bring in some fresh life.”
    Once for a school project, Luke had drawn a timeline of our family pets: Tigger, the sweet shelter cat we’d adopted to keep the mice in our new house at bay, and who lived to be a whopping twenty-two years old. Deaf and senile, she meowed at the top of her lungs all night long, night after night, until she forgot she was nocturnal and started doing it all day, too. Then she somehow managed to sneak out, only to get her neck broken in our driveway in broad daylight by something she no longer recognized as a dog.
    Dash and Ashley, our much-loved but too-often-neglected Lab-cross shelter dogs who kept each other company when we were too stressed-out with our kids’ crazy schedules to give them the attention they deserved. Dash died at thirteen, and Ashley died of a broken heart a few months later.
    Indiana Jones, the adorable two-year-old psychotic female beagle we adopted next from a family who couldn’t keep her. She chewed the shingles off the house and made a break for freedom the minute anyone left the door open longer than a nanosecond. Right before the four of us left for a funeral one day, I went back into the house to grab some tissues. She darted out between my legs and raced across the driveway and into the road. The big green landscape truck never even saw her coming, and she exploded on contact, splattering the street with black, white, and red pieces of Indie. A passing fire truck circled back and washed off the street, and a kind firefighter with kids of his own wrapped what he could in an old blanket so we could bury her.
    Rainbow and Star, the sweet rabbits we loved almost as much as they loved each other. And Comet, Luke’s pet rat the rest of us were so sure we’d hate, but who turned out to be one of the smartest, most affectionate pets of all, like a little dog, really. He died a horrible, painful death as a tumor grew on his neck, finally cutting off his oxygen supply during a crazy winter’s nor’easter, when the power went out and all we could do was take turns sitting vigil with him by candlelight until the sad, sad end.
    They were all buried out behind the garage, along with some mouse skeletons and an occasional bird, marked by beach stones and seashells and little wooden signs carved with their names. Luke had even given up his childhood blankie to bury Comet the rat in, and he’d made us videotape the candlelit burial service. We’d found it a few years ago at Christmas, and the four of us had watched it and cried like babies.
    My eyes filled with tears as I looked at Greg.
    “No,” I said. “I just can’t do it again. I want fun new experiences where nobody dies for a long, long time.”

CHAPTER 12
    I TOOK A DETOUR on my walk to the post office, looping through the tiny web of downtown streets and around to the harbor. Even though full-blown spring was in the air today, on the roller-coaster ride that was New England weather, tomorrow might be another story. Still, it wouldn’t be long before the sun-bleached docks piled behind the harbormaster’s office would be back in the water and filled with boats.
    Seagulls swooped and screeched overhead, waiting impatiently for the summer tourists to come back and feed them the crusts of their fat deli sandwiches, along with ketchup-soaked French fries from their take-out orders of fish-and-chips.
    I unwrapped an old, half-eaten Kashi bar I found in my jacket pocket, leaned over the