Here to Stay by Margot Early Page B

handler. I can make money as one, as well as teach obedience. And I know how to do a lot of things myself. The grooming, for instance. Elijah, I want this so badly. I want to get to Westminster.”
    The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Sissy wanted to go to the top. The top of her world.
    And her world, in the view of the United States Humane Society, was one of questionable merit.
    But Elijah didn’t say that—wouldn’t say that—not to this woman he loved. He would get flack for it, and he had no idea how they could pay for it, but how could he strike down her dream? “Okay,” he said and kissed her. “We can try to start a kennel, in a small way. But not with the goal of hurting your parents. I don’t want that.”
    “If you’d heard her, you wouldn’t feel that way,” Sissy replied.
    But Elijah could imagine the kinds of things Heloise Atherton had said. What he felt was saddened; Sissy’s mother couldn’t like him or feel resigned to Sissy’s having married him, yet he’d wished that she would. And he didn’t intend to injure his relationship with her parents further. He said softly, “Yes, I would.”
     
    T HEY MADE LOVE in the queen-size bed in the cabin’s larger bedroom, and Elijah dispensed with condoms for the first time. “Oh, God,” he whispered when he was inside her, when they were one. “Sissy…”
    She looked at his face, the craggy, handsome face thatkissed every part of her body, and his eyes were shining, wet with emotion. He loves me. He really loves me.
    Her heart surged, too, and she tried to be closer to him. The intense pleasure he brought sought her out, vibrating through her, washing over her.
    Sometime later, holding her carefully, Elijah said, “I feel like we’ve always belonged to each other. I think we were made for each other. Now I’m with you as I’ve always wanted to be, and I only want more. I want to be inside you to know what you think and feel.”
    Sissy pressed her face against his dark hair. “That’s how I feel, too.”
    He met her eyes, and his seemed very beautiful to her. “You are so worth waiting for.”
    Sissy thought she knew what he was saying, that she had been his first. She touched his face, trying not to replay the question that had troubled her once before. Did he believe she had been a virgin when they’d first made love? He was so gentle, so careful never to hurt her.
    She considered things she could say now. I wish I’d waited for you. But that wouldn’t be quite true. If she hadn’t slept with her professor, she might not have slept with Clark, might not have realized she didn’t want to marry him, so might not be with Elijah now. One change anywhere along the line could have altered her life, and she was so grateful to be married to Elijah, in love with him. “I love you,” she said.
    But she didn’t like his believing she’d had no other lovers. It hadn’t bothered her for Clark to believe that, but she didn’t want any misunderstanding or misperception between Elijah and herself. The problem was, if hecarried that idea of her, it might be important to him. She didn’t want to disappoint him with the truth.
    She didn’t want to risk his loving her less.

CHAPTER FIVE

    After the incident with the babysitter and Gene’s retreating to the kennel, from where our bitch Martha defended his sanctuary, it was my wife’s opinion that Martha regarded our son, Gene, as one of her puppies.
    — Among the God Dogs, Elijah Workman, 1990

    July 20, 1969

    S ISSY SAT beside Elijah on the plaid couch that they both agreed was ugly yet extremely comfortable, and stared at the image of their planet on the television.
    “God,” Elijah whispered.
    Sissy echoed the thought numbly. God, don’t let it be true.
    A man on the moon? No, not that. Many times in the years since she first left Echo Springs to go away to college she had felt her world turning upside down, but never so certainly as now.
    She had everything she wanted in this