Men and Dogs Read Free

glacial divide in the Legare household began to form. For her brother, Palmer, the topic of her father was closed. Her mother, too, seemed over it, having remarried within a year, something Hannah has never quite been able to forgive her for.
    So Hannah entered her twelfth year more than a little baffled. She still had— has —questions. For her, an empty boat floating on the harbor is not an obvious conclusion.
    Hannah believes her father is alive. As in, still in existence and breathing the same air as she is, on this very Earth. It’s not that she isn’t tempted to believe otherwise; there are just too many unexplained factors. For instance, how does one fall off a boat on a calm spring evening? And why did no one see her father out in the harbor? And why was he fishing on a Monday at twilight? And if he drowned, why was no body ever found? And finally, why, why was the dog still there?
    After six years of probing, Hannah succeeded only in estranging herself from her family. Palmer, Daisy, and her stepfather were tired of her questions, tired of what they saw as her relentless desire to cause upheaval in their lives. “What do you need?” Daisy once snapped in exasperation. “A shark-eaten carcass?” So when it came time for college, it became clear that
Hannah’s best option was just to leave. Since high school graduation, she’s been back to Charleston only four times: a wedding,
a Christmas, a funeral, and once with Jon—each visit an awkward jail sentence. It isn’t that she doesn’t appreciate the place. Who wouldn’t adore the beaches and a local accent so complex it allows a woman to simultaneously seduce and reprimand in one single word? She probably loved it more than anyone, right up until that day in April when her father took off in his boat to find something better. A crappy thing for him to do, but as she’s gotten older, she’s come to admire her father for it. She’s almost grateful, even.
Because certainly her father’s departure gave her an unquestionable license to leave without looking back.
    And she’s thriving, isn’t she? Stanford, a start-up, then Stanford again for business school, and now another start-up out of the ashes of the first. Three marathons, two biking centuries, a marriage (albeit slightly screwed) to a highly appropriate life partner.
    Her father never would have dreamed of such a future for her. Often she wakes up in the middle of the night,
wanting to tell him. I’m killing it, Dad, she’d say. How about you? She googles his name once a week. He left long before the Internet; still she sends e-mails to the kinds of addresses he might choose—[email protected], [email protected].
But she receives only auto replies from strangers. Action failed. Error. Your message did not go through .
    Taxis always have trouble finding Hannah and Jon’s Upper Terrace apartment, and this one’s no different. Not that she can blame the driver. On a map, the neighborhood looks like the inside of a brain. He refuses her help at first (pride, directions,
men), and for a while, her inner Southerner politely lets him wander. After the second wrong turn, though, she becomes impatient and barks the directions. “Up Fell. Left on Masonic. Keep going. Keep going. Top of the hill. Around the bend. I know it’s curvy, but I promise the street keeps going. Yes, this one. Thanks.”
    It was Hannah who found the apartment, a one-bedroom with good fixtures and spectacularly unfriendly neighbors. Not the best deal in the world; they paid $920, 000 cash in a market that could only slither downward. Still, it’s perched on one of the highest hills in San Francisco, meaning that from the living room, one can see the whole city—the coppery tops of the new de Young Museum, just now beginning to green, the washed-out Sunset District, the Crayola smear of the Golden Gate Bridge stretched out against miles of churning sea. The place is small, but that view, at least, Hannah reasoned at the