TWENTY-FOUR
Kieran told Emory everything.
It took forty minutes. He sat on his back porch in the late afternoon sun, phone pressed to his ear, while Hank dug methodically at something near the fence and Mabel lay stretched in a patch of shade, unbothered by the heat.
Two days had passed since the fight. Two days of silence from next door. No texts. No knocks. Rory’s truck came and went at its usual times, but Kieran hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t tried to.
The San Francisco host had responded. The unit was available. First and last month’s rent, move-in as early as next week.
Kieran hadn’t replied.
When he finished talking, the line was quiet for a long moment. He could hear Emory breathing, the faint sound of traffic wherever she was.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Can I be honest with you?”
“When have you ever not been?”
“Fair.” A pause. “How long have you and Rory officially been together?”
Kieran frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean how long. A few months?”
“We’re not officially anything…but I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“Kieran. How well do you know this person?”
The question landed wrong. Like a glass set down too hard on a counter.
“I know him,” Kieran said.
“You didn’t know he was married.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“The point is that you’ve been together for a few weeks and you’re acting like he violated a sacred contract.” Emory’s voice wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t soft either. “Does he owe you that? This early? His worst trauma, on your timeline?”
Kieran didn’t answer right away.
“He listened to me talk about my mom,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “He didn’t rush to fill the silence, while I—I just kept talking.”
“You chose to tell him that. That was yours to give. It doesn’t mean he owes you his.”
“So I’m supposed to be okay with it?”
“I’m saying maybe the size of your reaction doesn’t match the size of the thing.”
Kieran stood up from the porch chair. Some reflex, the need to be moving. “You weren’t there. You didn’t hear him.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t.”
“So maybe don’t tell me how big my reaction should be.”
“Kieran—”
“He stood in my driveway and told me about identifying his wife’s body. About planning her funeral. About drinking himself into the ground.” He was pacing now. “And he told me all of that like it was my fault for asking. Like I was the asshole for wanting to know who I’m with.”
“Or,” Emory said, “like a man whose worst memory got ripped out of him in the middle of a fight and he didn’t have a clean way to say it.”
Kieran stopped pacing.
“You’re defending him.”
“I’m not defending him.”
“It sounds like you’re defending him.”
“It sounds like you called me wanting me to say you’re right, and you’re pissed because I won’t.”
The line went quiet. Kieran could hear his own breathing, too fast, too shallow.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “You’ve never had to—”
He stopped.
He’d been about to say you’ve never had to start over. Which wasn’t true. Emory had left a marriage at twenty-eight. Had moved cities. Had rebuilt from scratch. He knew this. He’d helped her do it.
“Never had to what?” Emory said. Her voice was flat.
“Nothing. That wasn’t fair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
They sat in the silence. The conversation building—Kieran was tilting, the anger losing its footing.
“You emailed an Airbnb the same night,” Emory said. Not accusatory. Just the fact of it. “San Francisco.”
“I know.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t therapist me. I already pay Jim for that.”
“I’m not therapisting you. I’m asking a question.”
“It tells me I have options,” Kieran said. “It tells me I’m not stuck here.”
The words came out fast, like he’d rehearsed it at three in the morning. And for about half a second they sounded right.
Then he heard them.
The way he’d hear his own voice on a recording and think, That’s not what I sound like. Except it was. That was exactly what he sounded like. A man at a party who was already looking for the door.
Emory didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
Kieran sat down. The chair creaked.
The Airbnb message was sitting in his sent folder. Month-to-month rental, flexible move-in date. He’d pulled the words straight from Rory’s mouth. Had typed them as a declaration of independence.
His chest lurched. Not a realization. That was too clean a word for it. More like stepping on a stair that wasn’t there. The ground different beneath him than he’d expected.
“Kieran?” Emory said.
“Yeah.”
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
A long silence.
“I used his exact words,” Kieran said finally. His voice sounded far away, even to him. “Month-to-month. That’s what he called me. And I typed it into a search bar like it was a fucking feature.”
Emory was quiet.
The porch was quiet. Hank had given up digging and was sitting by the fence, watching Kieran with his head tilted.
Kieran didn’t say anything else for a while. Emory held the line open. She was good at that, knowing when to push and when to stay.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too. But I’m not helping you move to San Francisco.”
“I’m not moving to San Francisco.”
“Good. And for the record, Jim has done wonders.”
She hung up.
Kieran sat on the porch for a long time after.
He opened his phone and looked at the Airbnb message. The host’s cheerful response. The photos of the studio with the exposed brick and the alley view.
Thank you for getting back to me. I’ve decided to stay where I am.
He hit send.
It didn’t feel triumphant.
He watched the light change, listening to the ocean he couldn’t see but could always hear, while Hank pressed his warm body against Kieran’s legs and Mabel snored in the shade.
He was almost asleep when the whining started.
Low at first, then higher. Insistent. Hank was standing at the side of the bed, nose pressed against the mattress, shifting his weight from paw to paw.
“Seriously?” Kieran muttered, reaching for his phone. 1:39 a.m. “Now?”
Hank whined again, more urgent, backing toward the door.
Kieran sighed and pushed himself off the mattress. His body was heavy, wrung out from days of not sleeping well and too much thinking.
He shuffled to the back door and slid it open, letting Hank out into the yard.
“Make it quick,” he said, leaving the door cracked.
Hank trotted out into the darkness, tail up, purpose in his stride.
Kieran walked to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, drank it standing at the sink while staring blankly at the microwave clock. The numbers glowed an accusatory green. The house was quiet in that thick, cotton-wrapped way that only happened in the dead of night.
A few minutes passed.
Long enough that his brain started to wake up a little. Long enough to register that Hank usually came back by now. Usually scratched at the door or jingled his collar near the threshold.
Kieran set the glass down and walked back to the door, peering out into the yard.
“Hank?” he called softly, not wanting to wake the neighbors.
Nothing.
He stepped outside, bare feet hitting cool concrete, then grass. The night air was sharp, cutting through the fog of exhaustion.
“Hank, come on. Let’s go,” he said, louder now.
Still nothing.
Kieran went back inside, grabbed his phone from the counter, and turned on the flashlight. The beam cut across the yard, grass, fence, the corner where Mabel’s toys were scattered in their usual chaos.
No Hank.
He walked the perimeter, shining the light along the fence line, checking the usual spots where Hank liked to sniff around, the bushes he’d marked a hundred times.
And then he saw it.
A hole.
Not small. Not some minor gap a dog might squeeze through if he was determined. This was deliberate. A decent-sized excavation under the fence, dirt scattered on both sides like evidence of a prison break. Fresh dirt. Recent.
“Oh shit,” Kieran hissed. “No no no.”
Hank was gone.
His hands started shaking.
His brain morphed into worst-case scenarios, each one more vivid than the last. Hank running into the street.
A car. Coyotes. Someone taking him. Hank lost and scared and alone, the way he’d been when Kieran first got him from the rescue.
All that progress, all that trust, gone in a single moment of carelessness.
I’m supposed to keep him safe.
“Okay,” Kieran said, his voice tight. “Okay. Just—”
He stood up too fast, head spinning, and bolted back inside.
Shoes. He needed shoes.
He shoved his feet into the first pair he found, sandals, wrong for running, didn’t care, and grabbed a leash from the hook by the door.
His phone. He had his phone. Keys. Where were his keys?
His thoughts were moving too fast, tripping over themselves. He couldn’t slow them down.
The street was empty. Silent. The kind of late-night where the world had been put on pause and forgotten to resume.
“Hank!” Kieran called, his voice cutting through the quiet. “Hank, come here!”
He jogged down the driveway, scanning left and right.
“Hank!” he shouted again, louder this time.
The street stretched out in both directions, familiar houses, familiar trees, all of it suddenly foreign in the darkness. He didn’t know which way to go. Didn’t know where Hank would head if given the choice.
He started walking quickly down the street, shining his phone light into yards, calling Hank’s name every few seconds. Nothing. He stopped in the middle of the street, breathing hard, trying to think.
“Hank!”
He should’ve checked the fence. Should’ve noticed the digging earlier. Should’ve been more careful, more vigilant, more present.
“Kieran?”
He spun around.
Rory was standing on his front porch, shirtless, hair messy from sleep, squinting against the glare of Kieran’s phone flashlight. He looked like he’d rolled out of bed.
“What’s going on?” Rory’s voice was rough, confused, but already sharpening.
“My dog got out.” Kieran heard how he sounded, frantic, hostile, barely holding it together, and couldn’t do anything about it. “There’s a hole under the fence. He’s gone.”
Rory stepped off the porch, bare feet on concrete. “How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes.”
“Which direction did he—”
“If I knew what fucking direction he went, I wouldn’t be standing in the street in my sandals, Rory.”
Rory went still. His expression didn’t change. He looked at Kieran for a long moment—steady, absorbing the hit without flinching.
“Do you want help?” he said quietly.
“No.” Kieran was already turning away, heading for his front door. “I can deal with it. Sorry for waking you up.”
He went back inside. Finally found his keys thrown into a corner on the counter. Shoved his feet into real shoes. His hands were still shaking but he had a plan now. Drive the neighborhood, check the beach access points, search the park on Third Street, where they walked sometimes.
He could do this alone. He didn’t need anyone’s help. He certainly didn’t need Rory’s help. He locked the front door and stepped back onto the driveway. And stopped in his tracks.
Rory’s Tacoma was already running, headlights blazing, not regular headlights, high beams, cutting through the darkness like searchlights, illuminating everything in harsh white light.
Kieran fumbled with his keys in his hand, watching.
Rory didn’t look at him. Didn’t wave. Didn’t ask again.
He threw the truck into reverse, tires squealing as he backed out fast, and then he was gone, speeding down the street, lights sweeping wide arcs across lawns and driveways, scanning, searching.
Kieran stood in the middle of his driveway, watching the taillights disappear around the corner. Then he got into his car, started the engine, and pulled out onto the street.
The neighborhood was still dark, still quiet, less overwhelming now.
Because somewhere out there, Rory was looking too.
Kieran drove slowly, windows down, calling Hank’s name into the night.