Seattle

Seattle is the central urban setting of Enzo’s life with Denny, shifting from a small apartment above Lake Washington to a family house in the Central District and, later, a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill. These homes anchor the family’s daily life while the surrounding city and its nearby communities become the landscape through which illness, separation, grief, and financial hardship are experienced.

Neighborhoods and Homes

Denny moved Enzo from the farm in Spangle to Leschi, where he rented a little apartment beside Lake Washington. Enzo, still a puppy and accustomed to open country, did not take readily to apartment living. The balcony overlooking the lake nevertheless offered a welcome connection to the outdoors. The move also marks the beginning of a close bond between dog and owner: during Enzo’s first year in the city, he and Denny developed deep affection and trust.

The family later settled in a small Craftsman house on a hillside in the Central District. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and generous living space despite standing close to its neighbors. Enzo’s account places the neat, well-kept home among a varied streetscape: nearby houses had unkempt lawns, peeling paint, and mossy roofs, while electrical wires crossed above the sidewalk. The house became the setting for family routines and a place to which Enzo grew strongly attached.

Family Life in the Central District

The Central District house gathered the family’s everyday rituals around its small yard. After work, Denny greeted Eve and Zoë, then took Enzo outside to throw a ball for him to retrieve. As Zoë grew old enough to run and squeal, Enzo pretended to chase her. Denny firmly defended the dog when Eve worried that he might hurt the child; Enzo understood the concern but deliberately avoided rough play so Eve would not be anxious.

The house’s value to Enzo lay not only in its role as a family home but also in its familiar details. He had a warm place on the hardwood living-room floor, a dog door Denny had installed so he could go into the backyard, and a back porch where he sat on cold, rainy days while Denny was at work. From there, he watched the tree branches move and smelled the rain. The yard was too small for an extended run, and buses could be loud at night, but these limitations did not diminish his attachment to the house.

Illness, Separation, and the City’s Reach

Seattle is also where Enzo’s close observation of Eve’s illness acquires its painful significance. While she fed him, he detected an abnormal odor that he associated with a disease inside her head. He believed that his nose had registered the problem before medical examinations identified it, but he had no way to communicate what he sensed. The house therefore became a place of both intimate family care and helpless watching: Eve had asked Enzo to protect Zoë, while he felt that no one had been assigned to protect Eve.

When Eve went to stay with her parents for a time, Denny explained the arrangement to Zoë as they crossed the floating bridge she had once called the High 90. Their passage connects the city’s neighborhoods to the wider Seattle-area setting in which the family’s life unfolds. Later, after visiting Eve, Denny and Enzo returned across the lake. Enzo watched Bellevue and Medina pass, then saw Madison Park, Leschi, and downtown Seattle from the bridge, with the city appearing sharp in the night. Eve died that night. The journey home thus leads directly from a visit to her to the moment of her death, making the familiar city landscape part of the novel’s passage through grief.

Legal and Financial Upheaval

The city remains the setting for practical and legal struggles after Eve’s death. Denny’s custody dispute over Zoë and the criminal charges against him extended across nearly three years, much of which Enzo did not witness directly. He was present for only a few of Denny’s meetings with attorney Mark Fein, including meetings at Victrola Coffee. Enzo’s account makes clear that these urban encounters form only a partial view of proceedings from which he was excluded; much of what he relates about the legal process is reconstructed from secondhand information and overheard conversation.

The prolonged conflict depleted Denny’s money and threatened his ability to keep his lawyer. He eventually sold the Central District house and, with help from friends, moved the household’s belongings in a rented U-Haul truck to a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill. For Enzo, this was not simply a change of address. The move ended access to the dog door and backyard, as well as to the warm living-room floor and porch where he had watched the rain. In the new apartment, carpeting smelled of chemicals, the insulated windows did not seem to breathe, and the refrigerator hummed too loudly; there was no cable television. Seattle’s homes register the family’s changing circumstances in concrete form: the early apartment is an adjustment from open country, the Central District house becomes a cherished center of family life, and the Capitol Hill apartment marks what financial and legal pressure has taken away.