Read Online Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline - Free Book Online

as if they were trying to figure out what to say next. There was so much to say—there were so many questions—but it seemed both too soon and vaguely prurient to ask.
    “We want to help,” Ben said finally. “Do you need—what do you need?”
    “I don’t know. Thank you. Nothing.”
    “Is—was—Alison at fault?” Claire asked suddenly.
    “Umm—no. Not exactly. She’s being charged with DWI. We hope that’s the extent of it. We’re waiting for the police report.”
    Ben lay back against his pillow, shaping it with his left hand into a hard pallet under his neck, holding the phone with his right. How many martinis had Alison had last night? One—or two—and was there another just before she left? “Does she need a lawyer?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Charlie said. “Yep.”
    “Hey. My college roommate,” Ben said, leaping into the idea with relief. “This is what he does. Practices in Ridgewood. Let me call him.”
    “Okay. I appreciate it.”
    “Good, good,” Ben said, glancing at the clock, calculating what time Paul Ryan might be in his office, trying to remember where he’d stashed his number.
    These things happened to people, Ben knew. They happened all the time. Every morning, over his cup of coffee, he read about scenarios far worse in the Metro section. Ex-husbands bent on revenge, half a dozen kids killed in a fire, construction workers plummeting to their deaths, carloads of teenagers in head-on collisions. But they didn’t happen to him or to anyone he knew. And now Alison had been in an accident, and a child was dead. It didn’t seem possible.
    “She’s at home now?”
    “She’s asleep. Took an Ambien. Two, in fact,” Charlie said. Then he blurted, “I should’ve gone to the party. I knew she didn’t want to go alone.”
    “It’s not your fault,” Claire said. “It was raining, wasn’t it,” as if the rain were to blame. “I’m. So. Sorry, Charlie,” she breathed.
    “We’re both sorry,” Ben said with annoyance, acutely aware in that instant that Claire’s empathy had shut him out.
    And with a jolt he realized that this feeling—separated from Claire, by her choice—wasn’t unfamiliar. An almost imperceptible rift had developed between them, he thought, since her miscarriage several months ago—he wanted to try again and she didn’t, he was sure and she wasn’t. Claire had always been, by nature, somewhat moody and unpredictable, but after she lost the baby she was alternately withdrawn and overly solicitous. She often seemed to have something on her mind, but when he asked, she said she was simply tired, or thinking about a scene in her book. Ben had let these vague denials suffice, afraid of confirming what he suspected: she was becoming emotionally detached. She was pulling away.
    But he told himself he was being silly. They were both caught up in their work; that was all. Truth be told, Ben had been so preoccupied with a project at his architectural design firm that he’d had little time to think about much else. Sloane Howard had gotten a new commission, a big one, in Boston, right on the harbor, and Ben was working hard to meet both the client’s mercurial needs and the arcane structural codes and limitations of downtown Boston. He wanted to create a structure that would put his small boutique firm on the map.
    Sloane Howard made most of its money designing second and third homes for the very rich—homes that the next owner would likely as not tear down in pursuit of his own grandiose vision, a “bash and build” trend that Sloane Howard benefited from as much as it decried. But Ben, wooed to Sloane Howard from a larger firm as a junior partner a year ago, had greater aspirations. So when the chance came to bid on this ambitious, high-budget arts complex, with its large and small performance spaces, restaurants, offices, and conference center, Ben didn’t hesitate.
    He hired two new associates, fresh out of the M.I.T. graduate architecture program,