That meant the world to me. Polly would think it was too small, but it’s not like I chose to be squeezed this tight. It’s not like I asked for it.

The phone rang. I just about jumped. I’d ignored the computer narrating my keystrokes, but the phone was unexpected. At the same time, the front door opened. I could tell by the foot stomps on the doormat that it was Harry. It sounded like he had plastic bags, like from Sainsbury’s. Groceries.

The phone kept ringing. Instead of picking up in the kitchen, he went for the stairs. A machine picked up, a machine in this room. It didn’t seem like he was going to answer, but there was every chance he’d listen to the message. I do that. I screen. It’s normal. He was coming.

I’d already shut down the banking site and the monitor. I slipped out of the den and could only follow the hall away from the main stairs. And the only thing there was the ladder to the bird room. Jesus. There were feathers and sawdust on each step, and the air smelled like balsa with a tinge of refrigerator rot.

The voice came from the den: “You’ve reached Gretchen Paul and Harry Reed. Please leave a message.” Gretchen, Paul, and Harry-they sounded like a folk group. Ha. Then a long, irritating whine for a beep.

Harry had paused outside the den door to listen. I was wearing ballet flats, but even so I didn’t think I would get up to the bird room without obvious creaks. He might even be on his way there anyway. And-Jesus, there was a dead bird on the top step. A dead orange bird…

“Hello, Gretchen. I’m calling again to make sure you know that Miranda Bailey has been released. I thought you’d want to know that her situation has been resolved by a witness. Phone if you have any questions; I’ll be in the office.”

It was the lawyer. So it wasn’t Polly’s mother who did it, whatever had been done. Sometimes I wondered if Nick had pulled a Gauguin of his own.

Harry came closer. I hunched in the corner, behind the ladder stair. I should have just grabbed some papers and said I was working. He didn’t care when I was there. Shit. I closed my eyes. He gasped.

It was the bird. It wasn’t me.

He’d seen it. Poor thing. The feathers were fluffed out, making it almost spherical. The body itself was rubber-chicken limp. He stood on the bottom step and scooped the body gently in both his hands together. Then he gasped again, and thundered up the stairs. He froze with his upper half inside the bird room, standing on the middle step. I looked up at him. There was nowhere to go. I kept still. His head fell forward and he saw me.

“Liv?” He sounded strangled.

“I was just… I was finishing up with the pictures…”

I wasn’t even thinking about the money anymore. I thought for sure he’d blame me for the birds. Indignance blossomed in my chest, blossomed so big it hurt. I defended myself: “I don’t know what the hell happened up there. Jesus.”

He was calmer than I expected. He’s a big man. I thought for sure he’d grab me up by my shirt and throw me into a wall. He had that kind of energy in him all of a sudden. But it wasn’t directed at me. The sound that came out of him was weird and keening, and he pounded the top step with his fist.

I wasn’t sure how he was reading the situation, but I felt like I had to prove it hadn’t been me. I followed him up the ladder. He squatted in the middle of the mess, righting cages. Dead birds flopped inside; living ones flapped and chattered.

I took a broom propped in the corner and pushed sawdust and birdseed together in a pile. Little bits of broccoli too. I swept around the cages. It was really important that he know this wasn’t my doing. Jesus. There are some things I would do but this was horrible.

While I swept, he got all the loose cages piled up. The big cage in the middle was bashed in, one corner completely concave, and the door couldn’t close anymore. Some birds were still in there. A few had escaped. They were perched or lying dead or out the window.

A white one was on a chair seat. It was alive, but it wasn’t sitting right. Like it was hurt. I picked it up, in my two hands together, like he’d done with the dead one on the stairs. It quivered. I switched to cupping it; maybe it was cold. I brought it to him, like, What do I do now? I thought he would open a cage. Harry turned from righting a cage and looked straight at me, this awful look. His eyes slowly lowered to my hands.

He freaked. He wanted me to put his bird down. I didn’t know where to put it down. He stood over me. He’s really tall. He started waving his arms around and there was really nowhere to go.

The bird twitched, making awful noises. He was trying to get me to let it go, but it was crazy. He was crazy, and all the grief and wonder in him about what had happened up here made this wall of crazy that backed me up to the point that I couldn’t do anything.

He grabbed my elbows. I didn’t want to drop it. Did he want me to drop it? The sharp little feet were scrabbling at my palm and he was shaking me. Jesus. He was, like, huge. I screamed at him, “Get the fuck away from me! Get the fuck away!”

“Please,” he said. “Please.” He wanted this one bird. He wanted it. But he had my elbows. I didn’t know what he was going to do. He was crazy about this bird, like my holding it was worse than what had already happened to it.

I charged forward with my shoulder. I pushed him hard. There was this kind of oof, but I kept pushing. My legs churned, sliding on spilled lettuce leaves. He went down the ladder steps.

I put the bird down, finally. Without him looming over me, I was able to pop it into a cage. It was going to die anyway. It wasn’t sitting right; it was broken.

I looked down. Harry had fallen onto the back of his neck. His legs were diagonal up the steps; his head was flat on the carpet. His body looked short and strange to me from up here. It reminded me of Mantegna’s laid-out Dead Christ, which everyone studies. The way he used foreshortening of the legs to position the viewer, anyone looking at the painting is right there, at dead Jesus’ feet, near and kneeling. It’s like I was right there with Harry. It’s like this was real.

I had to walk sideways to get down past him. The phone rang. Four rings, the long beep again, “Gretchen, Paul, and Harry…” Ha. Ha. Ha.

It was Gretchen. I listened. It’s human nature to listen.

She was sorry, she said. It was she who had done it to the birds. She forgave, I don’t know what. She needed to be picked up. Her mother was… something. And the money.

She was suddenly bent on moving the money.

Charity. Immediately. I could hear the disgust in her voice. She was shoving the money away from her, like a plate of bad food. I needed until Tuesday. I needed.

I deleted the message. I took the keys out of Harry’s pocket.

I picked birdseed out from the tread of my shoes before I went downstairs.

The orange Sainsbury’s bags sagged by the front door. I put the milk away, and the hot cross buns, and the coffee beans. It seemed important. My fingerprints wouldn’t matter. They were already all over the place, they were supposed to be. It just seemed important that this not look sudden, not look caught-in-the-act. I pushed the empty bags in with the recycling under the sink. A small, white feather, which must have come off of me, was caught between them.

I picked it out very carefully. It was very important that nothing confuse the simplest explanation of what had happened, an explanation that didn’t include me.

I cupped my hands around the feather, so it wouldn’t waft away, and carried it up the stairs. At the end of the hall I stepped around the mess at the bottom of the ladder and inched my way up. At the top, the little bird, whose heart had beat so fast in my hand, was lying on its side but still visibly breathing.