Flesh and Blood Read Free

day, every year. What is this spell you have over me?”
    “Food. I’m good in the kitchen.”
    “What a happy day when you were born.”
    “Not if you ask my mother.”
    He suddenly pulls back from me almost imperceptibly as if he just saw something. Squinting in the sun, he stares in the direction of the Academy of Arts and Sciences a block north of us, separated from our property by a row of homes and a street.
    “What?” I look where he’s looking as the helicopter gets louder.
    From our backyard we can see the corrugated metal roof the green color of copper patina peeking above densely wooded grounds. The world’s top leaders in business, government, academia and science routinely speak and meet at the Academy’s headquarters, the House of the Mind as it’s called.
    “What is it?” I follow Benton’s intense stare, and the roar of a helicopter flying low is coming closer.
    “I don’t know,” he says. “I thought I saw something flash over there, like a camera flash but not as bright.”
    I scan the canopies of old trees and the multiangled green metal roof. I don’t notice anything unusual. I don’t see anyone.
    “Maybe sunlight reflecting off a car window,” I offer and Benton is typing on his phone again, something brief to someone.
    “It came from the trees. I might have noticed the same thing earlier, caught it out of the corner of my eye. Something glinted. A flick of light maybe. I wasn’t sure …” He stares again and the helicopter is very loud now. “I hope it’s not some damn reporter with a telescopic lens.”
    We both look up at the same time as the deep blue Agusta comes into view, sleek with a bright yellow stripe and a flat silver belly, its landing gear retracted. I can feel the vibration in my bones, and then Sock is cowering on the grass next to me, pressing against my legs.
    “Lucy,” I say loudly and I watch transfixed. She’s done this before but never at such a low altitude. “Good God. What is she doing?”
    The composite blades whump-whump loudly, their rotor wash agitating the tops of trees as my niece overflies our house at less than five hundred feet. She circles in a thunderous roar then pauses in a hover, nodding the nose. I can just make out her helmet and tinted visor before she flies away, dropping lower over the Academy of Arts and Sciences, circling the grounds slowly, then gone.
    “I believe Lucy just wished you a happy birthday,” Benton says.
    “She’d better hope the neighbors don’t report her to the FAA for violating noise abatement regulations.” All the same I can’t help but be thrilled and touched.
    “There won’t be a problem.” He’s looking at his phone again. “She can blame it on the FBI. While she was in the area I had her do a recon. That’s why she was so low.”
    “You knew she was going to buzz the house?” I ask and of course he did and at exactly what time, which is why he’s been stalling in the backyard, making sure we weren’t in the house when she showed up.
    “No photographer or anybody else with a camera or a scope.” Benton stares in the direction of the wooded grounds, of the cantilevered green roof.
    “You just this minute told her to look.”
    “I did and in her words,
no joy
.” He shows me the two-word text on his iPhone that Lucy’s partner Janet sent, aviation lingo meaning they didn’t see anything.
    The two of them are flying together, and I wonder if the only reason they’re up is to wish me a very loud and dramatic happy birthday. Then I think of something else. Lucy’s twin-engine Italian helicopter looks law enforcement, and the neighbors probably think it has to do with President Obama arriving in Cambridge late today. He’ll be staying in a hotel near the Kennedy School of Government, barely a mile from here.
    “Nothing unusual,” Benton is saying. “So if someone was there up in a tree or wherever, he’s gone. Did I mention how hungry I am?”
    “As soon as I can get our poor