Seven Minutes to Noon

caught the case.” Frannie’s eyes were dark as coal, Alice now noticed, with a swallowing depth. “We’re going to find her. Together. Okay?”
    Alice and Maggie both nodded in agreement. Yes, together they would find Lauren. And she would be fine. Still pregnant with Ivy. Together they would rewind time two days and start over.
    “So tell us about Lauren.” Frannie looked at Alice, then Maggie. “Tell us everything you can think of about her.”
    “She’s our sister,” Maggie said.
    Frannie glanced at Giometti, who sat slightly back in his chair, eyes glued to Maggie.
    “Like a sister,” Alice clarified.
    “When was the very last time you saw her?” Frannie asked.
    Alice’s reaction was to assume Frannie already knew the answer — the detective had been with them — but she didn’t say that. Instead she reiterated the facts: “That afternoon at the park. When I kissed her good-bye.”
    “Same for me,” Maggie said. “We said good-bye at the park.”
    Frannie and Giometti listened as Alice and Maggie finished each other’s sentences, sharing the story of their last afternoon with Lauren. Where one erred, the other corrected; often they overlapped for emphasis. They were eager to tell the detectives everything they could to help clarify the picture of Lauren’s life. Frannie was particularly interested in Lauren’s relationship with Tim. Alice felt slightly uncomfortable divulging the details of Lauren’s private life, but knew she had to if it might help. Giometti pulled a small pad and pen from his shirt pocket and began taking occasional notes so selectively that Alice cringed each time he leaned over to write.
    “They have a good marriage,” Alice said.
    “He’s a solid husband,” Maggie added. “She has few complaints.”
    “What complaints?” Frannie asked.
    “Nothing, really,” Maggie said. “He works late all the time. Things like that.”
    “They were happy,” Alice added.
    Maggie corrected her: “They are happy.”
    Alice held her tongue on the next thought: Well, they’re not happy now, and neither are we.
    “They’ve been under a lot of pressure lately,” Alice said. “Their landlord’s been trying to evict them and they’ve been fighting it.”
    “Lease?” Giometti’s pen hovered above the pad.
    “It expired, but they wanted to renew,” Alice explained. “Their apartment’s rent-stabilized, so they had the right to renew. Their landlord’s Metro Properties.” She watched as Giometti wrote it down, feeling some satisfaction at having informed the authorities of the offense. “I’m getting evicted too,” she blurted out, regretting it the instant Maggie’s eyes rolled to the ceiling.
    “Let’s not get off the point, darling,” Maggie said.
    “Do you live in the same building as Lauren?” Frannie asked Alice.
    “No, I live in a two-family house on President Street. Lauren lives in an eight-unit building on Union.”
    “It’s a coincidence,” Maggie clarified to the detectives, in case they hadn’t figured it out themselves. “One has nothing to do with the other. Lauren’s problem is institutional, so to speak, whereas Alice has the misfortune of occupying the space of someone who wishes to move into his own house.”
    Maggie’s commandeering of the issue grated. “The thing is” — Alice tried to clarify a thought that had barely congealed in her mind — “I’m six months pregnant and I got my Thirty Day Notice yesterday. Lauren was six months pregnant when she got her Thirty Day Notice almost three months ago. Doesn’t that have to mean something?”
    “Maybe,” Frannie said. “Or maybe not. It’s kind of stroller city around here. And we’ve been seeing a lot of forcible evictions. Mostly legal, by the way. No one’s ever happy about it.”
    “It’s called gentrification.” Maggie reached over to smooth a wrinkle out of Alice’s sleeve. “That’s really all I’ve been trying to say. It’s why Blue Shoes can exist. There is a price for everything, is there not?”
    Neither Alice nor the detectives tried to answer Maggie’s rhetorical question. Of course there was a price for everything. But what exactly was the commodity at issue? Shoes? Real estate? A woman’s life?
    “What’s Lauren’s due date?” Frannie changed the subject, to Alice’s relief.
    “September fifteenth,” Alice answered. “But Austin was a week early and she thought she might deliver early the second time too.”
    “Why?”
    “Just a