Seven Minutes to Noon

hunch, I guess,” Alice said. “Bodies follow patterns — you know, habits — in childbirth just like everything else.”
    “Does she know if she’s having a boy or a girl?” Frannie asked.
    “No,” Maggie answered quickly.
    Alice was caught off guard by the lie. She leaned forwardto speak, but changed her mind and sat back. She didn’t want to bluntly contradict Maggie. But why, she wondered, had Maggie told them that?
    There were more questions and more answers until Lauren’s life had been outlined and colored in. At the end, Alice and Maggie were given business cards for both detectives.
    “Call us with anything you think of,” Frannie said.
    “Anything at all could be important,” Giometti added.
    “Don’t hesitate, okay?” Frannie reached out to squeeze Alice’s hand, then Maggie’s, offering both a supportive smile. Alice never would have imagined a police detective to be so friendly, but then she had never known one.
    “Thank you so much,” Alice said. “We’ll help in any way we can.” Alice kept her gaze from twitching toward Maggie, whose secretive withholding of Ivy was resonating through every word they spoke. She wondered if the detectives could feel it, smell it, somehow intuit the lie. It didn’t seem like it, though, by the gracious, un-freighted tone of their good-byes.
    “We’ll be in touch,” Frannie said. Giometti leaned forward to shake both their hands. They walked together across the store, this time not even glancing at the shoes. Giometti opened the door with a forcefulness that sent a shivering ring through the welcome bell.
    Alice watched the detectives’ blue sedan pull away. For some reason she couldn’t pin down, the fact that Frannie was driving came as a mild surprise. As the car wove into traffic, Alice wondered if she should have spoken up when she had the chance.
    “She’s too nice nice to be a cop,” Maggie said, un-stacking three boxes that had been delivered earlier that morning.
    “What’s wrong with nice? Maybe she really cares.” Alice removed the BE RIGHT BACK sign from the door and tucked it behind the nearest display case, on which pairs of summer pastel stilettos offered themselves at half price.
    “Only we care about Lauren.” Maggie clicked open an Exacto knife, dragging the blade swiftly across the top of one box and pulling open the cardboard flaps. “You, me and Tim. And Austin, of course. You know that, Alice.”
    Maggie had a point. There was caring and there was caring. Lauren was a Minnesota transplant whose parents had died in quick succession while she was in college, her mother of breast cancer and her father apparently of heartbreak. An only child, she had cultivated her friendships into family. Tim had also lost both his parents and so it was always the Barnets who hosted the holidays for those who weren’t going home to original families. Their apartment was their home and their friends were their family. Lauren had once honored her two best friends by declaring them her sisters, which is what Maggie had meant in answer to Frannie’s question. Alice and Maggie were Lauren’s true, chosen sisters, a declaration that had been both a promise and a bond.
    “But Maggie,” Alice said, “why did you stop me from explaining about the evictions? You made my comments seem so... trivial. And why did you lie about Ivy? What was the point of that? We know Lauren’s having a girl.”
    “We can’t give away every little bit of her,” Maggie said in the too-patient tone of an older sister tired of explaining the obvious. She sliced open the second box, then the third.
    “But it’s just information,” Alice argued. “Ivy is a fact.”
    “Yes, that’s right.” Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “Ivy is a fact. Not was, but is. How will you feel when Lauren turns up with some perfectly sane explanation and we’ve broadcast her most precious secret?”
    “Nothing about this is sane, Mags.”
    “True.” Maggie lifted her chin with magisterial confidence. “Nonetheless, I say we hold her trust until we know for sure. Really, Alice, it’s the least we can do.”
    By afternoon the neighborhood was buzzing with theinvestigation. A sizable task force had been deployed to canvass the neighborhood for anyone who had seen Lauren Barnet yesterday between dropping Austin off at school that morning, and two thirty when she failed to meet Alice at the park. Everyone who came into Blue Shoes talked about it. All day long, Alice and