Seven Minutes to Noon

mostly explained her decision to become a single mother.
    Alice searched every strand of the site for mention of where Christine had lived, if she had owned or rented, if there had been any trouble. But there was nothing beyond the fact that she had been in Carroll Gardens for three years.
    The last time anyone had posted any comments was over a year ago. Alice closed Christine’s site and moved on to the next listings, a few old newspaper articles and a link to the National Center for Missing Adults. Case still open.
    Alice sat back under a swell of exhaustion, thinkingabout how someone had cared enough to take the time to build a Web site for Christine. In the turmoil of her disappearance, someone who loved her had stayed focused on the single most important thing: finding her. Sipping the last of her tea, Alice leaned over the keyboard and Googled Web site building. Within half an hour she had secured a domain name: www.findlauren.com. She had a year’s worth of downloaded photographs from her digital camera, and by sunrise had put up a home page showing Lauren in July, seven months pregnant, laughing as Austin tugged a book out of her hands. It was Alice’s favorite recent photograph of Lauren because it showed so much of what was important to her: love, family and intellect. Lauren had a good life. That she had vanished felt wildly out of sync.
    At the sound of the morning paper thumping against the front door, Alice knew it was time to stop. Her eyes stung from staring at the computer screen. She flipped shut the laptop, moved it back to its place on the shelf and put her mug in the sink.
    The newspaper was sitting on the stoop in its blue plastic sleeve. She brought it inside and turned immediately to the Metro section. There it was, front page, above the fold.
    CARROLL GARDENS WOMAN MISSING, NINE MONTHS PREGNANT read the headline. Not quite nine months, Alice thought, wishing she could correct the detail. In a half column, a reporter named Erin Brinkley summarized Lauren’s disappearance, listing facts and circumstances that Alice already knew.
    She put the paper down and swallowed a knot of anxiety. It was only six o’clock. She dressed in clean clothes pulled from the dryer, wrote a note for Mike and left the house. Walking down President Street, she saw the yellow MISSING signs everywhere. Lauren, summarized on paper, imploring help. Alice had always liked being out early in the morning in the sleepy lull before the world began to stir, but there was no peace in it today. Her eyes trailed a bronze Mini Cooper that zipped pasther and turned onto Hoyt Street. Then, once again, she was alone.
    She crossed Hoyt, turned right and took the next left onto Carroll Street. Without having consciously decided to, she found herself heading toward the Gowanus Canal. It was where Christine Craddock’s cell phone had been found. And presumably it was one of the last walks Lauren had taken on her way to Pilates. Although Lauren lived on Union Street, which had its own canal overpass, she had once said she preferred the older Carroll Street Bridge, which took you through a slightly less industrial area.
    It was downhill all the way to Bond, then leveled off for the half block just before the bridge. On the left was a concrete office building with a blue awning that read BOND STREET LIMO . A large man with neatly trimmed gray hair stood outside, smoking a cigarette. He nodded to Alice as she passed. She nodded back, assuming he was a limo driver even though he wasn’t in uniform. He had creepy eyes — one blue and one green — that stayed on her as she moved toward the bridge. His attention felt intrusive and she walked faster, away from him. She saw the flare of his flicked cigarette butt as it cartwheeled into the street. Moments later a long black limousine slid past her, but every window was one-way glass and she couldn’t see if he was driving.
    To the right was a round building, an artist’s house. Alice remembered hearing about a whimsical fountain with jets reaching a hundred feet, misting passersby, but had never seen it. Lauren had complained about being sprayed by toxic canal water. She hadn’t liked it.
    Alice walked onto the bridge and stopped midway. She set both her hands on the blue-painted iron railing and looked out. She knew she was facing the ocean, though it was blocked by the industrial silhouette of Third Street. Beyond that was the Buttermilk Channel, into which the canal emptied through