Seven Minutes to Noon

higher and higher with Gina’s gentle encouragement. Her long ponytail hung lazily across her shoulder in a way that inexplicably broke Alice’s heart. Gina was being so tender with Austin. Austin with his thick sandy brown hair looked more like Lauren than Tim. Alice wanted to run to him but wasn’t sure how much he understood. She didn’t want to frighten him. Instead she offered him a faint smile.
    “No!” he shouted and smashed his tower. He must have seen something else in her face, in all their faces.He was only five but he had to feel the disproportion of everything that was happening around him. He jumped up and ran out of the living room, refusing to look at the grown-ups who had gathered before him like ghosts to ruin his perfect sleep.
    Tim’s haggard face contracted, squeezed like a fist. Draining him. Completing his desolation. “I have to tell him,” he said in a voice broken into gravel.
    “I’ll go,” Alice offered.
    “Yes,” Maggie said. “Let us.”
    “No.” Tim breathed deeply, as if trying impossibly to pump air into waxen lungs. “I have to do this.”
    Tim followed Austin down the hall and a door clicked shut behind them.
    Gina sighed and stood up. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
    Simon thanked Gina for bringing Austin home and, gallant as always, showed her out. When he came back into the living room, Alice suddenly remembered that Mike, Simon and Tim had Yankees tickets for a game that night. She saw the three empty seats, midway up the stands. Heard the roar of a crowd that would gather without them. Saw a hard white ball swallowed by a candy-blue sky, disappearing into a rapturous silence.
    All the windows of Tim’s apartment were shut and no one bothered to open one, a detail that occurred to Alice as a kind of out-of-body observation. She was vaguely aware of the possibility of walking over and opening one of the windows. Instead she sat pressed against Maggie on the couch Lauren had recently reupholstered in raw eggshell silk.
    Mike positioned himself behind the purple chair, running his hand back and forth across the nubby fabric. Simon walked over to one of the windows, posting himself there as if on lookout.
    Above Alice, the glass pendants of Lauren’s antique chandelier threw brilliant slivers of sunlight across the room. The sudden rain of refracted light galloped over them, dizzying Alice. Lauren was everywhere all at once, ricocheting off the walls and ceiling and floor. Talkingup her love for Austin. Asking favors. Planning projects. Detailing hopes for Ivy.
    Lauren. Echoing. Resonating. Everywhere.
    Alice pressed her hands against her ears and shut her eyes. She couldn’t take it in. But the cacophony of Lauren didn’t stop.
    “What should we do?” Mike said, glancing toward the hall down which Tim and Austin had fled.
    “Leave them alone a little while, I think,” Simon answered.
    When the doorbell rang, Simon and Mike both jumped to the intercom. Moments later, Frannie and Giometti appeared in Lauren’s living room. They strode in with the perfect mixture of sympathy and confidence; it was as if, having often visited scenes of such crises, they were buffered from the raw shock. All of a sudden Alice saw the detectives, these people, in a new light. The way they stoically walked in, joined the friends, handled the situation. Alice felt suddenly reduced, childlike; irrationally reassured.
    “We’ll need to talk,” Giometti said in a tone that was both sad and determined. He glanced around the living room, those soft eyes beaming regret from his toughened face. “Where’s Tim? He’ll need to hear this too.”
    “Right,” Simon said. “I’ll go.” He went down the hall, returning a few minutes later behind Tim, who carried a limp Austin over his shoulder. Tim settled himself and Austin uneasily in the purple chair, stroking the small back as sobs alternated with deep, reflexive breaths. Simon stood behind them, his fingers playing lightly in Austin’s hair. Giometti helped Mike bring extra chairs from the dining table.
    Frannie sat next to Alice on the couch, bringing with her a faint scent of rosemary.
    “We’re sorry,” Frannie said softly to Tim. “We know this is a terrible, terrible thing for you. For all of you. We were hoping to find her—”
    Alive, Alice thought, and began to cry. She could still feel Lauren’s warmth on the bench beside her. Hear theprecise way she formed her words. As Frannie spoke, everyone surrendered to