Seven Minutes to Noon

biologist, I thought. Didn’t she work in Daddy’s lab?”
    “She was a bimbo. It works better for me that way. Do you remember what I did when he left?”
    “I remember you were kind of quiet. It scared me.”
    “It scared me too.” Lizzie’s fingertip lingered on Alice’s forehead. “The first thing I did was I went shopping, for both of us. Then I sold all our old stuff. Then I sold the house. Then we moved to California.”
    “I remember all the new clothes — that part was fun. But I was mad at you for selling my old stuff because I wasn’t finished with it.”
    “I figured that out later. Sorry. But we humans make mistakes.”
    Alice propped her head on her hand and faced her mother. Lizzie was lying flat on the scant mattress, staring at the ceiling, having let Alice take the whole pillow. The intensity of her eyes betrayed her irreverent tone.
    “The thing is,” Lizzie said quietly, “he never came looking for us. I made a lot of noise leaving and he never noticed.”
    Now it was Alice’s turn to trace a fingertip along hermother’s face. Free of makeup, a web of fine lines mapped her skin. She was still so beautiful to Alice.
    “Another thing.” Lizzie turned onto her side to face Alice. “Even though I might have still loved him in a certain way, he was over for me. I left him behind in Long Island. He did not come to California with us in any way, shape or form. I refused him in my heart.”
    Alice had always wondered how her father could just leave them like that. As a wife, she found it painful to imagine. As a parent with a daughter nearly the same age, she found it shocking.
    “Alice,” Lizzie said, “when that bastard-whoever-he-is murdered Lauren, when he took her from us, he took you too. Don’t let him have that power over you. Don’t!”
    The force of that last word startled Alice into tears. “I don’t have control over my feelings, Mom.”
    “I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. You do. You have got to steel yourself against the pain. Make yourself some armor and wear it, just like I did. You have children — falling apart is not an option.” A tear rolled onto Lizzie’s lower lash and she ignored it, but Alice couldn’t; she reached over and flattened it with her fingertip.
    “You make it sound so easy, Mom.”
    “I never said it was easy, did I?”
    Alice fell asleep next to Lizzie and slept there all night long. A solid twelve hours, nearly a good sleep.
    What ruined it was waking up to today. Lauren’s funeral was at one o’clock. Alice squeezed shut her eyes, trying to press away the anguish. She wanted to take her mother’s advice but didn’t know how. After a while, Nell and Peter crept upstairs and burrowed under the sofa bed covers in a crowd of wiggling limbs and kisses. Alice knew she would have to learn her mother’s lesson. Lauren’s killer could destroy many lives, if Alice let him; but how to cast him out of her soul?

Chapter 13
    Lauren’s funeral was held at the Scoletto funeral home on Court Street. Tim stood in front of the double brown-stone, smoking under the leafy branch of a magnolia long past its bloom. Austin hovered nearby in a little dark suit and striped clip-on tie, struggling to control a squishy lime green yo-yo ball that veered in all the wrong directions. Nell broke away from the family to join him.
    On their way over, the sky had suddenly darkened, and now Alice found herself shivering. Lizzie pulled her close.
    “What a good girl she is,” Lizzie said as Nell showed Austin how to handle the yo-yo ball. Peter stood with them, watching.
    “It’s good for Austin we brought them,” Mike said.
    Alice hoped it had been the right decision. Maggie and Simon were bringing Ethan too. The adults had decided it was best to expose the children to the truth up front, answer questions they may not have known how to ask. Show them the stark wrongness of Lauren’s death so they wouldn’t grow up thinking she had simply gone away. “Lauren is dead,” Lizzie had told the children that morning when Alice and Mike couldn’t bring themselves to. “She was killed. Today we’re all going to say good-bye.”
    Lizzie had made it seem so simple, but Alice knew what response that notion would get. Whoever said itwas simple? You do what you have to. These children need to know. But they didn’t cry and Alice suspected they didn’t really understand, that it would hit them later — days, months, maybe even years later. They had