Seven Minutes to Noon

pregnant woman stop on the Union Street Bridge about a hundred feet down the canal. He saw her bend forward in apparent pain, stopped taking pictures of his angel, and turned his lens on the woman who he assumed was in labor. One of the pictures was printed next to the article. It showed a distant bridge on which a blurry woman leaned into the railing. Her head was tilted forward, her elbow bent, as if she was trying to stop herself from falling. Asked if she did fall, Capa said that no, she pushed herself back up and slowly continued across the bridge. Asked why he hadn’t come forward with the information at the time, he explained that he never read the news, didn’t own a television, and within days after Christine’s disappearance had left the country for Bali where he kept a second home.
    “I called to her,” the article quoted Capa as saying, “and asked if she needed help. She said no, she was inlabor and was on her way to Methodist Hospital.” Ms. Brinkley answered the reader’s next potential question about why Christine hadn’t called herself a cab to get to the hospital, stating that new wisdom advised pregnant women to walk in the early stages of labor.
    Alice remembered her own early labor, doubling over in excruciating pain every couple of minutes. Eventually, walking became impossible. How far, she wondered, had Christine made it before she was unable to go on?
    She turned back to the article about Lauren — her peaceful photograph — and with a stab at her heart read what amounted to an obituary. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Lauren Barnet suspended her career to stay home with her children. She leaves behind her husband, Tim Barnet, and five-year-old son, Austin.
    Leaves them behind.
    Yet they too were now gone, having left behind everything they had known of their life with Lauren.
    Alice pushed the newspaper across the kitchen table in disgust. How was this happening to people she knew? In her own neighborhood? In her home ?
    The house was eerily silent. Even Julius didn’t seem to be home, or if he was, she couldn’t hear him moving around upstairs as she sometimes did. Outside, a car rumbled past. The bones of the house creaked and moaned.
    She picked up the phone and called the precinct, leaving a voice mail for Frannie: “Please call me back. I’m sitting here going crazy. Did you read the paper today? I think that artist is after me.” She hung up, feeling part angry and part ashamed. She knew her message made her sound paranoid, but why shouldn’t she be?
    She pushed a spray of breakfast crumbs into a pile on the table in front of her. She had to think this through.
    Andre Capa.
    Maybe he was the limo driver. Maybe he worked for Metro. Maybe ridding Julius Pollack of his more stubborn tenants was his day job. But what would they want with the babies?
    To get her mind off the gruesome details of Pam’s attack and everything else — everything — she took a pad of paper and a pen and started a shopping list. Milk, bread, oranges, graham crackers, the simplest of things. Then, without meaning to, she started a new list, and another, jotting lists for anything that came to mind. Moving. Baby Prep. Kids/School. Blue Shoes. She needed a way to unknot and streamline her goals and thoughts and worries and plans. Then she decided to try listing the things that kept her up at night, not just what needed to be accomplished during the day. Lauren/Ivy. Phantom Baby. Pam. Julius/Partner. Capa/Stalker. Investigation. News. Fear of Being Next.
    She called Frannie’s numbers, then Giometti’s, and left more messages. “Call me.” Mike’s voice mail answered. “Call me. Please.” She sat with her hand heavy on the phone and thought: Mags.
    Maggie answered her home phone right away.
    “Have you read this morning’s paper?”
    “Alice? No, I haven’t. What’s wrong?”
    She described her morning to Maggie, who listened in uncharacteristic silence. Within fifteen minutes, she was at Alice’s front door.
    “If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain—” Maggie brushed Alice’s cheek with a kiss as she walked in without invitation, but then she didn’t need one.
    “Jason’s opening the store,” Alice said. “I can’t go out. I’ve been ordered to stay here and wait, but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I—”
    “Slow down, darling.” Maggie sat Alice at the kitchen table, brought her a glass of water, then settled in close enough to touch knees. “I’m not