Seven Minutes to Noon

and they settled into old conversations.
    “Will you and Simon get back together, do you think?” Alice asked.
    Maggie’s face burst into ridicule. “He’s much better as a lover. Why ruin it with domestic bliss?”
    “Does Ethan know? Is he there when you’re together?”
    “Isn’t it funny? One of us hires Sylvie to watch him if we see each other in the evening. We don’t want him to get his hopes up, poor darling. He’d be at me nonstop to move back into the house.”
    “Maggie.” Alice leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Do you ever wonder if you only imagined Simon was unfaithful to you back then? I mean, he still denies it, doesn’t he?”
    “Yes, he does, the bastard.”
    “Do you?”
    Maggie hesitated, probably trying to avoid the question more than consider it.
    “I have entertained the thought, yes.”
    “And?”
    “There was evidence.” Maggie also leaned in, bringing the women’s faces close together. “There was the button—”
    “A button, Maggie!” Alice would never forget that button, a red plastic rose the likes of which Maggie had never owned. She had discussed it at length with Alice and Lauren, displaying it in the palm of her hand like the nugget of gold an ancient miner always knew he’d find if he just kept looking. The possibility Maggie would never entertain was that the button could have been brought into the house in the pocket of any of Ethan’sfriends. Alice herself was always amazed at the things she found in her children’s pockets: wads of tape, miniature wheels, broken pencils, food, money, ticket stubs for movies they had never seen. She had watched them pick things up from the street and try to slip them into pockets, always with her objection. It was when she wasn’t looking that the secret agents of miscellany made their way in.
    “Yes, a button. And all those errands that took hours.” Maggie’s eyes shimmered with the effort it took to maintain her belief that her dignity — her soul, as she’d put it — had demanded her decision to end her marriage. “Listen, it’s no big deal if I want to have sex with him, or even if I’m in love with him. I don’t want to live with him. I don’t trust him. It would happen again, all of it, for whatever reason.”
    “Right,” Alice said. “I see what you mean.”
    It didn’t matter whom the button belonged to. It was what the button had stoked in Maggie’s imagination that really mattered; her jealousies and fears were what she had ultimately run from.
    Sitting with Maggie, Alice began to wonder just how much her own imagination had been playing with her fears. Had Pam been wrong in her generous assurances that there had been a baby upstairs in Julius’s apartment, simply because Alice believed she had heard it? That if she was convinced she had a stalker, he was real? One thing was clear: Maggie was more comfortable than Alice with the ambiguity of her own assertions, and maybe it helped keep her this side of sanity. But Alice didn’t know if she could tolerate the indefinite twilight of not knowing the truth.
    Alice’s cell phone began to simultaneously vibrate and ring. She fumbled it open and caught the call just before it reverted to voice mail.
    “Alice, it’s Frannie. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. It’s been crazy. We’ve got some time now. Where can we find you?”

Chapter 24
    Giometti was driving the blue sedan when they pulled up in front of the President Street house. They hadn’t wanted to talk inside, once they heard Maggie was over, and insisted on picking up Alice. They would take her to her children’s school for their three o’clock pickup. Frannie reached back from the passenger’s seat and popped open the back door for Alice. She slid awkwardly in — her growing bulk was making it hard to move gracefully — and the car glided into Smith Street traffic.
    Alice could see Giometti’s calm, steady eyes suspended in the rearview mirror. They shifted briefly to her, then back to the road. Frannie twisted around and began the conversation Alice had been waiting for.
    “So you’ve read the papers,” Frannie said wearily; it was only midafternoon and already it had been a long day.
    “Yes.”
    “So you know.”
    “Is it him?” Alice shifted forward, closer to Frannie. “The man who’s been stalking me? Am I supposed to be next?”
    Frannie seemed to hesitate before answering. “We can’t be sure.”
    “Haven’t you found him yet? You’ve