Seven Minutes to Noon

house felt eerily abandoned. Things were just where they had left them in the rush of their lives. Dishes were in the sink and Alice’s half-finished mug of tea sat on the counter by the phone. Toys were scattered where the children had left them before school that last morning.
    Alice checked her watch. “How much time do we have?”
    “Just what you need.” Dana sat at the kitchen table and waited.
    Alice forced herself to ignore the dirty dishes and the trash that was starting to smell. She went directly downstairs,where she collected clothes for everyone, a stack of books Nell hadn’t yet read and a small bag full of Peter’s favorite trucks and action figures. When she came upstairs, Dana had a funny look on her face.
    “What?” Alice asked.
    “Shh.” Dana tilted her ear toward the ceiling. Footsteps. Alice now heard them clearly.
    “He’s home ,” Alice whispered. “He wasn’t supposed to be home.”
    “He just came in. Come on — we gotta go. Quietly.”
    Padding through the living room, Alice noticed Judy Gersten’s peony pillow where she had left it on the couch. Veering slightly off course, she stooped to pick it up and jam it into her overflowing bag. Dana cast her a frustrated look — why was Alice stopping to get even one more thing? But this could be her last chance to take the pillow. Since bringing it home, Alice had wanted it for Blue Shoes, where with the flowers it would live as a constant reminder of Lauren. It could be a kind of shrine.
    Dana opened the apartment door as carefully as possible and Alice followed her into the hallway. Except for the footsteps, all was silent. And then the footsteps stopped and Alice heard it. The baby was crying upstairs, again.
    She looked fiercely at Dana, widening her eyes and angling her ear toward the stairs as if to say, Do you hear it too? You must hear it! A baby is crying, right now, right here.
    Dana mouthed, Not now. She shook her head and walked to the front door.
    Yes, now, Alice thought. If not now, when? Whatever the police knew about Julius and the phantom baby, if they knew anything at all, they hadn’t shared it with her. They hadn’t found a crime scene. A search warrant for Julius’s apartment hadn’t even been issued, as far as Alice knew. Unless there were still things they hadn’t told her. She didn’t know and right at this moment, she didn’t care.
    She was here now. Right now. And right now, a baby was crying. Upstairs. In this house. Just above their heads.
    Alice set down her bags and turned to the stairs.
    “Stop!” Dana hissed. “You go up there now, you could screw up the whole case. Let us do it the right way.”
    Alice hurried, climbing the stairs quickly, taking them two steps at a time. By the top of the stairs, she was panting for breath. Her belly contracted hard over her twins — a Braxton Hicks. She ignored it and continued on. Dana flew up the stairs behind her, saying, “No, Alice! Let us—”
    But Alice couldn’t wait anymore. She knocked hard on Julius’s apartment door. The footsteps came loud and fast, and the door swung open. Julius stood there in his sleeveless white undershirt, flesh bulging out. His hair was a mess and his face looked haggard. The rectangular lilac glasses rested halfway down his nose.
    His eyes went instantly hard. “What are you doing in my house?”
    Behind him, the baby’s cries were louder but somehow less real. Alice heard a woman’s voice humming a lullaby. The baby’s cries calmed, then petered out.
    Dana stood next to Alice, gun in her hand, aimed at Julius Pollack’s shabby kitchen. A white Formica table was piled with mail and newspapers. Boxes were everywhere. Behind the table, next to an old, deep porcelain sink, was a life-size sewing model with the curvaceous shape of a large woman. It was dressed in lavish but mismatched women’s clothes, as if someone had decided to bring out a favorite element of different outfits. At the foot of the model were the same silver shoes Alice had seen Julius wearing that night she first heard the baby cry.
    A plate with a half-eaten sandwich sat in an uncluttered niche on the kitchen table. Julius had been eating, his chair haphazardly pushed away to answer the door. On a counter directly across the room, facing the table,was a television. He had been watching something while he ate, and now Alice saw what it was.
    Moving gently across the screen of Julius’s TV were scenes from a home video. The tiny pink face