Seven Minutes to Noon

of a baby in the arms of a woman who studiously ignored the camera. A close-up of her fingertip caressing the baby’s face as it calmed. The sound of Julius’s own voice, sounding unruffled and satisfied, speaking from the video: “She’ll sleep. Let her be.”
    Alice recognized the baby’s cry as it slowed to a whimper. It was the sound she had given Ivy. It was the sound of her own babies calming themselves to sleep. It was the cry that had haunted her since she first heard it. A sound she had inflated and mistaken for something it wasn’t.
    It wasn’t Ivy. It was a different baby. Possibly Julius’s own baby, for whom he pined in his solitary apartment.
    “What the fuck.” Julius’s tone was low and controlled.
    “We apologize,” Dana said edgily, her gun held taut. “Alice, apologize to the man, please.”
    “I’m sorry,” Alice said.
    “No, you’re not,” Julius said in the same tamped-down tone, holding back floods of... what? Alice noticed a speck of mayonnaise glistening on his top lip. “But you will be.”

Chapter 33
    Alice and Dana walked quickly up President Street. The stifling afternoon was growing darker; the air felt almost wet. Leaves shivered in a staccato of quick breezes.
    “What were you thinking?” Dana’s tone was stern; gone was the soft posturing of friendship.
    “I was thinking there was a baby up there who needed someone to find her.”
    “What if there was? Why does it have to be you?”
    “If I’m the one who hears her,” Alice said, “then I’m who she gets.”
    “You could have just seriously jeopardized the investigation. Do you know that?”
    Walking beside Dana, Alice shifted her heavy bag from one hand to the other. “I couldn’t help myself.”
    “Why not? I was standing right there. I told you not to go.”
    “I’m a mother, that’s why.”
    They turned onto Smith Street where the playground came into view. She could see Nell shooting down the slide and Peter on the swing being pushed by Sylvie. She wished she could turn into the park, kiss her children, discuss trivialities with Sylvie by the swings. But she had to finish this; she had to make Dana understand. And she had to absorb a new understanding herself: the crying that had haunted her had not been Ivy or any other living child, but a memory cherished by a man she loathed. A man she had thought incapable of warmth.A man who it seemed had left behind a past that included love and, presumably, some kind of loss. There was so much Alice needed to think over.
    “Someday,” Alice’s voice calmed, “when you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
    “Oh, please don’t start that shit about how no one can understand who doesn’t have kids.”
    But it’s true, Alice thought, though she didn’t say it. Motherhood was a transformation in your humanity and you simply could not fully understand it without experiencing it yourself. She couldn’t explain it to Dana; this was a hopeless debate.
    “I shouldn’t have gone up,” Alice said, stating the simple, official fact. “You told me not to, and then I did.”
    “Damn right,” Dana said. “You filed a restraining order against Julius Pollack and you just went into his apartment! Frannie’s gonna be pissed.”
    “But I got something for her,” Alice said.
    Dana stopped walking and looked at Alice. “What’s that?”
    “The baby I heard crying upstairs wasn’t even real.”
    Dana smirked. “We knew there was no baby up there! Did you think Frannie didn’t check that out? This just proves you weren’t hearing things.”
    Alice was stunned by this news. “But she knew I would keep listening for a baby. It was making me crazy. Why didn’t she tell me?” Alice could still feel the seepage of exhaustion all those nights she lay awake listening for the distant cries.
    Dana seemed to consider her words carefully. Alice watched her, waiting for an answer, feeling the humidity cramp around her.
    “Julius Pollack had a wife and baby daughter,” Dana said. “They were killed in a car accident two years ago.”
    Alice could see the tiny face squeezing out whimpers, calming under her mother’s touch. Julius’s half-eaten sandwich in the lonely apartment. The tsunami of his anger.
    “It would have helped if she had told me,” Alice said quietly.
    “Helped you, Alice,” Dana said. “We talked about that. Frannie wanted to help you, but she’s a detective. The investigation comes first.”
    “Right,” Alice said, remembering