Seven Minutes to Noon

spent summer — when she returned alone to Simon’s house for a few minutes before picking up Nell and Peter from school.
    She knew it was inevitable the moment she heard his voice.

Chapter 43
    “Shh.”
    The sound was distant, barely audible, like the crying baby who had haunted so many of Alice’s sleepless nights. But this time Alice knew it was real.
    She kept still a moment, then took a step across the foyer.
    “Shh.”
    She stopped, listening carefully. “Simon?” She walked to the arched entrance of the living room. Outside, the sun was just beginning to split through a storm-darkened afternoon sky, sending tentative slivers of light over the gleaming ebony of Simon’s piano, gently striping the slanted top.
    “Alice, are you alone?” his voice whispered.
    It didn’t sound like Simon, but Alice wanted it to be Simon, hoped it was.
    “Simon, is that you?”
    “Are you alone?”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Answer me.”
    He was sitting in the corner, blanketed in shadow. Someone hovered beside him, crouched down.
    A shaft of broken sunlight crept slowly over the shadow that hid him. He leaned forward, with both palms open as if in offering.
    Cupped in his hands was a small black gun with a curved white handle.
    Alice stepped backward, shoving her hand into her pocket for her cell phone.
    Beside him, the other person — who Alice now saw was not crouched, but small — became restless.
    “Simon!” Alice called, hoping he was upstairs. “Simon!”
    “Shh.” He leaned fully forward now, green eyes glowing through the shadow. He was badly sunburned. “Simon isn’t home.”
    “Daddy,” a small voice whispered. “Please can I come out?”
    Tim’s right hand yanked the gun behind a cushion at his side, hiding it. “Go ahead.”
    Austin moved out of the shadow. He looked thinner. His face, neck and arms were mottled tan and red with sunburn. Hovering at his father’s side, his eyes — a duller green now, Alice thought, and bruised with fatigue — sought Alice. Claimed her.
    Ignoring Tim, she dropped to her knees and opened her arms; Austin fled quickly to her. She wrapped up his small body with her protection and love, holding tight.
    “I can’t believe it,” Alice whispered into Austin’s neck. She breathed in his cinnamon smell; breathed in Lauren. “I can’t believe it’s true.”
    “But it’s what you always thought.” Tim crossed his legs and leaned toward the right, making sure the gun remained completely hidden from his son.
    “I never really believed it, Tim.” She raised her eyes to his. Green. Damp. He had better not cry; she wouldn’t tolerate that.
    “But you thought it.”
    “I thought it against my will.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your instinct was mostly right.”
    “Mostly?”
    He shook his head and glanced at the floor.
    “Where is the baby, Tim? Where is she?”
    His gaze fixed on her now, hardening with whatever determination had brought him here.
    “At the funeral,” he said, “I wanted to ask you something, but I didn’t know how.”
    “I don’t like this,” Austin whispered in Alice’s ear.
    “Let Austin go upstairs, Tim,” Alice demanded. She hated him. She would tell him what to do. If not for the gun, she would have taken the phone out of her pocket and called the police.
    Tim nodded to Austin, who raced from Alice’s arms and out of the living room. His footsteps thudded fast up the stairs.
    “Why are you doing this, Tim?”
    He shifted in the chair and reached beside him, his hand reappearing with the gun. Lauren had seen it. Pam had seen it. And now Alice.
    Her phone. If she could just get her hand into her pocket before he shot her. Open up a line to someone who could serve as witness to her death. Not Mike; she couldn’t do that to him. Frannie. Even Maggie. Someone.
    “I don’t want to do this.” His face twisted into an ugly knot and he began, actually, to cry.
    Alice’s fear transformed to anger. What right did Tim Barnet have to cry ?
    She thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out the phone, flipped it open and speed-dialed Maggie.
    He stood up, hand gripping the gun. A click. Not loud. The trigger cocking. He raised the gun with a stiff, shaking arm and pointed it directly at Alice’s heart.
    “I just want to know why.” Her voice cracked. But she was ready to jump into the wave of her ending; she was not afraid of this man.
    He raised the gun higher and then turned it, suddenly, on