Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
Pick a Time
I laid the wristband on a piece of white felt so I could see it properly. My niece, Maya, leaned across the counter.
“I thought you knew she was there,” she said.
I remembered a nurse asking me to squeeze her hand. I remembered thinking the hospital ceiling was farther away than it should have been. I didn't remember my sister. I had woken after a bicycle accident with three broken ribs and a gap in my memory big enough to put an entire afternoon in.
Maya said her mother had been in the waiting room since morning. At 4:17 a nurse came out and told her I was awake. She checked our father's watch, walked into the room and found me asleep again. By the time I could hold a conversation the next day, she'd gone home to change.
We fell out six years after the accident, after Dad died. I wanted to sell his tools so I could keep the shop open. Della wanted time to sort them herself. She'd called me greedy. I told her she'd never come when I needed her. We managed to get through the next twenty-six years without either of us having to hear those words said back to us.
“How did the watch stop?” I asked.
“She pulled the crown out that afternoon. She used to say she wanted one thing from that day to stay where she could find it.”
The old repair slip had been written before I bought the shop, while I was an apprentice. I remembered the customer who phoned and asked if a stopped watch could be cleaned without winding it. I didn't remember her voice. I had written the instructions and left them under the till for my boss. Della had picked it up after my shift.
Maya came back on Friday. I showed her how to push the crown in and gave her the old parts in a little paper envelope. We set the watch to 4:17 while it was still on the tray. Then she pressed the crown. The second hand moved past the scratch on the glass.
Outside, the rain had stopped. She asked if I wanted to meet her for lunch next week.
I had the shop diary open in front of me. I shut it.
“Yes,” I said. “Pick a time.”
