Original fiction · Chapter 1 of 2
The Watch That Stopped at 4:17
The watch had stopped at 4:17. That was the first thing the young woman told me when she laid it on the counter.
The second thing was that it had belonged to a man who owed her mother an apology.
I repair watches in a shop narrow enough that two customers have to turn sideways to pass each other. On rainy evenings people sometimes come in for shelter and ask about a clock they don't intend to bring back. She had come with the watch wrapped in a clean handkerchief.
I recognized the back. A dent ran across it like a small crescent moon. I had made that dent myself when the watch fell off a bicycle handlebar outside the post office.
“Where did your mother get this?”
“It was in the bottom of her sewing basket.” She hesitated. “She died last spring. I found a repair slip from your shop in the same basket.”
She unfolded the paper. It was from my last year working for the previous owner. Before I could read the name, I recognized my handwriting in the notes: Leave it stopped.
The watch had been my father's. When I turned nineteen, he gave it to me with a lecture about time and a warning about keeping it away from water. Three months later I lent it to my sister Della. I had told myself she'd sold it. In the arguments we used to have, it was the kind of thing I could picture her doing.
The woman said her mother's name was Della. She watched me while I opened the back with a dull blade.
“You're Henry,” she said.
I nodded. I hadn't seen my sister in twenty-six years. For an instant I expected her daughter to have her laugh. Then I realized I didn't know what I could possibly say to make her laugh.
The watch needed a mainspring. There was a strip of paper tucked behind the movement, thin enough that it slid out on the point of a screwdriver.
It was a hospital wristband. The name printed on it was mine.
Below it, someone had written 4:17 p.m. Henry opened his eyes.
