Chapter Seven
Tom stepped outside with a wooden box under one arm. It wasn’t heavy—just awkward. The kind of thing that looked more valuable than it was, polished too often but with corners dulled by time. Inside was a clock, fully repaired, ticking steady. One of the few he felt sure about returning.
He didn’t get far.
A man in a camo jacket and flip-flops, of all things, was walking his beagle past the shop. He slowed when he saw Tom.
“Hey,” the man said, pointing at the box. “Is that… him?”
Tom blinked. “Sorry?”
“Ellis. Your old man.”
Tom looked down at the box. Realized the implication.
“No. It’s a mantel clock.”
The man nodded solemnly, completely undeterred. “Ah. Makes sense. You doing, like, memorial clocks now?”
Tom stared. “What?”
“Like… you know. Putting ashes in ‘em. My cousin did that with his cat. Keeps it on the bookshelf. Ticks right over Misty.”
The dog sneezed loudly and sat.
Tom shifted the box in his arms. “No. I don’t offer… whatever that is.”
“Well maybe you should,” the man said, cheerful now. “Big market. Sentiment sells.”
Tom resisted the urge to back away.
“You might try the funeral home down on Lincoln,” he said. “They’ve got pamphlets.”
“Yeah,” the man said. “They’re weird about custom stuff, though. All urns and no imagination.”
Tom said nothing.
The man gave a little salute. “Anyway. Welcome back. Sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks.”
The man kept walking, the beagle trotting along beside him like this kind of conversation happened all the time.
Tom stood there a moment longer, watching them go.
Then he looked down at the box in his arms—the one not filled with ashes.
“Ticking over Misty,” he muttered. “What the hell.”
Tom drove the clock to the address listed in the logbook. One of the few with no question mark scribbled next to it. His father had even written “Runs slow in winter. Remind her.”
It was a one-story house with a deep porch and three wind chimes hanging unevenly from the eaves. He knocked.
A woman in her seventies opened the door, cardigan sleeves rolled up, gray hair pulled back in a no-nonsense twist.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Danvers? I believe this belongs to you.”
He opened the box slightly, revealing the mantel clock inside.
Her expression softened. “Well I’ll be. I didn’t think I’d see that again.”
She stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in. Unless you’re in a rush?”
Tom hesitated, then stepped inside.
The living room smelled like lemon polish and something faintly herbal. The furniture was worn, but tidy. There were afghans draped neatly over the backs of chairs, a cup of tea half-drunk on a side table, and a framed picture of a cat wearing a crown on the wall.
Tom placed the box carefully on the coffee table and opened it fully.
“There it is,” she said softly. “He did it after all.”
“You weren’t sure?”
“He told me not to bother. Said the chime spring was bent past repair. I said I didn’t mind—it was more for show. Left it anyway.”
Tom nodded. That sounded about right.
She leaned in, inspecting it, but didn’t touch.
“He didn’t like people watching him work.”
“No. He didn’t.”
There was a pause.
“You want tea?” she asked. “I made a fresh pot not long ago.”
Tom glanced toward the door, then to the clock. “Sure,” he said.
She gave him a surprised smile and went into the kitchen.
Tom sat stiffly on the edge of the couch. The house ticked. Not just the clock he brought, but another somewhere down the hall. That slow, layered kind of quiet you only hear in homes that have stayed lived in.
She came back with two cups. Handed him one. Sat in the chair across from him.
“I knew your mother,” she said after a moment. “Not well. But enough to say it out loud.”
Tom looked up.
“I remember her stopping by the shop once. Brought in a music box. Might’ve been the first time I saw her and your father in the same room,” she added. “She had this way of making you feel like she already knew you. That kind of warmth. You don’t forget it.”
He nodded, unsure what to say.
“I don’t remember her much,” he said. “She died when I was really little.”
Mrs. Danvers nodded. “That music box she brought in… I think it belonged to her grandmother. Your father told her it couldn’t be fixed—said it was rusted beyond saving.”
Tom looked over. “Sounds like him.”
“Next day, he had it open on the bench. Spent hours on it. Wouldn’t talk to anyone. Just working. Like he was arguing with it.”
Tom looked down at the tea he still hadn’t touched. “He didn’t talk much about her. Not to me.”
“Maybe he couldn’t,” she said gently. “Some men don’t know how to carry grief, so they set it down and walk away from whoever’s holding the other end.”
“That sounds like him too,” Tom said. “He was never cruel,” he added after a while. “Just... not there. Even when he was.”
“That kind of absence leaves a mark.”
“Guess I’m proof of that.”
She sipped her tea, watching him now, not pressing. “You’ve got your mother’s eyes. Same way of holding things in, like they’ll shatter if you say them out loud.”
Tom didn’t speak. He didn’t move.
“I didn’t think I’d see you back here,” she said. “When I heard Ellis passed, I figured you’d sell it all off. Leave the town to its ghosts.”
Tom looked into his cup. “I might still.”
“But not yet?”
He shook his head.
“He kept the shop clean, you know. Right up until the end. That man swept every night. You don’t do that unless you think someone’s coming through the door.”
Tom said nothing.
She went on, softer now. “After your mother passed, something in him… changed. He didn’t talk about her. Not to me. But sometimes he’d drop off a clock here. Something I hadn’t asked for. Just fixed. No charge. Said it was nothing. Then he’d leave.”
Tom looked up. “You knew him well.” He paused. “He dropped off more than one clock?”
She smiled faintly. “I used to run a little antique and craft shop out of this place. Clocks fit in nicely—especially the ones that still had a little character left. He’d bring one by now and then. Said it might ‘find a better home here.’”
Tom absorbed that. “You think that was the real reason?”
“I think he liked having a reason,” she said. “I don’t know if anyone did. But I knew how he acted when he didn’t have to.”
“Were you two...?” He trailed off.
“Close?” she echoed, not mocking. Just measuring the word. “We had our moments. And a lot of quiet between them.”
Tom waited.
“He’d sit right where you’re sitting now,” she said. “Didn’t always speak. Sometimes just held a clock and stared at it—like it might give him permission to say something he couldn’t otherwise.”
“Permission for what?”
She looked at him fully now. “To stay.”
Tom exhaled. Slow.
“He was braver with clocks than he ever was with people,” she said.
Tom nodded. “Sounds familiar.”
She gave a soft smile and stood. “Well. That tea’s going cold.”
Tom glanced at the cup. “Sorry. I’m not much of a tea drinker.”
She smiled. “That’s alright. Most people aren’t. I just like the way it slows a moment down.”
She smiled again, but this time it lingered. And something in her eyes, the way they drifted toward the door—not to rush him out, but because she knew that’s where this ended—made him wonder how many evenings Ellis had walked through that frame and never turned back.
Back in the truck, Tom sat for a long time with the engine off. He opened the logbook and ran his thumb down the list. One entry had no last name. Just a first.
Claire – travel clock.
He stared at it, then looked back toward the house.
He closed the logbook.
Without thinking, he reached into his shirt pocket. The card was still there. Claire’s. A little bent at the corner now. He turned it over in his hand and looked back at the house again.
At the door.
The one his father had stood at. And never stepped through.
Then Tom drove back toward the shop. And all the while, he kept thinking about that door. How many times had his father stood outside it? How many times had he almost stayed? Tom didn’t know if it was fear or guilt or just Ellis being Ellis—but whatever it was, it had kept him from stepping through.
And now he was gone.
Maybe he’d wanted more. Maybe he’d simply never learned how to ask for it.
Tom tightened his grip on the wheel. He wasn’t sure what he believed yet. But he knew this: the silence his father left behind was full of people. People who had waited.
And one of them had made him tea.
