Chapter Two

The afternoon light slanted through the shop window, catching on the dust that hung in the air like pollen. Everything was still—too still—but the ticking hadn’t stopped. Somewhere deeper in the shop, one of the clocks was holding time steady.

Tom followed the sound back to the main workbench. Nothing had moved. Tools still lined up like surgical instruments, drawers labeled in his father’s blocky handwriting, the magnifying lamp frozen mid-swing, just where his father had left it.

He opened the second drawer.

That one had always stuck.

He jiggled it loose and found a row of small screwdrivers, each with its own worn groove in the felt lining. In the back corner, wrapped in a bit of old flannel, was a watch.

His watch.

Black strap, cracked. Face scratched. Cartoon rocketship where the numbers should’ve been. It was the one he’d worn every day in third grade, right up until he dropped it off the jungle gym and it stopped ticking.

Timeless, he thought. In the most literal sense.

He hadn’t seen it since.

Tom sat at the edge of the workbench, legs swinging, fingers sticky with whatever snack he’d half-finished. The shop smelled like oil and wood, like it always did.

His dad was working on a mantle clock, loupe pushed up on his forehead, hands steady over tiny brass parts.

“I think it broke,” Tom said.

His father didn’t look up. “What broke?”

“My watch.” He held it out.

Still no glance. Just a shift in breath. “What’d you do to it?”

“Nothing. It just stopped.”

A pause. Then: “Things don’t just stop.”

Tom shrugged, unsure what the right answer was.

“Leave it on the bench,” his father said.

“Can you fix it?”

“Maybe.”

“Will you?”

A longer pause this time. His father finally looked over—not unkind, just... blank. Tired maybe. Or distracted.

“I’ll get to it,” he said.

That was it. No “sure, bud.” No smile. No promise.

Tom hesitated, then set the watch on the corner of the bench and slid off the stool. He didn’t say goodbye, just let the door creak shut behind him as he stepped out into the yard, not realizing until later that something in him had shut, too.

Now, decades later, Tom held the same watch in his hand.

It was ticking.

He listened to it for a long time, thumb brushing the scratches on the face. His father had fixed it. At some point. He never told him. Just quietly mended what was broken and tucked it away, like so many other things.

Tom set the watch down and eased into the old stool. It was still solid, still carried the indent of someone who sat too long and rarely stood up straight. He could hear his father's voice even now—low, firm, impatient with nonsense.

His eyes drifted toward the shelf of unfinished clocks. A few had masking tape labels on them. Names, some first, some last, some nicknames he couldn’t place. He reached for one with a slip that read “For Eddie – June,” but stopped short.

He let his hand fall back to his side.

He wasn’t ready to make anything real.

Instead, he moved to the back wall, to the wooden box beneath the old calendar. It had always been there. A place for broken parts. Springs too tight, gears stripped beyond repair. As a kid, Tom used to think of it as a kind of clock cemetery.

He lifted the lid.

The same strange mix of smells: metal, oil, time. Same chaos of twisted brass and tiny discarded hands.

But at the bottom, under a rusted mainspring, was a folded photograph.

He took it out carefully. The paper had softened with age and creased perfectly where it had been hidden for so long.

It was a photo of his father—young, maybe early thirties. Standing beside a woman Tom didn’t recognize. She was laughing, hand on his father’s shoulder, pulling him toward her. And the strangest part: his father was smiling.

Not a small smirk. Not the polite grimace he wore in family photos. A full, honest smile. Like he’d forgotten something was broken.

Tom stared at the photo for a long time. Then folded it back along the creases and slipped it into his pocket.

He didn’t know why.

He just knew he wasn’t ready to forget it.

It felt like stealing, even though the shop belonged to him now. The whole building did. Legally, anyway. But nothing in here felt like it was his. It still smelled like his father. Still looked like his routines were just paused, not ended.

The floor creaked as Tom moved back toward the workbench. The ticking watch was still there, still going. Steady as a heartbeat.

He opened the top drawer next. Neat compartments, organized to the point of obsession. Watchbands, batteries, jewelers’ cloths, even a bottle of eyedrops with a faded prescription label.

Tom found himself talking out loud, just to fill the space.

“You could’ve said something,” he muttered. “About the watch. Or... the photo. About anything.”

Silence, of course. But not empty. The kind of silence that pushed back.

He closed the drawer and leaned on the bench, palms flat, head down.

What was he even doing here?

The plan had been simple. Come back. Sign the paperwork. Sell the shop. Get on a plane. Maybe toss a few boxes in storage if anything felt worth keeping. The estate lawyer had warned him: “Your father didn’t leave much, but what he did leave, he left with care.”

Whatever that meant.

It hadn’t felt like care. Not when he was a kid. Not when he’d called after his mother’s funeral and his father said, “I’m not much for talking.”

Tom was still standing like that, head down, when the front bell chimed.

It startled him. Sharp, bright.

He straightened up, wiped his palms on his jeans, and walked out front.

A woman stood in the doorway, mid-fifties maybe. Hair pinned up. Work shirt and jeans. She looked like she belonged to the town. The kind of person who had a standing order at the diner and whose dog knew every sidewalk crack between home and Main Street.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” Tom lied.

She smiled faintly. “I heard someone was here. Saw the light on this morning. Thought I’d stop in.”

He nodded, unsure what to say. She looked past him into the shop. Her expression shifted—something like recognition softened by time.

“I used to come by every few months,” she said. “Your dad fixed my grandfather’s pocket watch. The kind with the lid and the little chain? He said it wasn’t worth repairing, but he did it anyway.”

Tom didn’t know how to respond. “I don’t remember him mentioning you.”

She gave him a look—not unkind, but clear. “Your dad didn’t mention a lot of people. Doesn’t mean they didn’t matter.”

He glanced back toward the workbench. The ticking had stopped. Or maybe he’d just stopped noticing it.

“Did you need something repaired?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and took a step back toward the door. “Just wanted to say I was sorry. He was a good man. Not always easy. But good.”

She hesitated. Then reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “He called me a few months ago. Said he had something ready for me. Never got a chance to pick it up.”

Tom took the note from her. It was in his father’s handwriting. Block letters. He wrote like every word was a warning label. “For Eddie – June.”

“Eddie’s my son,” she said. “He’s named after my grandfather.”

He stared at the paper.

“I’ll take a look,” he said. “Give me a day or two.”

She nodded. “Thanks. And—” she looked around the shop one more time, her expression unreadable “—don’t sell this place too fast. It’s more than just a building, you know?”

Tom opened his mouth to reply, but the bell rang again and she was gone.

He locked the door behind her, turned the sign to CLOSED, and stood there a while, staring at the note in his hand.

“For Eddie – June.”

The same name he’d seen earlier. The one he couldn’t place.

He looked back toward the shelves, where the clocks waited in their rows, each one holding its own quiet history.

And for the first time since coming back, Tom wondered if maybe this wasn’t going to be as simple as packing up and leaving.

Maybe the past had more to say.

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