The pocket watch has never told the time properly. That is the first thing you need to understand. It has hands, Roman numerals, and a polished gold case worn smooth where my thumb rests against it. It ticks when it feels inclined. It occasionally chimes, although there is no bell inside it. Some mornings, it claims the hour is midnight while sunlight pours through every window in Lapwing House.
Calder tried to repair it once. Of course he did.
He sat at the kitchen table with his sleeves rolled up, a tiny screwdriver between his fingers and the serious expression of a man attempting delicate surgery on something that had never requested medical attention.
“There must be a loose gear,” he said.
“There may not be any gears.”
“It’s a watch, Sara.”
“And Rory is technically a dog, yet he behaves like the disgruntled landlord.”
Rory lifted his head from beneath the table, sighed heavily, and returned to sleep. Calder ignored both of us and opened the back of the watch.
There were no gears.
Inside lay a miniature painting of a lighthouse standing beside a dark blue sea. Its narrow beam had been painted in gold, so finely that it seemed to shimmer whenever the case moved.
Calder stared at it. I leaned over his shoulder, resting my chin against him.
“Well,” I whispered, “at least the loose gear is not the problem.”
He gave me a look that promised retaliation. Then the watch clicked shut by itself. We have not tried repairing it since.
Today, I sit on the balcony overlooking the water, wrapped in my cream jumper. The summer sun rests warmly across my shoulders. My tea waits on the little wooden table beside my notebook, slowly growing cold because I have become distracted by the watch again.
It is warm in my palm. The watch always becomes warm before it does something unusual. I press the catch. The lid opens. Instead of numbers, the face shows a tiny golden field filled with tiger lilies. Their petals sway beneath a sky the colour of clear glass.
I smile.
“That was Tuesday,” I say.
The watch gives a soft tick of agreement. Tuesday had been bright and ridiculous. Calder had followed me into the lilies carrying a picnic basket, two glasses, and a blanket that refused to remain folded. A gust of wind caught it and sent it tumbling across the field.
He chased it.
I chased him.
Rory chased both of us, although he had no understanding of the objective and appeared mostly delighted that civilisation had finally collapsed into running and shouting.
When we caught the blanket, Calder fell backwards into the grass. I landed beside him, laughing so hard I could barely breathe. The picnic basket had tipped over. Blackberries rolled among the flowers, and one of the sandwiches had somehow ended up beneath his shoulder.
“You planned this badly,” I told him.
“I planned romance.”
“You brought mustard.”
“Romantic mustard.”
The memory dissolves from the watch face, replaced by the lighthouse.
Its beam circles once.
Then the scene changes.
Now I see our midnight-blue Citroën moving along the road into Kilkee. The top is down. My hair streams behind me while Calder drives with one hand resting lightly on the wheel. The sunset pours molten orange across the sea, and the licence plate catches the light.
FRVRMR.
I remember that evening perfectly.
Calder had insisted we were merely going for a short drive. We returned four hours later with chips wrapped in paper, a second-hand book neither of us remembered buying, and a ceramic gull that he claimed was charming.
It was not charming. It looked furious. It now lives on the mantel because apparently love requires compromise.
The watch changes again.
The balcony appears beneath moonlight. Two chairs sit side by side, though neither of us occupies them properly. His legs are stretched across mine. My head rests on his shoulder. Between us sits a single mug of tea because Calder accidentally drank from mine, then declared there was no practical reason to make another.
The hands of the watch appear over the image. One points towards him. The other points towards me. That is when I finally understand.
The watch does not count hours. It keeps moments when we have forgotten the hour entirely.
Long dinners that become midnight conversations. Quiet mornings beneath tangled blankets. Walks taken without destinations. Pages written while one of us reads nearby. Tickle fights begun through treachery and ended through breathless surrender. Ceiling watching. The creak of Lapwing House settling around us while Rory sleeps before the fire.
Every time we stop measuring the day, the watch records it. The discovery makes me laugh softly. All this time, we believed it was broken because it refused to tell us how much time had passed. It was preserving the parts that never felt as though they were passing at all.
Behind me, the balcony door opens.
“There you are,” Calder says. He carries fresh tea in two cups, having apparently abandoned his argument for beverage efficiency.
I hold up the watch. “I know what it does.”
He sets the cups down and sits beside me.
“Does it tell time?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then I remain concerned about its performance.”
I place the open watch in his hand.
The face changes once more.
It shows us exactly as we are now. The warm balcony. The bright sea. My shoulder resting against his. His thumb brushing slowly over my knuckles.
At the bottom of the watch face, where the date should appear, a single word forms in tiny golden letters.
Here.
Calder looks at me. I look at him. Neither of us speaks for a while. The watch ticks steadily between our hands, counting nothing at all. And for once, we let it.
*written by Calder, whispered into life by Sara
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