Chapter 3 - THE WATCH THAT SHOULD HAVE DIED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
Nora stared at the pocket watch.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The sound was impossibly ordinary.
Her father had been dead for twenty-five years.
Yet something that belonged in his hand was alive on Adrian’s library table.
Nora reached for it.
Victor covered it with his palm.
Adrian moved between them.
“Take your hand off it.”
Victor looked up at his nephew.
“You’re making the same mistake your father made.”
“What mistake?”
“Choosing emotion before facts.”
Nora’s patience broke.
“That belonged to my father.”
Victor withdrew his hand.
“Then take it.”
She did.
The silver was warmer than she expected.
The back contained three scratches near the hinge.
Nora remembered them.
When she was six, her father had let her hold the watch while sitting at their kitchen table.
She dropped it.
She cried so hard he eventually laughed, kissed the top of her head, and told her objects were supposed to collect evidence that people had lived.
Those three scratches were hers.
Nora closed her fingers around the watch.
“My mother searched for this after he died.”
Victor looked toward the fire.
“Dominic had it.”
Adrian’s eyes sharpened.
“How?”
“Thomas gave it to him.”
“Why?”
Victor glanced at Celeste.
“Because Thomas had become paranoid.”
Celeste folded her arms.
“You told me he stole it.”
“I told you what kept you from asking questions you weren’t ready to answer.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
The word landed harder because Victor did not defend himself.
Nora looked at the envelope.
“What’s inside?”
“Something that will hurt you.”
“People keep saying that while making decisions for me.”
Adrian absorbed the accusation silently.
Victor handed her the envelope.
Inside was a ferry ticket.
Bellport to Block Island.
October 22, 2001.
The day Thomas Bennett died.
Nora turned it over.
On the back, her father had written two words.
ELENA KNOWS.
Nora looked toward Celeste.
“Your mother?”
Celeste nodded.
Victor walked to the liquor cabinet.
Adrian blocked him before he could pour anything.
“No.”
Victor glanced at him.
“I’m not twenty years old, Adrian.”
“Then you don’t need whiskey to tell the truth.”
Victor gave a tired smile.
“You sound exactly like Dominic.”
“Tell her.”
Victor’s expression hardened.
“Thomas worked at Vale Harbor Operations from 1994 until 2001. Mechanic at first. Then maintenance supervisor. He and Dominic became close.”
“How close?”
“Close enough that your father was at our house every Sunday for years.”
Nora felt disoriented.
“My father never mentioned the Vales.”
“He had reasons.”
“What reasons?”
Victor looked at the watch.
“In 2001, federal shipping inspectors began asking questions about containers moving through Pier Nine.”
Adrian frowned.
“Pier Nine handled machinery imports.”
“Officially.”
Something passed between the two men.
Nora caught it.
“What was unofficial?”
Victor took a breath.
“Smuggled pharmaceuticals. Untaxed cigarettes. Electronics. Nothing Dominic started, but something our father tolerated before Dominic took control.”
Nora stared at Adrian.
“You knew?”
“Not this.”
Victor nodded.
“Dominic was trying to end it. Thomas discovered records showing someone was continuing shipments behind his back.”
“Who?”
Victor’s face tightened.
“He thought it was me.”
Celeste whispered, “Was it?”
Victor did not answer quickly enough.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Was it?”
“Some of it.”
Nora’s skin chilled.
“And my father found out.”
“Yes.”
“Then he died.”
“Yes.”
Nora crossed the room before she consciously decided to move.
She stopped inches from Victor.
“Did you kill my father?”
Celeste gasped.
Adrian did not.
Victor looked Nora directly in the eyes.
“No.”
She searched his face.
“I’ve done things I regret,” Victor said. “I have carried responsibilities I would not defend in a church. But I did not kill Thomas Bennett.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
Celeste made an angry sound.
“You always know.”
“Not this time.”
Nora turned toward Adrian.
He had gone very still.
That frightening stillness people in Bellport misunderstood as calm.
She knew better.
Adrian was furious.
But not only at Victor.
At himself.
“Two weeks,” Nora said.
He looked at her.
“You knew my father worked for your family for two weeks.”
“Yes.”
“You knew his death might be connected.”
“I suspected.”
“You slept beside me.”
“Yes.”
“You put your hand on our son every night.”
Their baby was a boy.
A name had not yet been chosen.
Adrian’s voice lowered.
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I needed certainty.”
“No. You needed control.”
That struck.
He looked away for half a second.
Nora pressed a hand to her belly.
Celeste noticed.
“Are you okay?”
Nora almost snapped at her.
Then she saw genuine concern.
“I’m fine.”
Celeste stepped nearer.
“I didn’t know about the smuggling until tonight.”
Nora looked at her.
“Then why have you hated me for months?”
Celeste swallowed.
“Because Victor showed me something else.”
Victor muttered her name.
“Celeste.”
“No.”
She looked at Nora.
“You deserve all of it.”
She crossed to a writing desk and opened the lower drawer.
Adrian frowned.
“What are you doing?”
Celeste removed a folded child’s drawing protected inside a clear sleeve.
It showed a house drawn in crayon.
Four stick figures stood outside.
A tall man.
A woman in a blue dress.
A little boy.
And a little girl.
Above them, in childish handwriting, were names.
DADDY.
MOMMY.
ADRIAN.
CELESTE.
But beside the family stood another man wearing a brown jacket.
UNCLE TOM.
Nora’s knees weakened.
“My father?”
Celeste nodded.
“I drew this when I was six.”
Nora stared at it.
Adrian was eleven in 2001.
Celeste had been six.
“You knew him.”
“I didn’t remember until I saw the photograph.”
Celeste’s voice trembled.
“Then pieces started coming back.”
“What pieces?”
“A night at our house. My mother crying. Your father shouting at my father.”
Adrian frowned.
“I don’t remember that.”
“You weren’t there.”
“Where was I?”
Celeste looked at him.
“That’s another thing no one has ever explained.”
Victor shut his eyes.
Adrian turned slowly.
“Explain it now.”
Victor looked suddenly old.
“Dominic sent you away that weekend.”
“Where?”
“With me.”
Adrian stared at him.
“I don’t remember going anywhere with you.”
“You were eleven. We drove north.”
“Why?”
“To keep you out of the house.”
“From what?”
Victor said nothing.
Nora heard the watch ticking again.
Celeste looked at the drawing.
“There’s more on the back.”
She removed it from the sleeve.
Nora expected another picture.
Instead, there was a sentence in Elena Vale’s handwriting.
Celeste remembered after all. God help us if Adrian ever does too.
Adrian took the paper.
His face drained of color.
“What am I supposed to remember?”
Victor reached for the drawing.
Adrian pulled it away.
“Don’t.”
“Adrian.”
“What am I supposed to remember?”
Victor’s composure finally cracked.
“You saw Thomas the night before he died.”
Nora froze.
Adrian stared at his uncle.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I would remember.”
“You were a child.”
“I was eleven.”
Victor’s voice softened.
“And you saw something no eleven-year-old should have seen.”
Nora stepped toward her husband.
“What did he see?”
Victor looked at Adrian.
Adrian looked back.
Then, slowly, his hand went to the inside pocket of his suit.
He removed an object Nora had never seen.
A thin leather cord.
Attached to it was half of a broken St. Christopher medal.
Celeste covered her mouth.
Nora whispered, “What is that?”
Adrian’s expression had changed.
Not recognition exactly.
Something worse.
Memory.
“I woke up holding this three nights ago.”
Victor stopped breathing.
Adrian turned the broken medal over.
On the back were two engraved initials.
T.B.
Thomas Bennett.
Nora’s father.
May you like
And suddenly Adrian whispered the first words he had remembered from that night.
“Your father told me to run.”
