Chapter 5 - THE WATCH MY HUSBAND NEVER EXPLAINED
“Michael didn't give me the watch,” David said.
Rebecca stared at him.
“Then how did you get it?”
David rubbed his face.
“My father bought it from him.”
“When?”
“Years before Emma was born.”
Rebecca laughed without humor.
“That's impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Michael bought that watch for himself the month our daughter was born.”
David stopped speaking.
I looked at the engraved initials.
All those years.
That watch had rested in David's pocket while he walked Emma down school hallways and sat beside me through difficult nights.
He'd told me it belonged to his father.
A family heirloom.
And now even that story was falling apart.
“David,” I said quietly, “please tell me something true.”
He looked at me.
“My father did own it.”
“How?”
“He took it as payment for a debt.”
Rebecca's eyes narrowed.
“What debt?”
David hesitated.
Then Nathan answered.
“My uncle owed money.”
Everyone turned.
Nathan held up the blue notebook.
“My father wrote about it.”
He turned several pages.
“Michael had borrowed nearly forty thousand dollars from people he shouldn't have trusted. Your husband helped him settle it.”
Rebecca looked stunned.
“David helped Michael?”
David nodded reluctantly.
“I worked for a small commercial lending company back then. Michael came to me because he needed money quickly.”
I tried to remember that period.
David had been working long hours.
We were saving for a house.
I had been seven months pregnant when he'd told me a business deal had gone wrong.
We'd lost almost everything in our savings account.
I had cried at the kitchen table.
He'd promised we would recover.
“Was that the money?” I asked.
David lowered his head.
“Yes.”
I felt physically sick.
“You told me the investment failed.”
“It did.”
“No. You gave our money to Michael Parker.”
“He was desperate.”
“Did you know Rebecca?”
“Not then.”
Rebecca stepped closer.
“Michael told me he'd been getting help from someone named David Mitchell.”
I stared at my husband.
“You knew about her pregnancy?”
“Yes.”
“And the baby?”
“Yes.”
“Yet when I showed you her telephone number yesterday, you told me you didn't recognize it.”
David looked ashamed.
“I panicked.”
I stared at him.
“You didn't panic, David. You chose to lie.”
He didn't defend himself.
For the first time, that felt worse.
Emma stepped toward us.
“Can we please stop talking about Dad's watch?”
Her voice was strained.
“I'm supposed to get married in an hour.”
I turned toward her.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
She shook her head.
“No. Don't say everything will be fine. I can't hear that anymore.”
Nathan reached for her hand.
She moved away.
He looked crushed.
Emma drew a long breath.
“I love Nathan. I was ready to promise him my whole life.”
“Emma,” he whispered.
“But you thought we might be related, and you let me pick out a wedding dress without telling me.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes,” she said. “You were.”
I watched her straighten her shoulders.
“I'm not getting married today.”
Nathan went still.
Rebecca closed her eyes.
David whispered, “Emma, please think about this.”
My daughter turned toward him.
“Dad, I have been thinking about everyone except myself for six weeks.”
She looked at Nathan.
“I need answers before I make promises.”
Nathan nodded slowly.
“All right.”
The acceptance surprised me.
He didn't argue.
He didn't beg.
He simply removed his wedding ring from his pocket.
The ring he hadn't worn yet.
And closed his fist around it.
“I'll help you find them,” he said.
“Even if I don't marry you?”
His voice broke.
“Even then.”
Emma began crying.
I put my arms around her.
For one beautiful second, she was my little girl again.
Then I remembered Rebecca standing behind us.
Another mother.
One who might never have gotten the chance to hold her daughter.
I looked at the wedding coordinator returning from the ballroom.
“Please tell the guests the ceremony has been postponed.”
Emma nodded against my shoulder.
“No explanations yet.”
“Of course.”
The coordinator left.
Nathan closed his notebook.
“We need to go through everything my father left.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“Can we do that now?”
He nodded.
“The boxes are at my house.”
David shook his head.
“Not everything in those boxes is reliable.”
I turned toward him.
“You don't get to decide that anymore.”
He looked wounded.
I didn't care.
Not yet.
We left the venue through a side entrance.
Emma remained in her wedding dress.
She refused to change.
“I spent eight months choosing it,” she said. “I'm not going to let this day disappear.”
Nathan drove us to the small brick house he'd inherited from his father.
It sat beneath old maple trees on a quiet street outside Philadelphia.
Inside, the living room smelled faintly of cedar polish.
Family photographs covered the mantel.
Emma looked at them.
I noticed how carefully she avoided Nathan's eyes.
He led us into his father's study.
Three cardboard boxes stood beneath a window.
Each had been labeled in black marker.
PERSONAL.
HOSPITAL.
FINANCIAL.
Nathan opened the hospital box first.
We spent almost an hour sorting papers.
Most were ordinary records.
Staff schedules.
Insurance statements.
Old newspaper clippings.
Then Emma found a photograph tucked inside a medical journal.
She held it up.
“Mom?”
I looked.
Three people stood outside the hospital on a cold November morning.
David.
Margaret Collins.
And a man in a gray overcoat.
Nathan took the photograph.
His face changed.
“That's my father.”
I looked closer.
“Your father?”
“Yes. Dr. Robert Parker.”
Rebecca came around the desk.
“And that's Margaret.”
David stood near the doorway.
He hadn't touched a single box.
Emma turned the photograph over.
On the back were three handwritten words.
After the arrangement.
I felt sick.
“What arrangement?”
Nathan began searching the financial box.
He found a receipt.
Then another.
Then a letter addressed to his father.
Rebecca read it aloud.
“Payment received. Remaining balance waived upon completion of the transfer.”
David moved toward her.
“Let me see.”
She held it away.
“Transfer of what?”
Nobody answered.
Nathan found the date.
November 17.
Three days after Emma's birth.
I looked at David.
“You paid Michael forty thousand dollars before the babies were born.”
He nodded.
“And three days after they were born, someone arranged another payment.”
He said nothing.
Rebecca stared at the photograph.
Then she whispered, “I recognize that coat.”
We looked at her.
“Michael had one just like it.”
Nathan shook his head.
“That's my father in the photograph.”
Rebecca pointed at the man's left sleeve.
“Look at the cuff.”
The fabric had been repaired with a distinctive triangular patch.
“My mother sewed that patch for Michael.”
Nathan examined it.
Then his expression changed.
He brought the picture toward the window.
“The man isn't my father.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
Nathan turned the photograph slightly.
A faint reflection appeared in the hospital glass behind the three figures.
The man in the gray coat was facing the camera.
But in the reflection, another man stood several feet away.
Nathan went very still.
“That's my father.”
Rebecca gripped the desk.
“Then the man beside Margaret…”
“Is Michael,” Nathan whispered.
David closed his eyes.
I stared at my husband.
“You knew Michael was there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
David's voice was almost inaudible.
“Because he came to claim something.”
Rebecca stepped toward him.
“What?”
David looked at her.
Then at Emma.
“A baby.”
Rebecca made a small sound.
I gripped the edge of the desk.
“And which baby did he take?”
David looked at me with tears in his eyes.
“Laura, I never saw her face.”
Rebecca whispered, “Her?”
He nodded.
“Michael left the hospital carrying a little girl.”
Then Nathan opened the bottom of the financial box.
Inside lay a small yellow envelope.
Across the front, in his father's handwriting, were five words.
For the child Michael took.
Nathan opened it.
And a photograph fell into his hands.
A little girl of about six stood beside a Christmas tree.
She was smiling.
Dark hair.
Blue eyes.
A small silver necklace around her neck.
Rebecca looked at the picture.
Her lips parted.
“Oh my God.”
I stared at her.
She touched the photograph with trembling fingers.
“That necklace belonged to my mother.”
Nathan turned the picture over.
Written in faded ink was a name.
SOPHIE. AGE SIX.
Beneath it was an address in Ohio.
May you like
And a date from twenty-two years earlier.
Rebecca whispered, “My daughter lived.”
