Chapter 12 - The Night She Handed Him the Watch in Her Parking Lot
I parked two spaces down from her Corolla and didn't get out right away. It was just after six and the lot behind her apartment building was still holding the day's heat. Kids' bikes locked to the stair rail. A screen door slapping somewhere above. I could see her in the side mirror, standing by the dumpster enclosure with her arms crossed, like she'd come down to meet me but hadn't decided to stay.
My name is Elena, and I'd stopped trying to get her to like me.
She walked over when I opened my door. No makeup. Hair in a low ponytail. A gray T-shirt with a school logo washed thin.
"You said this wouldn't take long," she said.
"It won't if we stay out here," I said. "I don't need to go up."
That seemed to ease her a fraction. She nodded toward the curb where the light was better and we both moved there. I could hear a TV through an open window. Someone frying onions.
"I went back to the jeweler," I said. "The watch wasn't serviced in Dayton. It was cleaned in Cincinnati three years ago. Paid cash. No name left."
She stared at the asphalt.
"So?" she said.
"So the watch was moving around long after you say he was left," I said. "Which means somebody held it. Somebody chose when to give it to him. I need you to tell me about that day. Not the abandonment day. The day he got it."
Her jaw worked. For a second I thought she'd walk back inside.
"You think I lied to him," she said.
"I think you told him what you were told," I said.
She let out a breath through her nose. Looked at the stairwell, then back at me.
"It was a Tuesday," she said. "After school. Second grade. He was eight. I was working the lunch shift at the diner on Colerain and picking up extra hours, and my sitter called and said a woman came to the door. Said she knew us from church."
My hands went cold despite the heat. "What woman?"
"I never got a name. Older. Maybe sixty. Short gray hair, glasses on a chain. She said she'd been holding something for him since he was little and he was old enough now." She rubbed her thumb hard against her fingers. "She had the watch in a little blue pouch. Like for jewelry. She showed the sitter how the back opened and there was the picture."
"And she said—"
"She said, that's his real mother. That the woman wanted him to have it. That it plays her voice." Her eyes flashed up at me. "I thought it was a scam at first. I thought she'd ask for money. She didn't. She just left it and left."
I tried to keep my breathing even. "Did you see her?"
"No. I got home at four and it was sitting on my kitchen counter next to his homework folder. He was already playing it over and over." Her voice thinned. "You have to understand. He'd been asking for months why he didn't look like me. Why his papers said one thing and nothing else. And then this woman — this photo — he just latched on. He slept with it under his pillow."
I could picture it too clearly. The white shirt, both hands around the brass.
"Did you believe her?" I asked quietly. "About the photo?"
She hesitated. That was the admission.
"I didn't know," she said. "I wanted it to help him, so I let it stand. I told him, if that's what she left you, then that's her. I never told him I didn't hear it from his caseworker or from anybody official. It came from — her. That woman at the door."
"Do you still have the pouch? Anything she wrote down?"
"No. Just — she told my sitter the watch had belonged to the woman in the picture." She shook her head. "My sitter's moved to Florida. I called her last night after you kept pushing. She doesn't remember more than gray hair and glasses. I'm sorry."
A car pulled in and its headlights swept us. She stepped closer to the curb, out of the way, and I stepped with her.
"He thinks you knew," I said. "That night at the party he said, Mom told me."
"I know what he said." Her eyes filled now, fast and angry. "You think I planned that? You think I sent him to you with it? I was in the coat check line. He slipped away. He does that when the music gets loud."
"I believe you," I said.
"Do you?" She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. "Because since you showed up, all he talks about is the lady who cried when she saw his picture. He's asking if you're her. If I'm not his real mom. You're undoing four years in a week."
The onions and TV noise faded under the hum of the lot lights coming on.
"I'm not here to take him," I said. "I'm not his mother. I don't know yet who Clara was to him, or to me. And I won't tell him I'm anything until I can prove it. That's a promise."
She studied me. Looking for the catch.
"Then why keep digging?" she said.
"Because somebody used her picture to give him an answer," I said. "And if that answer isn't true, he'll build his whole life on it."
She was quiet a long time. Then she nodded once, short.
"The sitter said the older woman drove a green Honda," she said. " Old one. With a church parking sticker on it. That's all I've got."
It wasn't much. It was a thread.
"I'll stay out of his school," I said. "You call me if he wants to talk. Not the other way around."
May you like
She pulled her keys from her pocket. Didn't move yet.
"If that woman in the photo isn't his mother," she said, low, "don't tell him like it's nothing. That's still the only mother he's ever pictured."
