Chapter 3 - What His Mom Told Him
The railing was cold through my sleeve. I could still hear the party behind us, glasses clinking and somebody laughing too loud near the bar, but out on that edge of the roof it felt separate. The boy stood with his back to the lights so his face was half in shadow. I held the watch flat in my palm because I didn't trust my fingers to keep holding the chain.
I asked him his name first. He told me it was Noah. He said it quick, like he thought I might not keep listening if he wasted time.
He kept looking at the watch while he talked, not at me. He said his mom had told him the story only once, on a night when he wouldn't sleep. He called it the day I was left. He didn't say abandoned. That word from before, it wasn't his word. It was something he'd heard and repeated.
He said he was little. He didn't know how little. He said he was in a car seat and it was raining. I watched his hands move while he talked. He kept rubbing his thumb against the side of his pants.
He said a woman carried him into a fire station. He remembered red doors. He remembered a man with a loud radio on his shoulder. He said he cried because his socks were wet. That was the detail he kept coming back to. His socks were wet.
I nodded. I didn't correct him. My throat felt tight, but I kept my breathing slow so he wouldn't notice.
He said his mom told him nobody knew who left him there. He said the police wrote down a time and a date. March, he thought. When it was still cold. He said a year that made him three. He frowned when he tried to do the math and then gave up.
That March landed wrong in my stomach. I did the count without meaning to. Clara would have been gone almost four years by then. The numbers didn't line up clean, but they were close enough to scare me.
I asked what else his mom told him. He glanced up then.
He pointed at the little photo inside the lid. He said she told him that was her. His real mother. Not the mom at home. The other one. The one before.
He said it plain, the way kids say things they've decided are true because an adult said them. She was pretty, so that meant something. She left the watch so he would know her face.
I wanted to tell him that wasn't how it worked. That a woman in a photo didn't make her anybody's mother. That the watch had sat in a drawer in my apartment for years and never belonged in a fire station lobby. But I bit down on the inside of my cheek and didn't say any of it.
Instead I asked if his mom showed him anything else. A paper. A bracelet. Anything that came with the watch.
He shook his head. Just the watch, he said. Just her.
Behind us someone dropped a glass and everybody made that little ooh sound people make at parties. Noah flinched. I shifted so my dress blocked the light from hitting the watch straight on.
I turned the watch slightly to see the photo again. The scalloped edge. The dark hair pulled to one side. Clara at twenty-two, maybe. Smiling like somebody had just told her not to laugh.
He asked if I knew her. His voice was smaller this time.
I didn't answer right away. I could feel my earring brush my neck when I tilted my head down. I told him I knew someone who looked like her a long time ago. That was all I let myself say.
He seemed to accept that. He kicked his shoe lightly against the base of the railing and said his mom didn't like talking about it. She said the past was past. That was why he'd brought the watch tonight. He'd seen my picture on the program at his mom's table. He thought I might know.
May you like
My hand closed a little around the watch. Not to take it. Just to hold it steady.
Across the roof, near the heaters, a woman in a dark green dress stood up and started looking around. I didn't know her yet, but I knew that look. I knew we didn't have much longer.
