to know,’ I said. ‘You only had to care that it was his.’
She flinched.
For years, I had imagined some future conversation where she would finally choose me. Where she would realize that marrying Richard had cost her more than she wanted to admit. Where she would apologize not because she was caught, but because she understood.
That morning, standing in the garage beside my father’s water-stained letters, I finally let that fantasy die.
Richard appeared in the doorway. ‘You think paperwork makes you powerful?’
I looked at him, then at Tyler, then at my mother.
‘No,’ I said. ‘My father did.’
No one answered.
I carried out the letters, the watch, my father’s old photo albums, and the last few things they had not managed to treat as disposable. My attorney stayed beside me. The officers stayed quiet. The house seemed smaller than I remembered, like the truth had reduced it.
At the front door, my mother called my name.
Not Mia.
Amelia.
I stopped, but I did not turn around.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
I looked down at the Rolex on my wrist. It was ticking steadily. Calmly. Faithfully.
For three years, I thought my father had left me a watch because he wanted me to remember him.
Now I understood.
He had left me a warning.
A map.
A key.
A way back to myself when the people closest to me tried to rewrite what belonged to me.
‘I am going to build the life Dad protected,’ I said.
Then I walked out into the morning with time finally on my side.
