The old man goes up the stairs, and Pete follows him. They both disappear. I shove my hands in my pockets and walk around, looking at all the old clocks. The man must just repair them. He doesn’t have a showroom or a place to display them. The train rumbles by on the track by my head, and I feel a grin tip the corners of my lips.
The door at the top of the stairs opens and light feet skip down them. I see puffy bedroom slippers and striped pajama bottoms, and I’m suddenly staring into the greenest, most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
Faith
I stumble on the bottom step and he reaches out to catch me. He’s a little unsteady on his feet and he hops, but he’s solid and strong. I have a feeling he’d fall before he let me do so, and that’s an odd feeling to have.
“So sorry,” I mutter. I tug my sweater close to my body, wrapping it around myself. I should have gotten dressed instead of coming down in my jammies, but I just don’t have enough energy to do more. I’m working constantly, and when I’m not working, Granddad’s at work and I’m taking care of Nan. I feel like I haven’t slept in days. I probably haven’t. I nearly got the life scared out of me when Nan tried to get out of bed and fell just now. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I should have stayed awake to watch her. I knew Granddad was downstairs. He needs a break sometimes, too. He still works during the day as a doorman at an apartment complex. And he fixes clocks in his spare time. And he loves my Nan.
Theirs is a love like nothing I’ve ever seen. Not even my own marriage could compare. When Nan was at the nursing facility, he went there and slept in a chair beside her bed every night, because he said he couldn’t sleep without her, so what good was it for him to sleep at home? I came to stay with them when they brought her home. I don’t know if I’m a help or a hindrance. But I feel better being here, until I do something stupid like fall asleep.
The man coughs into his fist. I must have been wandering. Granddad says I do that a lot. It’s one of the reasons why I’m good at fixing clocks. It’s slow, methodical work and it takes my mind off the rest of the world.
“Didn’t mean to fall into you,” I say. Heat creeps up my cheeks.
He’s handsome. Startlingly so. He has brown hair and deep, chocolate brown eyes. His face is shadowed by beard stubble, and he doesn’t smile. Why doesn’t he smile?
He reaches down to adjust his pant leg and I see the length of metal that comes out of his shoe. I look up to his face and he’s watching me carefully. Is that why he doesn’t smile? I stick out my hand, for lack of anything better to do. “I’m Faith,” I say. He takes my hand in his and gives it a gentle squeeze, his eyes meeting mine, and I might even see a little spark in his dark gaze. But it burns out as quickly as it arrived.
“Daniel,” he says. “Everything all right upstairs?” He looks toward the closed doorway.
“Nan tried to get up and fell.” I shake my head. Nan’s head is still solid, but her body won’t cooperate and she just doesn’t fully grasp her limitations yet. “Pete’s upstairs charming her back into bed.” I laugh. That man has a way with people.
“The Reeds,” he says. “They seem pretty nice.”
I roll my eyes. “All five of them in one room can be a little overwhelming.” I had a crush on Pete for a little while, but then he met Reagan, and they are so freaking perfect for one another that I quickly discarded that notion.
“There are five of them?” he asks. He scratches his head. “I think I only met two.”
I start to count on my fingers. “Paul, Matt, Logan, Sam and Pete, in order of age. Sam and Pete are twins, although Sam swears he’s eight minutes older.”
I walk over to where Granddad started on Daniel’s watch. “Is this yours?” I ask, as I pick up my glasses and sit down on the stool. I bend Granddad’s light toward the watch. I look into it, and, although I’ve never worked on one of these, I might be able to fix it.
“It was my grandfather’s.”
I look up at him. “What happened to it?”
He looks everywhere but at me. “There was an explosion. In Afghanistan.”
“Was that where you were injured?” I ask, but my mind is already on the inner workings of the clock.
“Yeah,” he says and he blows out a breath.
“So your watch hasn’t worked since the blast?” I ask. I’m trying to figure out what could be the matter. Because the gears turn when I manually work them.
“Nothing has worked for me since the blast,” he says. His voice is suddenly heavy and I look up.
“What do you mean?”
“The clock,” he goes on to clarify, but I’m pretty sure he just meant life. “It hasn’t worked since.”
“Mm hmm,” I hum. I start to remove the gears and pieces and lay them on the table in front of me.
“Are you sure you should be doing that?” he asks. He walks close to me and pulls up a stool. He’s fidgety, and he makes me a little nervous now that he’s close to me. But Granddad and Pete are right upstairs.
I look up at him. “You do want it fixed, right?” I ask.
He nods. “More than anything.” He heaves a sigh. “I feel like time stood still that day, and it never started back up.”
I nod. But I can’t look at him. He’s telling me more than he wants to, and I’m afraid he’ll stop if he realizes how closely I’m listening. “Did you lose any friends?” I keep working on the watch, removing the parts piece by piece.
“I lost all my men.” His voice gets thick and he coughs to clear his throat. “Everyone. I lost everyone and everything.”
“Where’s your family?” I ask.
I feel the warm breeze of his heavy exhale. “All gone.”
I finally look up. “I’m sorry.”
He nods. He gets up and starts to wander around the shop. An hour later, I’ve put his watch back together and I wind it up. It should work. But it just doesn’t. And I don’t know why. I heave a sigh.
“What’s wrong?” he asks from directly behind me. I feel the heat of his breath on the back of my neck, and the hair on my arms stands up.
“Nothing,” I say and I start to take it apart again. I look over my shoulder at him. “Are you in a hurry?”
He shrugs and settles down beside me. He picks up a pen and starts to spin it on the tabletop. I look over at him. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, and he stops the pen from spinning with a slap of his hand. “So, you live here?” he asks. “In New York? All the time?”
I nod. And I keep disassembling his watch. Watches are made on a series of gears, even watches this old. I make sure each one works as I put it back in place. There are no snags. No broken gears. No missing parts. Nothing was jarred loose in the blast. “Yep,” I say quickly.
“Have you always lived here?” he asks.
“No,” I grunt. “I moved here when my grandmother got sick. Before that, I was in Florida.”
“Do you like it here?” he asks.
I shrug. “One place is as good as another.”
“Why aren’t you married?” he asks.I look up. “What makes you think I’m not?”
He grins, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Because any man in his right mind wouldn’t let you out of his sight.”
I jerk my head up. He gets up and starts to wander around again, like he didn’t just say something profound. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble.
He cups his hand around his ear and leans toward me. He grins. “What was that?” he asks.
“Never mind.” My gaze drops to his lips. He licks his full upper lip, and I have to force myself to look away.
“Something wrong?” he asks. His eyes drop to my mouth and he walks closer to me. Is he thinking about kissing me?
I look down at the watch. I shrug out of my sweater, because it’s suddenly hot in here. “No,” I say.
I look at the parts of his watch, which are scattered all over my table. The door to the upstairs opens and Pete walks down. Half way, he slows down, and looks from me to Daniel and back. “What did I miss?” He grins.
“Shut up,” I grumble.
“Oh,” he breathes. He nods his head and punches my shoulder as he walks by me. I growl at him and he laughs.
“How’s Nan?” I ask. “Still upset?”
“Only that you were worked up over it,” he says. He ruffles my hair with his big bear paw. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says quietly. “Could have happened to anyone.”
I nod, biting my lower lip to keep from sobbing. Nan has gone downhill so fast. She keeps having these mini-strokes that make her weaker and weaker. There’s not much else we can do for her, except wait and make sure she’s comfortable.
“She was talking about some old clock,” Pete says. He picks up a bag of chips I was eating earlier and helps himself.
I smile. Granddad bought her a funny little clock made in Germany when they first got married. But they sold it when times were lean, about thirty years ago. Granddad has been scouring the internet to find another one. “He’ll never find another clock like that, not one that he can afford. They make crappy knock offs, but he doesn’t want crap. He wants the real thing for her. Or nothing.”
“What kind of clock?” Daniel asks.
“It was a German clock, made with a Black Forest design, and when the hour chimed, dancers came out of the clock and slid back and forth along the front.” I shrug my shoulders. “That’s all I remember about it.”
“Is it rare?” Pete asks.
I nod. “And too expensive for Granddad to buy another.” I would buy one today, if I could find one and had enough money. “Nan used to make up love stories about what the people did when they went into the house.” I lift my brows at the men. “Apparently, there was a lot of kissing that went on inside that Black Forest house.”
Nan and Granddad have always had this crazy kind of passion and I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have that again. Maybe I’m waiting for a love like theirs. I don’t know. I don’t need to elaborate, because Pete’s already grinning.
“Henry was a horn dog,” he sings playfully.
I shake my head, but I secretly don’t want to scold him. “She started to mention it again a few weeks ago. I know he wants to give her one, but it’s just not going to happen.”
Pete’s phone chirps from his pocket and he grins and types something really quickly. He looks up. “Reagan’s going to lock me out if I don’t get home soon.”
I laugh. “You better hurry.”
“She loves me,” he says. And he gets this happy look in his eye. Pete’s settled and happy, and I couldn’t be happier for him. He looks at me. “How much are we talking about with this clock?” he asks.
“Like more than a car,” I say. “Even for a broken one.”
He grimaces.
“Yeah, I know. I thought about buying one too.”
Daniel sticks out his hand. “Thanks for the help finding the shop,” he says to Pete.
“Hey, do you want to come over tomorrow night? You could go to the fireworks with us.”
Daniel shakes his head. “I have somewhere to be at midnight,” he says. “But thank you.”
Pete claps him on the shoulder, and then he hugs me way too tightly and leaves. I can hear him whistling as he goes up the sidewalk.
I snap the back onto Daniel’s watch and look up at him. “It still doesn’t work.”
His mouth flattens into a straight line. “I hoped someone could fix it before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” I ask.
“For me,” he says.
“It’s never too late for you, silly,” I tell him.
Daniel
A kernel of hope blooms within my chest. I haven’t felt hopeful in a really long time. I rub absently at the ache, because my heartbeat quickens. I’ve been dead inside for a really long time, ever since I woke up in the hospital without my leg, without my friends, and without a future. But suddenly, I feel like I’m going to pass out.
“Are you all right?” Faith asks. She gets up and comes toward me, and she reaches out one tentative hand to touch the side of my face. She looks into my eyes, and I want to fall into her and tell her all my problems.
“I’m fine,” I murmur, but I’m not. I’m not at all. “I have PTSD,” I say. “Really bad PTSD.”
“From the accident?” she asks. Her voice is soft, and I press my face into the palm of her hand. I nuzzle it like a kitten, and she smiles and lets me.
“From patrols. From killing people. From seeing dead people. From what my life turned into.”
She motions toward a sofa on the other side of the room, and I sit down on one end. She sits on the other, lifting her legs so that her feet are in the middle, and she pulls an afghan from the back of the couch to cover herself up. She tosses it over my lap too. My chest aches again, and I rub at the pain.
“What hurts?” she asks.
“Everything,” I say quietly. I never ever talk about this shit. Ever. But she’s asking me questions, and she’s not my commanding officer or that f**king shrink who wanted to medicate me until I didn’t feel anything. Until I forgot the things I saw. But I don’t want to forget them. I need to remember, because if I don’t remember their lives, who will? “Time stopped for me on that day,” I say. I drop my head into my hands and concentrate on breathing.