My Wife's Last Call I Never Answered novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Watch

Clara's father walks into Hayes's lobby with the repaired watch and asks, in front of the staff, for the tenfold Hayes promised; Rory says Clara owns nineteen percent of the firm.

I did not sleep, and at eight the next morning I was at my desk with a coffee I had not touched.

My receptionist knocked twice on the glass.

"Mr. Garrison, there's a man in the lobby asking for you. He says he's your father-in-law."

I had met Amos Tillman four times in three years.

He had not come to our wedding dinner because there was no wedding dinner.

I went out to the lobby, and he was standing in the middle of it.

He wore a grey flat cap and a brown jacket worn thin at the elbows.

A pair of magnifying glasses was pushed up on his forehead and forgotten there.

Eleven of my staff were at their desks behind the glass, and every one of them had stopped typing.

"Amos," I said. "You should have called. I'd have sent a car."

"I took the bus from the station."

"Come upstairs. We'll have coffee."

"Here's fine."

He put a small wooden box on the reception desk and opened the lid.

Inside, on a square of green felt, lay my grandfather's Patek Philippe.

It was ticking.

I could hear it from where I stood.

"I fixed it the week she brought it to me," Amos said. "Two years ago, near enough. A hairspring and a cleaning. It was not a hard job."

I looked at the watch.

Two years ago I had complained to Clara that it had stopped, and she had taken it away.

I had thought it was lost.

"She wanted to give it to you on your third anniversary," Amos said. "With a strap she braided herself. Six weeks of evenings, that strap took her. I hear it went in the trash."

Nobody behind the glass was pretending to work now.

"Amos, this isn't the place."

"She called me last night." His voice was mild. "First time since she was in college she called me and asked for nothing. She told me she's moved into the hospital housing. She didn't say why, and I didn't ask. I got on a bus."

"I'll talk to her."

"I expect you will. That's not what I came about."

He reached into his jacket and took out a folded sheet of notebook paper.

"I put the down payment on my daughter's apartment," he said. "Twenty-two years of my Saturday repairs, that was. She sold it after you married, and I know where the money went."

He did not look at the walls behind me, which had my firm's name on them in steel letters.

"A hundred and ninety thousand dollars," he said. "At my kitchen table you told me you'd pay it back tenfold. You shook my hand on it. I was holding a cup of tea at the time."

I did remember that.

I remembered saying it and I remembered the tea.

I had said it easily, and I had forgotten it by the next day.

"I'll honor that," I said.

"I'm sixty-eight, son." He said it gently. "I'd like to see it while I'm still using my own eyes."

A young designer near the window pressed her lips together and looked at her screen.

Everyone in the room could hear that I owed one point nine million dollars to a watch repairman from Ohio.

My face was hot.

"That's a lot of cash to find overnight," I said.

"I didn't say overnight."

He put the folded paper on top of the box and slid both toward me.

"It's my number and the motel I'm at. You can call me or you can not call me. Clara won't ask you for it. She never asked anyone for anything."

He closed the lid of the box and left it with me.

At the door he turned.

"The watch runs fine," he said. "Wind it every morning. She says you don't remember to do things unless somebody else does them."

The door sighed shut behind him.

I stood there holding the box and tried to think of the right thing to say to the room.

I said nothing, and Rory Fenn did it for me.

He came out of the conference room with a folder under his arm, took my elbow, and walked me into the glass room without a word.

He shut the door and put the folder on the table.

"Sit."

"Rory, if you're going to tell me that was my fault."

"I'm going to tell you something else." He opened the folder. "Three years ago you handed me a check from your wife and told me to deal with it. Remember?"

"It covered the cash-flow gap."

"It did. Eleven days from missing payroll." He turned a page toward me. "I booked it as equity, in her name. I put it in front of you and you signed without reading."

I looked down.

The line at the bottom had my signature on it, and above that were the words Clara Tillman, nineteen percent.

"She owns a piece of this firm," Rory said. "Has since the week you married her. The only person who didn't know that was you."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend