She told us how he’d joked that the diner coffee tasted like something brewed inside an old tire.
How he’d said meeting June at a dance hall was the luckiest event of his life.
How he’d claimed he stepped on her foot four times when they first danced.
“Five,” Mom corrected, laughing. “It was definitely five.”
Maya smiled.
“He told me his daughter loved animals. That she’d once brought a wild possum into the bathroom.”
I nearly dropped my spoon.
“I forgot about that!”
Mom covered her face.
“I certainly didn’t.”
“He said June screamed so loudly the neighbors could hear.”
“I did not scream,” Mom protested. “I expressed concern.”
“You stood on the toilet, Mom!”
All three of us burst into laughter.
Real laughter.
The kind that makes your shoulders shake.
And somewhere in the middle of it, I heard myself make a strange little hiccup sound.
Maya stopped laughing.
She looked at me with such tenderness.
“There it is,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your laugh. Just like he said.”
By the time we prepared to leave, it was getting dark.
Mom gave Maya our phone number and insisted she call whenever she needed anything.
Before stepping outside, Mom looked at Dad’s watch.
Then she looked at Maya.
“Would you like to keep it?” she asked. “You’ve looked after it longer than I ever did.”
Maya shook her head.
“No. It belongs with you.”
“Are you certain?”
Maya smiled.
“I don’t need it the way I used to.”
“Why not?”
“Because now I have something better.”
She looked from me to my mother.
“I have people who care about me.”
The drive home was quiet.
Mom kept one hand resting over the watch.
As we approached the turnoff for Route 9, she asked me to pull over.
I stopped beside the road.
She lowered her window and listened to the ticking.
“For years, I hated this road,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I thought a piece of your father was lost out here. I imagined that watch lying somewhere beneath the leaves.”
She paused.
“But it wasn’t lost.”
She glanced toward the darkening fields.
“It was with Maya. In Georgia. In bus stations. In nursing homes. Everywhere she went.”
Her eyes glistened.
“He kept doing good things, even after he was gone.”
She rolled up the window.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”
I didn’t immediately tell everyone at work what had happened.
The story felt too personal.
Too precious.
But Millbrook is a small town.
And Lori isn’t called the unofficial newspaper for nothing.
Within a week, people began hearing about Maya, the twins, and my father’s watch.
Then something wonderful happened.
Pastor Greene delivered two gently used cribs.
Patty from the diner began dropping off dinner every Tuesday, claiming she’d
