Chapter 2 - THE WATCH IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
“My dad’s available.”
Sophie said it with the complete confidence of a nine-year-old who had just solved a problem adults had somehow made unnecessarily complicated.
Jack stared at his daughter.
“Sophie.”
“What?”
“You cannot volunteer me for marriage.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not how marriage works.”
Sophie frowned.
“Then how does it work?”
A few people laughed nervously.
Evelyn Hart was still standing beneath the chandelier, one hand resting lightly against the skirt of her wedding gown.
She looked at Sophie.
Then at Jack.
Then back at Sophie.
“Well,” Evelyn said, “your father seems to have forgotten to object.”
Jack cleared his throat.
“I’m objecting now.”
“Too late,” Sophie said.
That earned a genuine laugh from Evelyn.
For several seconds, the ballroom relaxed.
The photographers started moving again.
Someone near the floral arch whispered that the whole thing had been hilarious.
Jack wished he could disappear beneath the platform again.
Then Evelyn noticed something.
A small silver object hung from Jack’s belt loop.
Her smile vanished.
It was an old pocket watch.
Jack had carried it for years.
The silver casing was scratched, and the chain had been repaired twice. Rachel had given it to him on their tenth anniversary.
Evelyn stared at it.
“Where did you get that?”
Jack looked down.
“The watch?”
“Yes.”
“My wife gave it to me.”
Something changed in Evelyn's face.
Not recognition.
Something closer to shock.
She stepped toward him.
“May I see it?”
Jack hesitated before unclipping the chain.
He handed it over.
Evelyn turned the watch in her palm.
Her thumb brushed across the worn initials engraved inside the lid.
J.M.
Then she opened it.
A tiny photograph had been tucked behind the mechanism.
It was old.
Faded.
A younger Jack stood beside Rachel.
And beside them stood another man.
A tall man with silver at his temples.
Evelyn stopped breathing.
Jack noticed.
“You know him?”
Evelyn stared at the photograph.
“I... think I do.”
“Who?”
She looked up.
“My father.”
Jack's expression hardened.
“That’s impossible.”
Evelyn turned the photograph toward him.
“That is my father.”
Jack took it back.
He looked again.
The man was unmistakably Arthur Hart.
Evelyn's father.
The man who had died seven years earlier.
Jack felt the ballroom suddenly become much colder.
Rachel had never mentioned the Hart family.
Not once.
At least, not by name.
Evelyn lowered her voice.
“Where did your wife get this?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“Rachel gave me the watch. She told me it belonged to someone important to her family.”
Evelyn's eyes narrowed.
“What exactly did she say?”
Jack searched his memory.
“She said there were things about her childhood she didn't understand.”
Evelyn went still.
“What childhood?”
“Evelyn.”
“I need to know.”
Jack looked around.
Too many people were watching.
He handed the watch back.
“Not here.”
Evelyn closed her fingers around it.
“Then come upstairs.”
Jack shook his head.
“I have work.”
“You just told the CEO she needed a groom.”
“And now I'm trying to avoid getting fired.”
“You're not getting fired.”
Sophie tugged Jack's sleeve.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“She's doing the boss voice.”
Jack looked at Evelyn.
For the first time, the CEO almost smiled.
“Your daughter is observant.”
“She gets it from her mother.”
The words came quietly.
Rachel.
The room suddenly felt different again.
Evelyn returned the watch.
“Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock. My office.”
Jack hesitated.
“Why?”
“Because I believe our families crossed paths before either of us knew.”
She looked directly at him.
“And I don't think my father was telling me the truth about it.”
That night, Jack barely slept.
He sat at the kitchen table after Sophie had gone upstairs.
The pocket watch rested beside him.
He opened it.
The photograph had always been there.
He had simply never studied the man standing beside Rachel.
Now he saw something he had missed for years.
On Arthur Hart's wrist was a distinctive gold bracelet.
A thin chain.
With a tiny blue stone.
Jack remembered it.
Rachel had owned the same bracelet.
She had worn it on their wedding day.
He had assumed it was costume jewelry.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Evelyn.
I found something in my father's office. Come alone tomorrow.
Jack stared at the screen.
Then another message arrived.
And bring the watch.
Upstairs, Sophie called his name.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you marrying your boss?”
Jack closed his eyes.
“No.”
A pause.
“Yet?”
Jack almost laughed.
But then he looked at the watch again.
And the laughter disappeared.
Because beneath the photograph, he noticed something he had never seen before.
A tiny handwritten date.
October 28, 1991.
May you like
Tomorrow was October 28.
And Rachel had been born on October 28, 1991.
