THE WATCH MY FATHER LEFT

I moved into the apartment eleven days after leaving Derek.

The floors creaked. The kitchen was narrow enough that Lucy and I couldn't open a cupboard and stand opposite each other at the same time. A maple tree filled the bedroom window, its branches tapping the glass when the wind rose.

I loved the place before we finished carrying in the bags.

Sarah had helped me arrange it without putting my new address into Derek's hands. Rebecca was handling the correspondence that still had to reach him. Nothing was simple, but there were people who knew which complications belonged to them and which choices belonged to me.

Lucy hung inexpensive curtains while I washed two mugs.

"This one leaks," I said.

"Then it's decorative. You're a woman with decorative mugs now."

We ate noodles on the kitchen floor. Afterward, she asked whether Derek had hurt me badly.

"He didn't hit me every day."

Lucy put down her carton.

I heard myself and closed my eyes. "I keep doing that. Trying to make it sound smaller."

"You don't have to make it any size for me."

I told her about the locked door, the messages he read, and the way he could ruin an entire afternoon by asking what was wrong with my face.

"Sometimes I believed him when he said I couldn't survive without him."

She looked around the little kitchen. "Well. The noodles are cold, but you're surviving."

I laughed and cried into the same napkin.

After she left, I stood by the front door and tried the lock. Once to close it, once to open it. The key remained in my hand.

Derek received the divorce papers a few days later. That evening, an unfamiliar number called my new phone.

I answered before thinking.

"Emily. Sweetheart."

I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. The sound of him in my own apartment felt like a hand reaching through a window.

"How did you get this number?"

"Is that really what matters? I've been worried sick."

"Rebecca told you to contact her."

"I'm trying to speak to my wife. We don't need a stranger in every conversation."

I looked at the maple tree. A little bird balanced on a bare branch.

"I'm not coming home."

He sighed. "You're confused. Moretti's got you frightened of me."

"I was frightened before I met him."

Silence. Then a laugh with no humor in it.

"You think he'll keep paying for you? Men like that get bored."

"Don't call this number again."

"Listen carefully. You don't know what happens to women who humiliate their husbands."

My hand shook so violently that the phone knocked against the cupboard.

"Goodbye, Derek."

I ended the call, blocked the number, and called Rebecca. She listened, told me what to preserve, and stayed on the line until my breathing slowed.

Later I discovered that the number had been exposed through an old account I hadn't realized was still linked to Derek. Sarah helped me close that gap. I hated needing help again, but needing it didn't put me back in his house.

Alexander sent one message that week through Rebecca, asking whether I wanted updates about the watch.

I said yes.

He didn't add flowers, a visit, or an apology I would have to answer. When news came, Rebecca called me herself.

The watch had been recovered from a storage unit Derek rented under another name. Financial records had led investigators to it. I didn't have to break into his house or ask him to return it.

At Rebecca's office, Thomas showed me photographs taken during the recovery. The original was being held with the other items investigators needed to examine.

The silver case had a scratch near the face. I remembered making it when Dad let me try it on and I banged my arm against a doorframe.

"Did he open it?" I asked.

"Someone did," Thomas said. "The back was removed and replaced badly. There wasn't anything hidden inside when it was recovered."

Alexander looked away. I understood his disappointment because I felt it too.

Then Thomas enlarged the back of the watch on his laptop.

E.W.

Beneath my initials were four tiny numbers.

0417.

"April seventeenth," I said.

"Your birthday?" Thomas asked.

"Dad's. At least, that's when we celebrated it."

I remembered cake and outings. My father always took the day off. Sometimes the zoo, sometimes the lake. Always the little bookstore with the red door.

"He used to go into the back room," I said. "Mrs. Bell would let me choose something while he was gone."

Thomas looked up the address. The bookstore had closed fifteen years earlier, but some furnishings and donated stock had stayed with the neighborhood archive that eventually occupied the building.

"I'd like to go," I said.

Alexander leaned forward. "We should check—"

He stopped.

I waited.

"Would you be willing to take an investigator?" he asked.

"Yes. And Lucy."

"All right."

It was a small correction. I noticed it anyway.

The door was green now, but I recognized the step outside. Inside, Marianne, the archivist, led us to the surviving storage room. Mrs. Bell had kept a locked counter there, and the archive had retained it with her papers.

Dad had given her a book to hold for me. I remembered that slowly: a blue cover, a golden bird, his hand over mine while he told me not to forget it.

"The Bluebird's Promise," I said.

Marianne checked a handwritten inventory and found the title among Mrs. Bell's personal keepsakes, not the books offered for sale.

She brought it out wrapped in tissue.

On the first page was my father's handwriting.

For Emily.

Inside the cover lay a yellowed envelope addressed to his little bird.

I slid a finger beneath the flap, careful not to tear it.

A folded letter fell into my hand.

For a moment, I saw him at our kitchen table, leaning close to the paper because he refused to admit he needed glasses. I used to tease him about his careful handwriting. Now I wanted every hesitation of the pen, every uneven line. Lucy moved her chair closer, and I let my shoulder rest against hers while I looked at the envelope.

Then a small metal key dropped onto the table.