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Her Landlord Ignored the Warnings, and Her Mother — But Forgot the Toolbox She Left Behind — Transcript

by The Forgotten Acre Farm · 21,480 words · 3,639 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Someone has been winding this clock for
0:01four years and I just moved in three
0:03days ago.
0:05A woman crouches in a stone room lit
0:07only by a headlamp, her palm pressed
0:09flat against a brass clock on a mantel,
0:1238 years dead.
0:14The second hand sweeps past the 12.
0:17The dust around the base has been wiped
0:19clean in a perfect circle the size of a
0:21stranger's hand. Upstairs through a
0:24hatch in the ceiling, 42 unfinished
0:27clocks hang in rows on wooden pegs.
0:30Every numeral raised. Every hour marker
0:33shaped for a fingertip. Made for people
0:36who cannot see.
0:38A floorboard shifts above her. She lifts
0:40her head.
0:42Outside the arched doorway, a West
0:44Virginia wind pushes against the stone.
0:46Somewhere down the footpath, her Subaru
0:48sits with a folder on the passenger
0:50seat.
0:51300 pages. Three certified letters.
0:56The name of a man who did not listen.
0:58She has $64 left and 90 days to prove
1:01she belongs here.
1:03The ticking does not stop.
1:05The shelter in Beckley kept its
1:07fluorescent lights on all night. Not for
1:09safety, for bed checks.
1:12Delphine Marchetti had learned the
1:14difference in her first week on the
1:16road, the way you learn which gas
1:17stations will let you sit in the parking
1:19lot past midnight without calling the
1:21police.
1:22Some lessons you don't ask for. They
1:24just arrive. She sat on the edge of a
1:26cot at 4:00 in the morning, feet still
1:28in her boots because the floor was cold
1:31and because she had learned somewhere
1:32between Columbus and here not to take
1:34her boots off in a room full of
1:36strangers.
1:37The cot creaked under her weight.
1:39Two cots over a woman snored softly. One
1:43arm flung across her face.
1:45Near the door, a man coughed three dry
1:47coughs in his sleep and then went quiet.
1:50Dell had the folder open on her lap. 300
1:53pages.
1:55She knew because she had counted them
1:56twice during the first week after the
1:58fire when counting was only thing that
2:00kept her hands busy.
2:02Insurance correspondence,
2:04lease agreements,
2:05email printouts,
2:07SMS screenshots she had paid $2 to print
2:11at a FedEx in Zanesville,
2:13a copy of the certified letter her
2:15mother had sent in April,
2:17the letter the landlord had signed for,
2:19the letter he had never acted on. Her
2:21mother's handwriting on the letter was
2:23careful.
2:24Lucienne Marchetti wrote the way she
2:26worked,
2:27clean, measured, no wasted motion.
2:31Mr. Carlyle,
2:33this is my third written notice
2:35regarding the electrical panel in the
2:37basement of 2847
2:39Linden Place.
2:41The smell of burning insulation has
2:42become constant.
2:44The breakers trip at least once a week.
2:46I am requesting an inspection by a
2:48licensed electrician before someone is
2:50hurt.
2:51Someone had been hurt. Dell read the
2:53sentence again
2:55and again
2:56because she had read it so many times in
2:58the past 3 months that the words had
3:00lost their shape and become only sound,
3:02a kind of hum,
3:04a background noise she carried with her
3:06the way other people carried music in
3:07their ears.
3:09She closed the folder. Outside the
3:11shelter window, Beckley was dark and
3:13wet, the kind of November dark that
3:15doesn't lift when the sun comes up, just
3:17thins.
3:19Her Subaru was in the lot.
3:21The last of her tools was in the trunk.
3:23The toolbox was on the passenger seat
3:25where she kept it so no one could reach
3:27it without going through her first. The
3:29toolbox was oak.
3:31Her mother had refinished it the year
3:33Dell turned 14, sanding it down one
3:35Saturday afternoon in the kitchen while
3:37the radio played something old.
3:40Lucienne had rubbed linseed oil into the
3:42grain with a rag until the wood went
3:44from gray to honey.
3:46She had told Dell once laughing that the
3:48box would outlive both of them if Dell
3:50took care of it.
3:51The box had outlived one of them.
3:54Dell stood.
3:55She rolled her sleeping bag.
3:57She tucked the folder into her backpack
3:59next to a half-empty bottle of water and
4:01the socket set her mother had given her
4:03the Christmas she turned 19.
4:06Then she walked past the night attendant
4:08who nodded without looking up and
4:09crossed the parking lot in the cold.
4:12The Subaru started on the second try.
4:14She drove south because south was warmer
4:17and because she had no reason to drive
4:18any other direction.
4:20The sky over the mountains was the color
4:22of wet concrete, a billboard for a
4:25casino,
4:26a billboard for a church,
4:28a billboard for a personal injury
4:30attorney with a face too big for his
4:31suit.
4:33A hand-painted sign that read Jesus is
4:35coming soon and underneath in different
4:37paint look busy. She almost smiled.
4:41Almost. Her phone propped on the
4:43dashboard buzzed.
4:45A notification from an app called Hollow
4:47Jobs.
4:48She had downloaded it in a Waffle House
4:50parking lot in Charleston three days ago
4:52after a woman at the counter had
4:54mentioned it over coffee the way people
4:56in small towns mention the weather.
4:58If you need cash and you don't mind
5:00driving, that's where to look.
5:03Dell tapped the notification. The
5:05listing was short.
5:06Beck with Hollow.
5:08Need help dismantling industrial sewing
5:10machines in abandoned garment shop.
5:13$95 per day cash.
5:15Three days work.
5:17Must have own hand tools.
5:20Text Marg.
5:21Dell pulled off at the next exit.
5:24She sat in the lot of a closed Dairy
5:25Queen and typed.
5:27I have tools.
5:29I can start tomorrow.
5:30I know Juki and Singer Industrials.
5:33The reply came in less than a minute.
5:35Good.
5:368:00 a.m. Garage on Main. Ask for Marg.
5:39Red door. Dell looked at the sentence
5:41for a long time.
5:43Then she set the phone down.
5:45Then she started the car again.
5:47Beck with Hollow was 40 miles southwest
5:49of Beckley down a two lane that cut
5:51through a gap in the mountains.
5:53The road climbed and fell and climbed
5:55again.
5:56A shuttered coal tipple.
5:58A church with a sign that said simply in
6:00black letters,
6:02We are open.
6:04A cemetery that climbed up the side of a
6:06hill in a staircase of stones. She
6:08passed into Beckwith Hollow at nine in
6:10the morning and parked at the end of
6:12Main Street.
6:13The garage was easy to find because
6:15Marge had been right about the red door.
6:17It was the brightest thing on the block.
6:19The building itself was a long low
6:21cinder block with a sign that read
6:23Ozanne Auto and Salvage.
6:26The paint faded in uneven stripes where
6:28the sun hit hardest.
6:30A row of pickup trucks sat along one
6:32wall in various stages of being alive.
6:35Dell got out of the Subaru.
6:37She slung the backpack over one
6:38shoulder.
6:39She carried the oak toolbox in her right
6:41hand because the handle was original and
6:43because her mother had taught her to
6:45carry things that mattered. A woman
6:47stepped out of the open bay before Dell
6:49reached the door.
6:51Late fifties, short, broad through the
6:53shoulders. Silver hair cropped close to
6:56her skull. A pair of reading glasses
6:58pushed up onto her forehead.
7:00She wore a navy jumpsuit with the Ozanne
7:03name stitched in red thread over the
7:05left breast and her hands were black to
7:07the second knuckle.
7:09Marchetti.
7:11It was not a question.
7:13She was Margaret, she added, and she
7:14wanted Dell to look at the machines
7:16before saying yes. Dell followed her
7:18through the bay, past a Chevy up on a
7:21lift, past a workbench covered in loose
7:23bolts and a mug of coffee gone cold.
7:26Out the back door into an alley.
7:29Across the alley to a brick building
7:30with its front door chained, but a side
7:32entrance propped open with a cinder
7:34block. The garment shop smelled like
7:36dust and lanolin.
7:38Three long tables ran down the center of
7:40the room and on each table sat a row of
7:43industrial sewing machines, their
7:45flywheels furred with lint, their belts
7:47gone slack.
7:48Twenty-two machines in total.
7:50Dell counted them by habit. Margaret
7:53stopped in the middle of the room, arms
7:54crossed, and gave the shortest version
7:56of the story.
7:58The place had closed in 2019.
8:00The owner had died.
8:02His kids lived in Phoenix and did not
8:04want anything to do with it.
8:06She had bought the salvage rights the
8:08month before, which meant she had to get
8:09the machines out before the inspector
8:11came through in December. She studied
8:14Dell. Dell had said she knew Jukus. Her
8:16mother, Dell answered, had sewed for a
8:18factory in Columbus for 12 years. Dell
8:21had grown up taking those heads apart on
8:23the kitchen table.
8:24Marguerite nodded once and ran through
8:26the order of operations. Needle plates
8:29first, feed dogs, then the hook race,
8:32belt, motor.
8:34The heads were the heavy part. She had
8:36dollies in the garage. She would help
8:38with those. The rest was Dell's. Dell
8:41said that was fine. Cash at the end of
8:43each day. A receipt if Dell wanted one.
8:46Dell thought about the folder in her
8:47backpack, about the 18 months the legal
8:50aid lawyer had quoted her,
8:52about the way every piece of paper in
8:53her life now needed to be kept.
8:55She wanted one.
8:57Marguerite's mouth pulled sideways. It
8:59wasn't quite a smile, but it was close.
9:02She had figured as much. They worked
9:04until dusk.
9:06Dell dismantled seven machines the first
9:08day.
9:09Her hands remembered things she hadn't
9:10asked them to remember.
9:12The small screwdriver her mother had
9:14called the stubborn one.
9:16The way you had to rock a hook race free
9:17instead of pulling.
9:19The sound a bobbin case made when it
9:21dropped and bounced on linoleum.
9:24By 4 in the afternoon, her wrists ached
9:26and her back hurt and her hands were
9:28black. Marguerite came in at 5 and set a
9:31paper plate down on one of the tables
9:33without a word.
9:34A ham sandwich, a pickle, a bottle of
9:37water.
9:38Dell hadn't eaten since the shelter.
9:41She was too thin to argue. Marguerite
9:43told her and left her to it.
9:46Dell ate. She slept in the Subaru that
9:49night, parked behind the garage with
9:51Marguerite's permission. The engine off,
9:53the windows cracked an inch.
9:55She dreamed about her mother's hands.
9:57She dreamed about a sentence she
9:59couldn't finish.
10:00She woke before dawn and started again.
10:03By the end of the third day, every
10:04machine was broken down and stacked on
10:06pallets in the corner of the shop.
10:09Marguerite counted out $285 in twenties
10:12and tens and handed them to Dell with a
10:14receipt written on the back of an oil
10:16change coupon.
10:18Dell did decent work, she said.
10:20Dell folded the money and put it in the
10:22inside pocket of her denim jacket. She
10:25said, thank you. Her voice came out
10:27flatter than she meant it to. Margaret
10:29watched her a moment then wiped her
10:31hands on a rag.
10:33How long was Dell planning to stay in
10:34the Hollow?
10:36Dell had not been planning to stay,
10:38but Dell had somewhere to be after this.
10:41The silence spoke on its own. Margaret
10:44tucked the rag into her back pocket and
10:46looked out the open bay toward the
10:48mountain that rose behind the garage
10:50like a dark wall.
10:52There was another job if Dell wanted it,
10:54longer, paid less up front, came with
10:57something she might need. She asked
10:59whether Dell had ever heard of a
11:00stewardship program.
11:02Dell shook her head. Margaret leaned
11:05against the door frame and ran through
11:06the shape of it.
11:08The county had rolled it out the year
11:09before, a pilot program.
11:13Beckwith County only as far as she knew.
11:16The idea was that a lot of properties
11:18out here had been abandoned when the
11:19mines closed.
11:21Houses in the woods, old lodges, cabins.
11:26The owners had died. The heirs had moved
11:28to Dallas and did not give a damn taxes,
11:31stopped getting paid, and the county
11:34ended up with land it could not afford
11:36to maintain.
11:38So some bright soul in the courthouse
11:40had come up with a program where you
11:42could register as a steward for 90 days.
11:46$64 filing fee.
11:49You went in,
11:50you inventoried what was there,
11:53you kept the roof from falling in.
11:55You wrote a report. If you proved you
11:58could take care of the place, you could
11:59apply for a long-term license, 10 years,
12:03$240
12:05a year. She paused.
12:07She looked at Dell.
12:09It was not ownership she wanted, that
12:10clear. No deed,
12:12the right to use the place as long as
12:14you kept it standing. If you left it,
12:16went back to the county. Simple enough.
12:20Dell shifted the toolbox from one hand
12:22to the other. She asked why no one had
12:24taken it.
12:25Because the property the county had put
12:27up six months earlier was the Veltri
12:29place. And nobody in this town wanted to
12:31touch the Veltri place.
12:33Dell waited for the rest. Marguerite
12:36exhaled through her nose.
12:38It was not quite a laugh.
12:40A mile into the woods behind the old
12:42Episcopal Church. No running water, no
12:45electric.
12:46The road to it had not been cleared
12:48since the Reagan administration.
12:50The woman who had built it had died
12:51alone up there in 1988. And the town had
12:54kind of forgotten her.
12:56And every man in Beckwith Hollow with
12:57the sense God gave a squirrel had looked
12:59at the paperwork and decided it was too
13:01much liability.
13:03She paused.
13:05She had thought of Dell yesterday
13:06because Dell did not flinch when
13:08something was broken.
13:10That was rare. Dell didn't know what to
13:12say to that.
13:13Marguerite reached into her jumpsuit
13:15pocket and pulled out a folded piece of
13:17paper.
13:18The county clerk's number.
13:21Odette.
13:22She would take the filing fee and walk
13:24Dell through the forms.
13:26There was a back room behind the office
13:28with a cot and a space heater.
13:30Dell could stay there 10 days while she
13:32figured out whether she wanted to do
13:34this.
13:35No charge.
13:37Marguerite did not need the room. Dell
13:39unfolded the paper and looked at it a
13:40moment, then up at Marguerite.
13:43Why was she helping?
13:45A shrug.
13:46Small.
13:48Somebody had helped Marguerite once when
13:50she was Dell's age, and she had never
13:52gotten the chance to pay her back.
13:54So she paid other people instead.
13:58Dell was not to make a story of it.
14:00That was just how it worked.
14:03Dell put the paper in her jacket pocket
14:04next to the money. That night she sat on
14:07the cot in the back room behind
14:08Marguerite's office. The space heater
14:11ticked. The fluorescent bulb overhead
14:13hummed.
14:15She opened her mother's toolbox on her
14:16knees and looked at the tools laid out
14:18in their velvet line trays.
14:21The small loop,
14:22the brass tweezers, the jeweler's
14:25screwdrivers with their red plastic
14:26handles,
14:28the tiny vial of clock oil,
14:30the rivets said her mother had used for
14:32industrial frames. She closed the lid.
14:35She thought about the 18 months the
14:37lawyer had quoted.
14:39She thought about the shelter.
14:41She thought about her mother's
14:42handwriting on the certified letter and
14:44about how a man named Rhett Carlyle
14:46somewhere in Columbus was probably
14:48sleeping in a bed tonight.
14:51She picked up the phone. She called the
14:53number on the paper. Odette at the
14:55county clerk's office answered on the
14:56fourth ring with a voice that sounded
14:58like she had been expecting a
14:59telemarketer.
15:01Dell explained who she was.
15:03Odette's tone changed.
15:06The paperwork would take about an hour.
15:08Nine the next morning.
15:10$64 in exact change if possible because
15:14the office was out of ones.
15:16Dell hung up.
15:17She lay down on the cot in her clothes.
15:20She did not sleep for a long time. The
15:22courthouse in Beckwith Hollow was a
15:24small brick building across from a diner
15:26called The Blue Hour.
15:28Dell counted out $64 at the kitchen
15:30table in Marguerite's back office before
15:33she went laying the bills flat and
15:35smoothing them with her palm.
15:37Three twenties, four ones.
15:39She put them in an envelope her mother
15:41would have called a paying envelope,
15:43which was what Lucian had always called
15:44the envelope that held rent money as if
15:46naming the thing made it harder to lose.
15:49Odette turned out to be a woman in her
15:51forties with wire-rimmed glasses and a
15:53photo of three dogs taped to her
15:55monitor.
15:56She slid a two-page contract across the
15:59counter and tapped the top line with her
16:01pen.
16:02Read every word she told Dell.
16:05Don't sign until you understand it.
16:08She was required by county policy to
16:10tell Dell that the stewardship was not
16:12ownership and did not convey any
16:15transferable interest.
16:17Dell had read.
16:19Good, Odette said. A lot of people did
16:21not.
16:22Then they got mad in six months. Dell
16:24read, $64 nonrefundable, 90 days of
16:28provisional access, an inventory report
16:30due within 30 days of registration,
16:33detailing every item of value found on
16:35the premises.
16:37A maintenance plan due within 60 days
16:40demonstrating minimum stabilization.
16:43If both conditions were met, the steward
16:45could petition the Beckwith County
16:47Commission for a long-term license, 10
16:49years renewable, at $240 annually,
16:53contingent on an approved use plan. If
16:55the conditions were not met, the
16:57property reverted to full county
16:59control.
17:00The language in that section used the
17:02phrase at which point the commission may
17:04elect to proceed with demolition or
17:06auction at its sole discretion.
17:09Dell lifted the pen.
17:10She signed on the line. She counted the
17:12bills out of the envelope. Odette
17:14stamped the paperwork.
17:16The stamp made a soft, wet sound. She
17:19slid Dell a receipt and a laminated card
17:21with GPS coordinates printed on it and a
17:24hand-drawn map on the back.
17:27The property, she explained, was about a
17:28mile and a quarter northeast of the old
17:30Episcopal church.
17:32There was a footpath that used to be a
17:34service road. It was overgrown but
17:36passable on foot,
17:38not drivable.
17:40Dell would bottom out her axle in the
17:42first 50 yards.
17:44Who had the property before? Dell asked.
17:46Odette looked up over her glasses.
17:49Henriette Veltri,
17:51deceased 1988.
17:53No heirs had ever come forward to claim.
17:57The property had been in county escheat
17:59since 2004.
18:01They had tried to auction it twice.
18:04Nobody had bid.
18:05So they had put it in the pilot program
18:07the previous May.
18:10She paused and gave the warning in a
18:12flatter voice.
18:14The building was unusual.
18:16People found it unsettling.
18:18If Dell wanted to back out before she
18:20went up there, she could withdraw today,
18:22and Odette would refund 50 of the 64.
18:25Dell folded the receipt into her jacket
18:27pocket. She did not want to back out.
18:30Odette nodded without arguing.
18:33Dell drove to the end of Main Street.
18:35She parked in the gravel lot behind the
18:37Episcopal Church, which was small and
18:39white and had a sign out front that read
18:41all are welcome in letters that had been
18:43hand painted and then painted over and
18:45then hand painted again.
18:48She shouldered her backpack. She picked
18:50up the toolbox. She walked around the
18:52back of the church to where the footpath
18:54began. The path was narrow and leaf
18:56choked.
18:58The trees were sugar maples and oaks and
19:00sweet gums, their leaves still clinging
19:02in reds and yellows.
19:04The ground sloped up gently and then
19:06more steeply.
19:08She passed a wooden sign tilted sideways
19:10in the earth that read property line
19:13Veltri estate
19:14in letters so weathered she had to lean
19:16close to read them.
19:18She kept walking.
19:20The path turned
19:22and there it was.
19:23She stopped at the edge of the clearing
19:25and did not move for a long moment. The
19:27house was made of stone, not the smooth
19:30cut stone of a bank or a courthouse, but
19:32the rough quarried stone of something
19:34built by hand, each block fitted to the
19:36next in a pattern that was almost, but
19:38not quite regular.
19:40Two stories tall.
19:42The lower floor was a half round bulging
19:44out from the hillside like the rounded
19:47end of a wine cellar with a single
19:49arched doorway low to the ground.
19:52The arch curved deeply, almost a half
19:54circle, and the door inside it was heavy
19:55and dark and set back a foot into the
19:57thickness of the wall. The upper floor
20:00was a wider cylinder set atop the lower
20:02one round like a tower, but not tall
20:05like a tower.
20:06It was crowned by a shallow metal dome
20:09oxidized to a deep green black, so
20:12thickly covered in moss that in places
20:14the moss had crept down over the edge
20:17and dripped like beards.
20:19Three arched windows ran around the
20:21upper floor, each one tall enough that a
20:24grown woman could have stepped through
20:25standing up.
20:27The glass in all three was gone. Only
20:30the iron tracery remained curling at the
20:32tops of the frames in a pattern of
20:34leaves. A square stone chimney rose from
20:37the left side of the structure.
20:39It was taller than it needed to be
20:40taller than the dome.
20:42It stood up above the tree line like a
20:44watch tower.
20:45The capstone was slanted.
20:47A single black bird sat on it unmoving
20:50watching. And on the outside of the
20:52building winding up and around the stone
20:54like a vine was a staircase.
20:56Stone steps each one carved hole from
20:59the body of the hill spiraling from the
21:01ground up to a small balcony at the
21:04second floor level.
21:06The balcony had a wrought iron railing
21:08gone to rust.
21:10The steps were slick with moss and ivy
21:12had grown over them in thick green ropes
21:14so that in places you could not tell
21:16where step ended and vine began.
21:19Above the balcony a smaller half dome of
21:21stone sheltered a wooden door that had
21:23long since gone to rot. Ferns grew
21:26knee-high around the foundation.
21:28The whole clearing was ringed with trees
21:30whose canopy closed overhead and let in
21:33only a dappled broken light so that the
21:35house seemed to sit at the bottom of a
21:37green well.
21:39Dell stood with her back to the trees
21:41and looked. She did not look like a
21:43woman who had come to inventory a
21:45building.
21:46She looked like a woman who had come
21:48upon something she had been looking for
21:50her whole life without knowing it.
21:53Her jacket was open.
21:55Her hair honey highlighted and loose
21:57moved slightly in the breeze that pushed
21:59down through the trees.
22:01The terracotta of her pants was the only
22:03color in the clearing that did not
22:05belong to the forest.
22:07The backpack sat high on her shoulders.
22:09The oak toolbox was still in her right
22:11hand.
22:12The small pink line of the burn scar
22:14along the left side of her neck 2 in
22:16above the collar of her denim jacket
22:19caught the light once and then was gone
22:21when she turned her head. She did not
22:23move for what might have been a minute.
22:25Then she walked forward.
22:27The arched door at the lower level was
22:29not locked.
22:30She reached for the handle, a wrought
22:32iron ring, blackened with age, and the
22:34door swung inward at the first pull.
22:37did not resist.
22:38did not creak.
22:40swung the way a door swings when it has
22:42been opened recently.
22:44She stood in the threshold. Inside, the
22:46air was cool and dry.
22:49The floor was tile, small hexagons in a
22:51dull green, half covered by dust.
22:54A stone fireplace stood against the far
22:56wall. Its hearth swept almost clean.
23:00The ceiling was low and vaulted. Shelves
23:02had been built into the curve of the
23:04walls, holding what looked like books
23:06and small boxes, all gray with dust.
23:09On the mantel of the fireplace in the
23:11center where the dust lay thick
23:13everywhere else sat a brass clock.
23:15Dell could hear it ticking from the
23:16doorway. She stepped inside.
23:19The hexagonal tiles were silent under
23:21her boots.
23:23She crossed the room slowly.
23:25She stopped in front of the fireplace.
23:28The clock was a tabletop piece,
23:30brass case,
23:32a simple white dial,
23:34Roman numerals,
23:35two hands and a sweep second.
23:38The second hand moved steadily, click by
23:41click, the small sound filling the room
23:43with a rhythm she had not heard in three
23:45months.
23:47Her mother's workshop had sounded like
23:48this
23:50all day,
23:51every day.
23:52She had grown up falling asleep to this
23:54sound. She reached out. She placed her
23:57palm flat on the mantel next to the
23:58clock and she felt the stone cool and
24:00solid under her hand.
24:02She looked at the clock face. The time
24:04was wrong.
24:06It read 7 minutes past 2:00. It was
24:08closer to 11:00 in the morning, but the
24:10clock was running, which meant someone
24:13had wound it.
24:14And then she noticed the dust. The
24:16mantel was covered in dust. The clock
24:18was not.
24:20Someone had set the clock in that spot
24:21recently, lifted it, cleaned the base,
24:23and set it back.
24:25There was a clean circle under the
24:26brass, no bigger than her hand.
24:29Someone had been here.
24:31Not 30 years ago, not ten, within the
24:34week.
24:36Dell stepped back from the fireplace.
24:38She listened. Somewhere above her in the
24:40upper floor a floorboard shifted.
24:43Not footsteps,
24:44just the small groan of wood settling.
24:48The sound a house makes when the
24:49temperature changes.
24:51She waited.
24:53Nothing else came. She set her toolbox
24:55on the stone floor beside the hearth.
24:57She knelt. She opened the lid.
25:00She took out her mother's small LED
25:02headlamp and strapped it around her
25:04forehead.
25:05She took out the loop and put it in her
25:07jacket pocket.
25:09She took out the small notebook her
25:10mother had labeled in careful block
25:12letters on the cover inventory and a
25:14pencil.
25:15She stood up. She walked a slow circle
25:17around the room writing.
25:19Fireplace stone functional hearth swept
25:22recently.
25:23Shelves built in approximately 40 ft of
25:25linear storage. Books condition unknown.
25:29Table oak overturned near north wall
25:31legs intact.
25:32One brass clock running maker unknown
25:35requires further examination.
25:37Floor hexagonal tile green glaze
25:39approximately 80% intact. She wrote the
25:42way her mother had taught her to write
25:44when she was ten and learning to
25:46inventory a job.
25:49Facts, not feelings.
25:52The feelings would come later.
25:54They always did.
25:57She climbed the inside stairs that
25:59evening.
26:00They were narrow and curled against the
26:02inside of the stone wall and emerged
26:04through a hatch in the floor of the
26:06upper story.
26:08She lifted the hatch and climbed
26:09through. The upper room was round. The
26:12three tall windows led in the last of
26:14the afternoon light broken by iron and
26:16the dome overhead echoed her breathing
26:18back to her softly. The floor was wood,
26:21oak. Wide planks warped in places where
26:24water had come in through the broken
26:26windows.
26:27A long workbench ran along the north
26:29curve of the wall and above the
26:30workbench mounted on wooden pegs in
26:32careful rows hung clocks.
26:35Dell counted them before she realized
26:37she was counting. Forty-two. They hung
26:39in four rows. Pocket clocks, table
26:42clocks, small wall pieces.
26:45Some had cases of wood, some of brass,
26:48some of polished steel. None of them
26:50were running.
26:52All of them, every single one had their
26:54faces turned outward, their dials
26:56visible.
26:57She walked closer.
26:59She stopped two feet from the bench and
27:01raised the loop to her eye. The faces
27:03were strange.
27:05They were not painted.
27:06They were raised.
27:08Every numeral stood up from the dial
27:10like a small sculpture.
27:12Every hour marker was textured
27:14differently from the one next to it so
27:16that twelve was a smooth dome and three
27:18was a ridged bar and six was a cluster
27:20of three raised dots.
27:22The hands were short.
27:24The hour hands ended in rounded knobs
27:26and the minute hands ended in flat
27:28spades and every hand was shaped so that
27:30a fingertip could tell them apart
27:31without seeing them. Dell lowered the
27:33loop.
27:34She looked at the clocks for a long
27:36time.
27:37She was not thinking about her mother.
27:40She was not thinking about Rhett
27:41Carlyle. She was not thinking about the
27:43folder in her backpack or the shelter in
27:46Beckley or the two hundred and
27:47eighty-five dollars folded in her
27:49jacket.
27:50She was thinking these were made for
27:52people who cannot see. And then
27:54forty-two. And then who were they for?
27:57She slept that first night in the lower
27:58room. The arched door closed and barred
28:01with the old iron hook that had been
28:03fitted into the frame a century ago.
28:06She lay on her camping pad on the
28:07hexagonal tile floor near the hearth
28:09with the brass clock ticking above her
28:12and she listened to the house breathe.
28:14The wind pressed against the stone. The
28:16windows above her creaked. Somewhere
28:19outside an owl called twice and then
28:21went silent.
28:22She slept better than she had slept in
28:24three months. She did not know yet
28:26whether that was a good sign or a bad
28:28one.
28:29Morning came gray and slow.
28:32Dell boiled water on a small camp stove
28:34she had taken from the Subaru and made
28:36instant coffee in her mother's tin cup.
28:39She sat on the stone step of the arched
28:41doorway with the cup in both hands and
28:43watched the clearing fill with light.
28:46She was writing in the inventory
28:47notebook, the pencil moving slowly when
28:49she heard the engine. It was small, a
28:51motorbike maybe,
28:53not a car.
28:55The sound came up the footpath from the
28:57direction of the church and stopped at
28:58the edge of the clearing.
29:00A woman walked a dark red Yamaha Dual
29:03Sport the last 10 yd and leaned it
29:05against a tree.
29:06She was tall, Dell's age or a little
29:08older and she wore a canvas work coat
29:11and jeans tucked into muddy boots.
29:14Her hair was the color of straw and cut
29:16short at the jaw.
29:17She had the kind of face that looked
29:19unimpressed on principle. The woman did
29:21not act surprised to see Dell.
29:23She did not act surprised by the house.
29:26She walked up to the arched door and
29:28stopped 3 ft short.
29:30Her name was Perry, she told Dell. She
29:32had come to wind the clock. Dell was the
29:35new steward.
29:36Dell set the coffee down on the stone
29:38step and stood.
29:40Delphine Marchetti. Odette had texted
29:42Perry yesterday, she went on,
29:45had said somebody had finally signed.
29:47Perry had figured she would come up and
29:49introduce herself before Dell called the
29:51sheriff on a trespasser.
29:53Her mouth twitched.
29:55Dell wouldn't have been the first.
29:57Dell asked how long she had been coming
29:59up here. Four years.
30:01Every seven days unless the road was
30:03out.
30:04The clock would not run past eight days
30:06on a single wind, so she had kept it at
30:08seven to be safe.
30:10Perry looked past Dell through the open
30:12doorway at the brass clock on the
30:13mantel. Her face shifted slightly.
30:17It was not an expression Dell could
30:19name.
30:20Henriette had been her great-aunt
30:22on her mother's side. Perry had not
30:24known her.
30:25Henrietta had died before Perry was
30:27born, but Perry's mother used to tell
30:29stories and when Perry was 22 she had
30:32come out here one day on a dare and had
30:34found this place and had started coming
30:35back.
30:37She did not own it, had never tried to.
30:40She just had not wanted Henriette's
30:41clock to stop. Dell did not know what to
30:43say to that. So she said after a moment
30:46the only thing she could think of,
30:48she offered coffee.
30:50Perry's eyebrows went up a quarter inch.
30:52That was not what she had expected.
30:55Dell admitted she wasn't sure why she
30:57had said it.
30:58Black Perry told her. Dell poured a
31:00second cup.
31:01They sat on the stone steps side by
31:03side, two women who did not know each
31:05other drinking bad instant coffee out of
31:07tin cups in front of a stone house that
31:09neither of them owned. Perry told her in
31:11short sentences who Henriette Veltri had
31:14been.
31:15A watchmaker, trained in Geneva as a
31:17young woman in the sixties.
31:20Came home to West Virginia when her
31:22father got sick.
31:23Built the stone house herself over seven
31:26years with the help of a mason from
31:27Lewisburg.
31:29Never married, never had children,
31:32never advertised,
31:34did not take on apprentices,
31:37was considered in Beckwith Hollow a
31:38strange woman who kept to herself. She
31:41hadn't been strange, Perry added.
31:43She had been busy. There was a
31:45difference.
31:46Dell asked what she had been busy with.
31:49Perry was quiet for a moment.
31:51She looked at the trees.
31:53She could show Dell upstairs if she
31:55wanted.
31:56There were forty-two of them.
31:58Dell had already seen them.
32:00Perry could tell from her face
32:02Dell had seen them. Then Dell already
32:04knew what Henriette had been busy with.
32:06She had been making clocks for people
32:08who could not see them.
32:09Perry did not know why. She did not know
32:12who Henriette had been making them for.
32:14She only knew that when Henriette had
32:16died there had been forty-two unfinished
32:19and nobody had ever come for them and
32:21Perry did not have the skill to finish
32:22them and she had been winding
32:24Henriette's brass table clock for four
32:26years because it had been the only thing
32:28she could think of to do. Perry turned
32:30the tin cup in her hands.
32:33Dell was a clockmaker, Odette had said.
32:36On the intake form.
32:39A clock repairer Dell corrected.
32:41There was a difference too. Could she
32:43finish them?
32:45Dell looked at her hands around the tin
32:47cup.
32:48Her mother had always said hands tell
32:50the truth before the mouth does.
32:52Dell's hands were steady.
32:54The caffeine should have made them
32:56shake.
32:57They did not.
32:58She did not know.
33:00That was a better answer than yes, Perry
33:01said. They sat in silence for another
33:04long moment.
33:06The brass clock ticked inside the house
33:08behind them. The forest shifted.
33:11A single leaf detached from a sugar
33:13maple and spiraled slowly down into the
33:15ferns.
33:17Perry set her cup down on the step.
33:19She reached into the inside pocket of
33:21her coat and took out a folded sheet of
33:23paper white printed on both sides.
33:26She unfolded it slowly and set it on the
33:28step between them. Before Dell said
33:30anything else, Perry told her Dell
33:32should see this.
33:34There was a man in Richmond named
33:35Casimir Valois. He collected.
33:38He had been in touch with Perry since
33:40last year.
33:41He knew what was in that room upstairs.
33:44He had offered $44,000 for the whole
33:46collection, the clocks, the bench, the
33:49tools.
33:50He would come get them.
33:52He would pay cash on signature.
33:54Perry had been waiting for a steward
33:55because she could not sell them.
33:57She was not family in any way the law
33:59recognized.
34:01But Dell could.
34:02She could transfer them under her
34:04steward authority and that money would
34:06go to whoever Dell said it would go to.
34:08Dell looked down at the paper. Perry's
34:10voice did not plead. It stated.
34:13She was telling Dell this up front
34:15because she did not play games.
34:17$44,000 would pay for the long-term
34:19license. It would pay to fix the dome.
34:22It would pay to put glass in the
34:23windows. It would save this house. And
34:26Dell needed to think about that because
34:28the house was what Henriette had built
34:30with her hands and the clocks were what
34:31she had not finished. And Perry did not
34:34believe the dead cared about unfinished
34:35work.
34:36She believed they cared about what the
34:38living kept standing. Dell folded the
34:40paper slowly. She did not say yes. She
34:43did not say no. She said she would think
34:45about it. Perry nodded once. She stood.
34:49She picked up her tin cup and set it on
34:51the step next to Dell's. She came every
34:53Monday to wind the clock.
34:56Dell did not have to be there when she
34:58did.
34:59The door opened from the outside with
35:01any strong pull.
35:03The house did not lock.
35:05It never had.
35:07Henriette had not believed in locks on
35:09the inside of a door.
35:11She had said the only person who ever
35:13came to the house was someone who was
35:15trying to find it. Perry walked to her
35:17motorcycle.
35:18She lifted it off the tree.
35:20She pushed it down the footpath toward
35:22the clearing's edge and before she
35:24disappeared into the trees she turned
35:26once and raised a hand.
35:28Not a wave,
35:30just an acknowledgement,
35:32the way one worker acknowledges another
35:34at the end of a long shift.
35:36Dell sat alone on the stone step for a
35:39long time after she was gone. The paper
35:41lay on the step beside her.
35:44$44,000,
35:46enough to make the 90 days matter,
35:49enough to make the long-term license a
35:51real thing instead of a sentence on a
35:53county form,
35:54enough to keep the roof from collapsing
35:56on the clocks Henriette had made, enough
35:59to make Dell someone who had done what
36:01the dead woman could not finish, but
36:03also enough to sell 42 unfinished
36:05promises to a man in Richmond who would
36:08put them behind glass in a private
36:09collection and never let them be touched
36:11again.
36:13Dell picked up the folded paper. She
36:15slid it into the inside pocket of her
36:17denim jacket where she had put the money
36:19from Marguerite, where she had put the
36:21certified letter from her mother before
36:23that, where she had put every piece of
36:25paper that mattered. She went back
36:27inside.
36:28She climbed the inside stairs again.
36:31She stood in the upper room under the
36:33metal dome and she looked at the 42
36:35clock faces hanging in their quiet rows.
36:38She reached out. She touched one of
36:40them,
36:42the numeral 12, a small smooth brass
36:44dome.
36:45The pad of her finger could read it as
36:47well as her eye could.
36:49She closed her eyes.
36:51She tried to feel the number without
36:53looking.
36:54She could. She stood there for a long
36:56time with her eyes closed and her finger
36:58resting on the brass dome of a numeral
37:00that a woman named Henriette Veltri had
37:02carved by hand for someone who was not
37:04here anymore and might never have been.
37:07Downstairs on the mantel, the brass
37:08clock kept ticking.
37:10The second hand swept past the 12,
37:13then past the 12 again,
37:15then past the 12 again. Somewhere
37:17between those sweeps, Dell understood
37:19that she was going to open the drawer of
37:21the workbench and look for whatever
37:22Henriette had left behind in writing.
37:25She understood it the way you understand
37:27a thing you have already decided without
37:29having said it out loud.
37:32She opened her eyes.
37:34She walked to the workbench. She pulled
37:36open the drawer. Inside was a leather
37:38notebook cracked at the spine, its cover
37:40darkened to the color of molasses.
37:43The front was blank. The pages were
37:45handwritten in a slanted careful cursive
37:48in ink that had faded in places to the
37:50color of weak tea.
37:52Dell lifted it out with both hands.
37:55She carried it to the window.
37:57She opened it. The first page was dated
37:59March of 1983.
38:01The handwriting was Henriette's.
38:04Dell knew this before she had read a
38:06single word because the capital letters
38:08leaned the same way they leaned on the
38:10paper that had come up to the house from
38:12the county clerk, the paper that had
38:14Henriette's recorded signature from 1976
38:17when she had first paid property tax on
38:19the parcel. Dell read the first entry.
38:22The retinal specialist in Charleston had
38:24confirmed what Henriette had already
38:26known.
38:27She would lose the sight in her left eye
38:29within three years and the sight in her
38:31right eye within seven.
38:33The disease was inherited.
38:35Her father had had it. Her grandmother
38:38had had it. She had been waiting for it
38:40her whole life.
38:42Now that it was here, she found she was
38:44less afraid than she had expected to be.
38:47She was angry, but she was not afraid.
38:49There was work she had been meaning to
38:51do, and now she had a deadline. Dell
38:53lowered the notebook. She stood in the
38:56round upper room with 42 clocks on the
38:58wall behind her and the November light
39:00coming in gray through the arched
39:01windows and the metal dome dripping moss
39:03above her head.
39:05She did not cry. She had done her crying
39:08in the first month after the fire, and
39:10after that she had not had any left to
39:12spend on the small things. This was a
39:14small thing.
39:16Henriette had been dead for 38 years.
39:18Her sentences had been sitting in a
39:20drawer for all of them waiting for
39:21someone to read them.
39:23Dell turned the page. The first clock
39:25would be for a woman named Oluwaseun
39:27Adetola in Charleston. She taught second
39:30grade. She had written to Henriette the
39:32previous spring to ask whether such a
39:34thing was possible. Henriette had been
39:37thinking about her letter for seven
39:38months.
39:39The answer was yes. The answer had
39:42always been yes.
39:43She had only needed someone to ask.
39:46Dell closed the notebook.
39:48She held it against her chest with both
39:50hands. Outside the arched windows the
39:52forest moved. A wind came up from the
39:54valley and pushed through the canopy and
39:56leaves fell in small bright showers past
39:58the glassless frames and the metal dome
40:00above her head rang faintly a single low
40:02note as if something very large had
40:04struck a bell very far away.
40:07Dell stood there and listened.
40:09She did not know yet what she was going
40:11to do,
40:12but she knew who she was going to call
40:13first. The notebook stayed on the
40:15workbench for three days before Dell
40:17opened it again.
40:19She told herself she was giving herself
40:21time to think.
40:23She was not.
40:24She was afraid of what the second page
40:26would ask of her
40:28because the first page had already
40:30asked,
40:31because the first page had set a name.
40:34And a woman named Oluwaseun Adetola was
40:37either still alive somewhere in
40:39Charleston or she was not, and either
40:41answer was going to change what Dell did
40:43next. She worked on the house instead.
40:46She told herself this was reasonable.
40:48The inventory was due in 30 days.
40:51She had used four already. She had 26
40:54left to catalog two floors of a stone
40:56building that had been sitting
40:57undisturbed since 1988.
41:00So she cataloged. She measured the lower
41:03room with her mother's steel tape.
41:05She counted the hexagonal tiles.
41:08She mapped the shelves.
41:09She opened every small box on every
41:11shelf and found inside them the things a
41:13watchmaker leaves behind when she dies
41:16without warning.
41:18A roll of pivot wire.
41:19A set of brass bushings sorted by
41:21diameter.
41:23Three vials of oil, two of them
41:25evaporated to a dark residue.
41:27A pair of tweezers wrapped in a cloth
41:29that had once been white.
41:31A sketch in pencil on the back of a
41:33grocery list of what might have been a
41:35balance wheel
41:36or might have been a flower. She wrote
41:38it all down. Facts, not feelings. The
41:42feeling sat in a drawer on the second
41:43floor and waited.
41:45On the fourth morning, Dell climbed the
41:47inside stairs with the headlamp strapped
41:49on and the notebook pressed against her
41:51ribs where she could feel its edge
41:53through her jacket.
41:55She sat on the stool at the workbench.
41:57She opened the notebook to page two.
41:59Henriette had written about Olausson for
42:01a long time.
42:02She had written about the letter the
42:04woman had sent in the fall of 1982,
42:07three paragraphs on a sheet of pale blue
42:09stationery asking whether a clock could
42:12be made that a blind person could read
42:15without being clumsy about it.
42:17Without the raised print being so coarse
42:19that it felt childish, without the hands
42:22being so sharp they cut the finger that
42:24brushed them. Henriette had kept the
42:26letter.
42:27She had copied it into the notebook word
42:30for word. I do not want a toy. I want a
42:32clock.
42:33I want to touch my wrist and know what
42:35time it is without asking the person
42:37next to me and without pretending I
42:38know.
42:39I am a teacher. The children I teach
42:42deserve a teacher who knows what time it
42:43is.
42:45Dell read it twice.
42:46She read it a third time with her finger
42:48moving across the words the way she had
42:50seen her mother do when she was working
42:52out the problem in a bent pivot.
42:55The slow finger,
42:56the pause at each phrase.
42:58She reached the end of the entry.
43:00Henriette had written, I will deliver
43:02this one in person. I will not mail it.
43:05I will not trust the post office with
43:07the first.
43:09Dell lifted the notebook.
43:11She turned to the back of the book and
43:13ran her thumb along the inside of the
43:14cover.
43:16There was a slit cut into the leather.
43:18She slid two fingers inside.
43:21A folded sheet of paper came out.
43:23It was blue.
43:25It was pale.
43:27It was the stationery.
43:29The original letter,
43:31not the copy.
43:32The letter Oluwaseun Adetola had written
43:36in October 1982.
43:38Dell held it between her palms and did
43:40not open it.
43:42She did not need to. She had already
43:44read it.
43:46She stood up.
43:47She went to the arched window.
43:49She stared out at the forest where the
43:51November wind was moving the last of the
43:53leaves, and she said out loud to no one
43:55in particular that if Oluwasan was still
43:58alive, she was 71 years old.
44:02If she was still alive, she had been
44:04waiting for this clock since Ronald
44:05Reagan was president.
44:07Quieter to herself, she was probably not
44:10still alive. Quieter still.
44:13Dell had to find out anyway.
44:15The library in Beckwith Hollow kept
44:17short hours.
44:19It was not a library the way a city
44:20library is a library.
44:22It was two rooms attached to the back of
44:24the Blue Hour Diner with a reading table
44:26and six shelves and a single desktop
44:28computer that connected to the internet
44:30through a cable that went across the
44:31parking lot and plugged into Shoshana
44:33Delacroix's coffee shop next door.
44:36Shoshana ran both the coffee and the
44:38books.
44:39She was 34 and wore her black hair in a
44:41long braid and had opinions about most
44:43things which she expressed in sentences
44:45shorter than her hair.
44:47Dell paid $2 for an hour on the
44:49computer.
44:50She sat down with the notebook in her
44:52lap.
44:54She typed Oluwaseun Adetola into the
44:56search bar. The first result was the
44:58profile page from a small school in
45:00Charleston.
45:02The school taught adaptive skills to
45:04adults with vision loss.
45:06The profile had a photograph.
45:09A tall woman, dark skin, silver hair cut
45:11close, wearing a navy blazer and a
45:13necklace of amber beads.
45:15The caption said she had taught second
45:17grade in Kanawha County from 1979 to
45:192004 and had served as a mentor at the
45:22school since 2015.
45:24The profile had been updated in June of
45:262024.
45:28Dell scrolled down. The last paragraph
45:30of the profile quoted Oluwaseun.
45:33She had once had a friend in the
45:34mountains who was a watchmaker.
45:37The friend had promised to make her a
45:38clock she could read.
45:40The friend had passed away before she
45:41finished.
45:43Oluwaseun still thought about that clock
45:45sometimes.
45:47She knew there was no one left to wait
45:48for,
45:49but she waited anyway.
45:51Habits were hard to break at her age.
45:53Dell read it once. She read it twice.
45:57She did not read it a third time. She
45:59stood up from the computer and walked
46:00out of the library and across the gravel
46:02lot and back through the trees to the
46:04stone house, and she climbed the inside
46:06stairs and she stood in front of the row
46:08of 42 clocks on the wall, and she lifted
46:11the one at the far left down from its
46:13wooden peg, the one with the small
46:15handwritten tag taped to the back. OA
46:18Charleston, incomplete, balance
46:21uninstalled, mainspring untested, dial
46:24done.
46:25Dell carried it to the workbench. She
46:28set it in the pool of lamplight.
46:30She looked at it
46:31because this was the moment and she knew
46:33it was the moment and she also knew she
46:35had no business doing it, because she
46:37was not Henriette,
46:39because she was Lucienne's daughter,
46:41and Lucienne had been a seamstress's
46:43machine mechanic and Dell had grown up
46:45turning the wrench on heads that weighed
46:4740 lbs and tying off bobbins with two
46:50fingers,
46:51and the finest work she had done on her
46:53own was a quarter repeater pocket watch
46:56that an estate attorney had paid her
46:57$200 to put back together because the
47:00client wanted it to tick during the
47:02funeral. Because this clock was not a
47:04repair,
47:05this was an unfinished thing.
47:08This was somebody else's design and
47:10somebody else's hand and somebody else's
47:12judgment.
47:13And the person who could have told Dell
47:15what she was doing wrong had been in a
47:17Beckwith County cemetery
47:19since 1988.
47:21And yet,
47:22Dell opened the toolbox.
47:25She lifted the loop. She bent over the
47:27clock.
47:28She did not blink for a long time.
47:31The movement was mostly complete. The
47:33balance was wrapped in a scrap of waxed
47:35paper in a small compartment under the
47:37dial.
47:39The main spring was wound tight and
47:41locked.
47:42The hands lay in a small envelope marked
47:44hands in Henriette's careful cursive.
47:47The dial was finished.
47:4912 raised numerals, each shaped
47:52differently.
47:53A 12 that was a dome,
47:55a one that was a short bar, a two that
47:58was two short bars,
48:00a three that was a ridged bar,
48:02a six that was three dots,
48:05a nine that was a textured spiral.
48:08Dell ran her fingertip across them with
48:10her eyes closed and she could read every
48:11one of them. She breathed out slow. She
48:14unwrapped the balance. She fitted it.
48:17She tested the hairspring with the
48:18smallest of her mother's tweezers.
48:20The spring was intact.
48:22The balance seated. She oiled the pivots
48:25with the vial that still had oil in it.
48:27She lifted the hands from their envelope
48:30and set them one at a time.
48:32Hour hand, minute hand, second hand. She
48:36let out the stop. She touched the
48:38balance wheel with the tip of a brass
48:40pin. The clock started. The tick was
48:43faint but steady.
48:44Dell put the loop aside. She watched the
48:47second hand sweep.
48:48She watched the minute hand twitch
48:50forward one position. She watched the
48:52clock run. For 20 minutes she sat on the
48:55stool and did not move except to breathe
48:58because the balance was holding,
49:00Because the escapement was clean.
49:02Because the thing she had just done with
49:04her hands and a room on the second floor
49:06of a house that she did not own
49:08was something her mother would have
49:09called decent work, and her mother had
49:11been stingy with that word.
49:13Decent work.
49:15Dell lifted the clock.
49:17She held it to her ear.
49:19The ticking was there right against her
49:20skull, small and alive. She slept that
49:23night with the clock on the hexagonal
49:25tile floor beside her camping pad inside
49:27a sock to protect it with her hand on
49:29top of the sock.
49:31She slept the way she had not slept
49:33since July.
49:34She woke once past 3:00 in the morning
49:36to listen to it.
49:38It was still running.
49:40She went back to sleep. The drive to
49:42Charleston took an hour and 20 minutes.
49:44The Subaru's heater worked only on the
49:46lower vents, so Dell drove with her
49:48hands cold and her feet warm, and the
49:50clock sat in the passenger seat inside a
49:52wooden box she had taken from one of the
49:54shelves downstairs wrapped in two layers
49:56of flannel strapped in place with the
49:58seat belt. The address from the school
50:00website was a brick two-story on a quiet
50:03street in the Edgewood neighborhood.
50:05A ramp led up to the porch.
50:07A hand-sewn flag with a sunflower hung
50:09by the door.
50:11Dell parked.
50:12She sat for a long moment with her hands
50:14on the wheel. She rehearsed what she was
50:16going to say and then abandoned the
50:17rehearsal because every version sounded
50:19worse than the one before it.
50:21She got out of the car. She lifted the
50:23box. She climbed the ramp. She rang the
50:25bell. A dog barked once somewhere
50:28inside.
50:29Then footsteps.
50:30Slow but even.
50:33Then the door opened.
50:35Olawasan Adetola stood in the doorway.
50:38She was taller than she had looked in
50:40the photograph.
50:42She wore a cardigan the color of wet
50:44slate over a cream blouse.
50:46Her hair was pulled back from her face
50:48in a soft silver roll.
50:50Her eyes were clouded with the
50:52particular pale that Dell had seen in
50:54her mother's optometry clients, the kind
50:56of clouding that was not blindness but
50:58was no longer sight. Olawasan turned her
51:01face a quarter inch listening.
51:03She asked who was at her door.
51:06Dell cleared her throat and gave her
51:07name the town she had come up from and
51:09fact that she was the new steward of a
51:11house that had used to belong to a woman
51:13named Henriette Beltree.
51:16said she thought Henriette had written
51:18to Olouassan a long time ago.
51:21She thought Henriette had promised her
51:22something she had not lived to finish.
51:24The silence that followed was not short.
51:27It was long enough for Dell to count ten
51:29breaths.
51:30Olouassan did not move. Her hands stayed
51:33on the door frame. Her face did not
51:35change.
51:36Finally quietly she said Dell had better
51:39come inside. The living room was warm
51:41and smelled of bergamot.
51:43Olouassan moved through it the way a
51:45person moves through their own house
51:47when they have memorized it inch by
51:48inch.
51:50She did not reach. She did not fumble.
51:52She crossed to a wing back chair and sat
51:54down and gestured to the sofa across
51:56from it.
51:57Dell sat. She placed the wooden box on
52:00the coffee table between them.
52:02She unwrapped the flannel. She lifted
52:04the clock.
52:06She had finished it she told Olouassan.
52:08Henriette's notes had said it was meant
52:10for her. Olouassan did not reach for it
52:12right away. She folded her hands in her
52:15lap.
52:16She was quiet for long enough that Dell
52:18thought maybe she had not understood.
52:21Then she asked Dell to describe it
52:23first.
52:24She wanted to know what her hands were
52:26about to touch. Dell described it. The
52:28brass case, the white dial, the twelve
52:31raised numerals each one different, the
52:33short hour hand with the rounded knob,
52:36the spade shaped minute hand, the thin
52:39sweep second,
52:40the small key on the back for winding.
52:44She described the weight.
52:45She described the sound.
52:48Olouassan listened.
52:50When Dell finished she held out both her
52:52hands palms up.
52:55Dell placed the clock in them.
52:57Olouassan's hands closed around the
52:58brass case. She did not say anything.
53:02Her head tilted tilted
53:03Her fingertip went to the dial.
53:05She found the twelve first. She felt the
53:08dome. She found the three, the ridged
53:11bar. She found the six, the three dots.
53:15She did not smile.
53:17Her face stayed still.
53:19Then she set the clock down on her knee.
53:22She drew her hand back.
53:24Her voice was gentler than Dell had
53:26expected and also harder.
53:28Dell had made this herself. Dell had
53:31finished what Henriette had started.
53:33The dial was Henriette's work.
53:35The balance Dell had set.
53:38The hands she had installed.
53:40How long since she had done it?
53:43Yesterday afternoon.
53:45Oluwaseun nodded slowly.
53:47She turned her face toward the window
53:49where the midmorning light was coming in
53:51through a blue curtain. [clears throat]
53:52She asked whether she could tell Dell
53:54what was wrong with it. Dell's chest
53:56tightened. Yes, please. The numerals
53:59were too shallow. Oluwaseun could read
54:01them, but she had to press. She would
54:03wear them smooth in a year.
54:06Henriette would have known that. She
54:08would have made them deeper on the final
54:10cut. Dell had left them where Henriette
54:12had had them for the proof.
54:15Oluwaseun's fingertip touched the dial
54:17again.
54:18The hour hand and the minute hand were
54:20both metal. They could be told apart by
54:23shape, but when they overlapped at the
54:25top of the hour, Oluwaseun could not
54:27find the edge of one against the other.
54:30The minute hand should be covered in a
54:32thin wrap, thread or a soft wire,
54:35something that felt different from
54:37brass.
54:38Henriette would have done that. Dell had
54:40not known.
54:42Dell could not have known. She had not
54:44asked.
54:45The words landed quietly, not sharp, but
54:48they landed. Oluwaseun turned her face
54:51back toward Dell.
54:53And the ticking.
54:54The ticking was small.
54:56For a woman who had her hearing, this
54:58was a lovely clock.
55:00For a woman who had lost her left ear in
55:02a stroke in 2011,
55:04this was a clock Oluwaseun had to hold
55:06up to her face to hear.
55:09Henriette would have put it in a
55:10resonator case,
55:12a thin wood chamber behind the brass.
55:15It made the sound carry.
55:18Oluwaseun's grandfather had had one as a
55:20boy.
55:21Henriette would have known.
55:24Dell was looking at her hands because
55:26her hands had done decent work, because
55:29her hands had done the wrong decent
55:30work, because she had made a thing that
55:33functioned without once asking the
55:35person it was meant to function for.
55:38Oluwaseun held the clock back out toward
55:40her.
55:41Take it.
55:43It was not finished, not for her.
55:47Dell took it.
55:48The brass was warm from Oluwaseun's
55:50hands.
55:52She did not know what to say.
55:54She said finally that she was sorry.
55:56Oluwaseun told her not to be sorry,
55:59to be careful.
56:01There was a difference.
56:03Her clouded eyes did not blink.
56:05Dell had come up here with the thing she
56:07had made, and she had brought it to the
56:09person who was going to use it.
56:11That was more than most people did.
56:14Most people made the thing, and then
56:16they waited for the user to be grateful.
56:18Henriette had not waited.
56:21She had asked first.
56:23She had written to Oluwaseun three times
56:25before she had started.
56:26Oluwaseun still had the letters. Dell
56:29lifted her head. She had kept them.
56:31Oluwaseun had kept them.
56:33They were in a box on the shelf behind
56:35Dell,
56:36the one with the lid taped shut because
56:38her cat used to open it.
56:40Oluwaseun's mouth did something that was
56:42almost a smile.
56:43She had kept them because for a long
56:45time they were the only letters she had
56:47from anyone who understood that she was
56:49not a problem to be solved. She was a
56:51woman who needed a clock. There was a
56:54difference. Henriette had known the
56:56difference. Dell sat with that sentence
56:58for a long moment.
57:00Then she asked Oluwaseun to help her.
57:02Oluwaseun did not answer right away.
57:05Help how? Dell did not know enough.
57:08She could set a balance.
57:10She could install hands.
57:12She could read what Henriette had
57:13written and she could follow the pieces
57:15Henriette had already made, but she
57:17could not design what she had not lived.
57:20She could not feel what she had not
57:22felt.
57:23There were 42 of these upstairs in
57:25Henriette's workshop. 38 of them were
57:27more or less at the stage this one had
57:29been.
57:31If Dell kept working the way she had
57:32just worked, she was going to make 42
57:35clocks that nobody could really use.
57:38She needed Olawassen to tell her what
57:40the people who needed them actually
57:41needed. Olawassen was quiet. The quiet
57:44lasted long enough that Dell thought the
57:46answer was going to be no. Then
57:48Olawassen told her that she was the
57:50first person who had ever asked her that
57:52question in that order.
57:53Most people asked her what she needed
57:55and then they told her what she needed.
57:58Dell had asked and then she had waited.
58:00That was unusual.
58:02Dell's mother had taught her to wait
58:04after a question.
58:05She had said the answer that came before
58:07the silence ended was not the real
58:09answer. Dell's mother sounded like a
58:11woman Olawassen would have liked. She
58:14had been.
58:15The past tense sat in the room.
58:18Olawassen did not comment on it.
58:21She did not reach for Dell's hand.
58:23She did not say she was sorry for her
58:25loss. The sentence Dell had heard 300
58:28times in 3 months and had come to
58:30despise.
58:32She simply nodded once slowly as if
58:34filing the information away. Then she
58:37gave Dell a name,
58:38a man named Bo Lemaitre, an engineer.
58:42He worked at a research lab in
58:44Morgantown that developed assistive
58:45technology. He was deaf in one ear.
58:49He was not blind, but he thought about
58:50touch and sound the way a sighted person
58:53did not.
58:54Olawassen knew him through the school.
58:56He had done work for them before. She
58:59would give Dell his email. Dell would
59:01write to him and tell him what she was
59:03doing. He would say yes. He always said
59:06yes to anything that was not a
59:08conference call. Dell asked why he would
59:10help.
59:11Because he believed, as Oluwasan did,
59:14that a thing designed for a disabled
59:16person, without the input of a disabled
59:18person, was a thing designed for the
59:20designer's conscience,
59:22not for the user.
59:24He was tired of that kind of work.
59:26He was looking for the other kind.
59:29Oluwasan paused.
59:30And because Oluwasan would tell him to,
59:33Dell nodded. She wrote down the email on
59:36the inside of her mother's inventory
59:37notebook with the stub of a pencil.
59:40Her hand was not entirely steady. The
59:42letters came out slightly off level.
59:45Oluwasan's last instructions were plain.
59:48Bring the clock back when the numerals
59:50were deeper.
59:51Bring it back when the minute hand was
59:52wrapped.
59:54Bring it back when the resonator case
59:55was behind the brass.
59:57She would tell Dell then if it was
59:59finished, not before. Dell promised she
1:00:02would. Oluwasan's voice softened.
1:00:05There was one more thing.
1:00:07Thank you, she told Dell for coming
1:00:08yourself.
1:00:10For a long time she had thought no one
1:00:11would.
1:00:13It was a small thing to drive an hour.
1:00:15It was also not a small thing. She knew
1:00:18the difference. Dell drove home in a
1:00:20silence that was different from the
1:00:21silence she had driven down in.
1:00:24The box with the clock inside it rode in
1:00:26the passenger seat the way a passenger
1:00:28rides.
1:00:29She did not play music. She did not stop
1:00:32for coffee.
1:00:34She drove with the heater on the low
1:00:35vents and the November lights slanting
1:00:37across her windshield in long yellow
1:00:39bars. And when she pulled into
1:00:41Marguerite's lot behind the garage, she
1:00:44sat in the Subaru for a long time with
1:00:46her hands on the wheel.
1:00:49She was not crying. She was thinking.
1:00:52She was thinking about her mother's
1:00:54three certified letters.
1:00:56About the way Ret Carlyle had read them
1:00:58and had decided he knew better than the
1:01:00woman who was living in his building.
1:01:02About the way she herself had just
1:01:04driven an hour south with a clock in a
1:01:06box and had sat down in front of a
1:01:0871-year-old woman and had assumed
1:01:11somewhere underneath her careful
1:01:12intentions that she already knew what
1:01:15the clock was to do. She was thinking
1:01:17about how the difference between those
1:01:18two things was the width of a single
1:01:20sentence.
1:01:22Did you ask her first?
1:01:24She had not.
1:01:25She was going to.
1:01:27From now on, she was going to. She wrote
1:01:29to Bo Le Maitre that night from
1:01:31Shoshana's coffee shop on the public
1:01:33laptop with a cup of black coffee going
1:01:35cold at her elbow.
1:01:37She wrote in short sentences because her
1:01:40mother had taught her to write in short
1:01:41sentences when the content was heavy.
1:01:44She told him what she was doing.
1:01:47She told him about Henriette.
1:01:49She told him about Oluwaseun.
1:01:52She told him about the vibration
1:01:53mechanism Oluwaseun had mentioned and
1:01:56about the resonator case and about the
1:01:57deeper numerals and she told him she did
1:01:59not know enough to do any of this alone.
1:02:02She hit send. She closed the laptop.
1:02:05Shoshana behind the counter slid a
1:02:07second cup of coffee across to her
1:02:09without asking.
1:02:10Shoshana had opinions as noted, but she
1:02:12expressed most of them through gestures.
1:02:15The second cup was a gesture.
1:02:18Bo wrote back the next morning. The
1:02:20reply was two paragraphs.
1:02:22The first was him saying yes.
1:02:24The second was him saying he would be
1:02:26free for a video call that evening and
1:02:28could Dell be at a computer with a
1:02:29camera at 7:00? Dell could. She borrowed
1:02:32the camera equipped laptop in Shoshana's
1:02:35back office.
1:02:36Bo's face appeared on the screen at 4
1:02:38minutes past 7:00, which Dell
1:02:41appreciated because it suggested he had
1:02:43been nervous about being punctual, which
1:02:46suggested he was a serious person.
1:02:49Mid 40s, curly brown hair going gray at
1:02:52the temples,
1:02:53a jaw that was mostly stubble and the
1:02:55kind of glasses that slid down the
1:02:57bridge of his nose.
1:02:59He wore a flannel shirt. His office was
1:03:01full of circuit boards. Show him the
1:03:03clock, he told her.
1:03:05Dell held it up to the camera.
1:03:07He had her turn it,
1:03:09open the back,
1:03:10show him the balance, the escapement,
1:03:13the mainspring.
1:03:15She did.
1:03:16He did not say he was impressed.
1:03:19He also did not say he was unimpressed.
1:03:22After about four minutes of looking, he
1:03:24gave his verdict. The movement was
1:03:26clean.
1:03:27She knew what she was doing on the
1:03:29mechanical side.
1:03:31The problem was the interface,
1:03:33everything above the dial.
1:03:35That was what they needed to redesign,
1:03:38not the guts. Ole Wesson had said
1:03:40something about a vibration mechanism.
1:03:42Dell told him she would.
1:03:44She had been asking him about that for
1:03:46two years.
1:03:48Here was what Bo could do for her. He
1:03:50could design a small cam that ran off
1:03:52the going train and tapped a thin brass
1:03:54reed inside the case once a second.
1:03:57That gave her a tactile pulse that
1:03:59matched the sweep.
1:04:00She would be able to feel the time
1:04:02passing with her fingertip on the
1:04:04vessel.
1:04:05The pulse could be tuned so it did not
1:04:07wake her up at night.
1:04:09If she wanted to turn it off, he could
1:04:11give her a lever on the back.
1:04:13The lever would be shaped so she could
1:04:15tell by touch which position it was in.
1:04:17Dell wrote all of this down. Bo added
1:04:19one more thing.
1:04:21This would not cost Dell money. It would
1:04:23cost her time. He would send her the
1:04:25drawings. She would have to source the
1:04:28brass reed from a supplier he knew. The
1:04:30cam he could print at the lab.
1:04:33He would mail it to her.
1:04:34The only thing he asked was that when
1:04:36she was done, when all 42 of these
1:04:38clocks were finished, she released the
1:04:40design as open source. He did not want
1:04:43it to be a thing that only one shop in
1:04:45West Virginia could make. He wanted it
1:04:48to be a thing anyone who cared could
1:04:50make. Dell agreed.
1:04:52Then they had a project he said and hung
1:04:53up.
1:04:54Dell sat in Shoshana's back office with
1:04:56the laptop closed in front of her for a
1:04:58long time.
1:04:59She was not thinking about anything in
1:05:01particular.
1:05:02She was feeling something that she had
1:05:04not felt in a long time.
1:05:06She was feeling less alone. It was not
1:05:09relief.
1:05:10It was something smaller than relief and
1:05:12more honest.
1:05:13It was the specific feeling of having in
1:05:15one 24-hour period been told by two
1:05:18separate strangers that she was not
1:05:20expected to do this by herself. She
1:05:22walked back to the stone house that
1:05:24night in the dark with a flashlight with
1:05:26the clock in its wooden box tucked under
1:05:28her arm.
1:05:29The forest was loud with the small
1:05:31sounds of mice and owls and the slow
1:05:33movement of branches.
1:05:35She climbed the footpath.
1:05:37She came out into the clearing.
1:05:39The house sat in its ring of trees under
1:05:41a sky that had cleared to a cold
1:05:43blue-black full of stars.
1:05:46She stood at the edge of the clearing
1:05:47for a moment,
1:05:48then she went inside. She slept well.
1:05:51She woke at dawn.
1:05:53She climbed to the second floor and she
1:05:55looked at the row of 42 clocks on the
1:05:57wall and she told them out loud that
1:05:58they were going to do this differently
1:06:00from now on.
1:06:02They did not answer.
1:06:04She had not expected them to.
1:06:07Perry came up the footpath on Tuesday
1:06:09afternoon on her Yamaha.
1:06:11She had the walk of someone who was
1:06:13coming with news she did not know how to
1:06:15deliver.
1:06:17Dell met her at the arch doorway with
1:06:18two tin cups of coffee. Perry took one.
1:06:22She did not drink from it.
1:06:24She stood with the cup in both hands and
1:06:26she told Dell in a voice that was flat,
1:06:29the way a rehearsed thing is flat, that
1:06:31her mother had cancer.
1:06:33Stage two breast cancer.
1:06:35The oncology center in Clarksburg could
1:06:37take her next month.
1:06:39The treatment was going to cost $38,000
1:06:41out of pocket.
1:06:42That was after insurance.
1:06:45Perry had been through her savings. She
1:06:47had 12,000 left. She had been waiting
1:06:49until she was sure before she told Dell.
1:06:52Dell lowered her cup.
1:06:54The November air pressed against the
1:06:56back of her neck. She could feel the
1:06:58cold of the stone step through the soles
1:07:00of her boots. She said she was so sorry.
1:07:03Casimir had called on Friday.
1:07:05Perry went on. He had raised the offer.
1:07:0948,000 for the whole collection. He was
1:07:11afraid he was going to lose the deal to
1:07:13a buyer in Boston he had heard about
1:07:14through a dealer. He wanted to come up
1:07:16here before Thanksgiving. He wanted to
1:07:18see the clocks himself. He would bring
1:07:20cash. He had said he would pay the
1:07:22long-term license fee for ten years on
1:07:24top of the 48 if that made the paperwork
1:07:26easier.
1:07:28Perry needed an answer in two weeks.
1:07:31She knew she had promised Dell more
1:07:32time.
1:07:34She could not give it.
1:07:36Her mother could not wait. Dell set her
1:07:38cup down on the stone step. She did not
1:07:41know what to say.
1:07:42She knew that there was no version of
1:07:44this conversation where anyone was
1:07:46wrong.
1:07:48Perry was not wrong.
1:07:50Vigdis Hjorth in Clarksburg was 68 years
1:07:53old and had just been handed a
1:07:55diagnosis,
1:07:57and her daughter was trying to save her.
1:07:59And Henriette's 42 unfinished clocks
1:08:03were sitting on a wall above them, doing
1:08:05nothing for anyone right now, except
1:08:07reminding them both of what could not be
1:08:10finished without money. Ola Wassen was
1:08:12not wrong either. Ola Wassen had been
1:08:15waiting for a clock since 1982.
1:08:18She was alive, and she had just that
1:08:20week offered Dell her name and her hands
1:08:23and her attention. And there were other
1:08:25names in Henriette's notebook, and some
1:08:27of those names belonged to people who
1:08:29were also still alive. And those people
1:08:31had also been waiting, and no one had
1:08:34come for them yet either. Bo was not
1:08:36wrong.
1:08:37Bo had already begun work on the cam. He
1:08:39had already written back twice with
1:08:41questions. He had already said in his
1:08:43second email that he was going to do
1:08:45this with her, that he was clearing
1:08:46calendar space. And Dell was not wrong.
1:08:50Dell needed to keep this house standing.
1:08:52Dell had 90 days and she had used 16 of
1:08:55them and the dome was leaking and the
1:08:56windows were broken and the first frost
1:08:58was coming and she had no way to pay for
1:09:00the materials to stabilize any of it
1:09:03without the money from Casimir.
1:09:05Four people,
1:09:07four correct answers, no overlap.
1:09:10Dell felt her hands close around
1:09:12nothing.
1:09:13She needed to think.
1:09:15Perry knew
1:09:17Dell was not telling her no.
1:09:19Perry knew that too. Perry set her cup
1:09:22down beside Dell's on the step. She did
1:09:24not drink any of the
1:09:26She looked at Dell for a long moment.
1:09:28Then she gave Dell the thing she had
1:09:30been holding back. The clocks were a
1:09:32question. She knew that.
1:09:34She was not pretending they were only
1:09:36money to her. Her mother used to tell
1:09:38her about Aunt Henriette the way other
1:09:40people told their children about saints.
1:09:43Perry had been winding that brass clock
1:09:45for four years because she had not known
1:09:47what else to do for a woman she had
1:09:49never met.
1:09:50She understood that selling them to a
1:09:52collector in Richmond was not what
1:09:53Henriette would have wanted.
1:09:55She understood that.
1:09:57She was asking anyway because her mother
1:09:59was here and Henriette was not. And the
1:10:01living had the right to ask things of
1:10:03the living that the dead could not ask
1:10:04anymore. Dell nodded.
1:10:07She had no words for it.
1:10:09She nodded.
1:10:11Perry walked back to her motorbike. She
1:10:13lifted it. She pushed it toward the
1:10:15trees. Before she disappeared, she
1:10:17turned once as she had the first time
1:10:19and raised a hand.
1:10:21Dell raised one back. Then she went
1:10:23inside the house and she climbed the
1:10:25inside stairs and she sat on the stool
1:10:27in front of the workbench and she put
1:10:28her head in her hands and she did not
1:10:30move for a long time. Because her mother
1:10:32used to say when there was no money,
1:10:34there was work.
1:10:36When there was no work, there was skill.
1:10:38When there was no skill, you learned one
1:10:40more.
1:10:41Because her mother had said that over a
1:10:43kitchen table in Columbus with a cold
1:10:45cup of coffee between them two years
1:10:47before the fire.
1:10:48Because Dell remembered the exact angle
1:10:50of her mother's wrist on the table when
1:10:52she had said it.
1:10:54Because the memory did not help her
1:10:55solve the problem and also it did. She
1:10:58sat up. She wiped her face with the back
1:11:00of her hand. She reached for the
1:11:02inventory notebook. She turned to a
1:11:05clean page. She wrote at the top in
1:11:07block letters what I have. Then she
1:11:09listed one stone house.
1:11:12Standing.
1:11:1464 days of stewardship remaining.
1:11:1742 clocks in various states of
1:11:19completion.
1:11:21A workbench. A toolbox.
1:11:24A mother's lifetime of training.
1:11:26A woman named Oluwason who had said yes.
1:11:30An engineer named Bo, who had said yes.
1:11:32A mechanic named Marguerite, who had
1:11:34already said yes, without being asked.
1:11:37She wrote what Casimir wants.
1:11:40Then she listed. He wants the whole
1:11:42collection.
1:11:44He wants the clocks and the bench and
1:11:45the tools.
1:11:47He wants history he can put behind
1:11:49glass.
1:11:50He wants to be the man who found the
1:11:52forgotten watchmaker of the
1:11:53Appalachians.
1:11:55She wrote what Casimir does not need.
1:11:58She looked at the question for a long
1:12:00time.
1:12:01Then she wrote. He does not need the
1:12:03clocks that have names on them.
1:12:05She lifted her pencil. Then she wrote
1:12:08again.
1:12:09He does not need the ones she promised.
1:12:12She stood up. She took the leather
1:12:14notebook from the drawer. She carried it
1:12:17to the window. She turned the pages one
1:12:19by one and she counted.
1:12:21The names Henriette had circled in red
1:12:23ink. The names with handwritten notes
1:12:25beside them. The names with letters
1:12:28attached.
1:12:29She counted carefully.
1:12:31She counted twice.
1:12:33Fourteen.
1:12:35Fourteen names out of forty-two. Which
1:12:37meant twenty-
1:12:51eight clocks were pieces of a promise
1:12:53Henriette had not yet made to anyone She
1:12:56sat down at the bench.
1:12:58She wrote a new page in the notebook.
1:13:00Proposal to Perry Gerda, draft one. She
1:13:03wrote the proposal in her mother's
1:13:04clean, careful hand.
1:13:07Twenty- eight clocks to Casimir Valois
1:13:09at a price to be negotiated downward
1:13:11from
1:13:12thousand, given the reduced scope
1:13:15estimated minimum of thirty- two
1:13:16thousand.
1:13:18Fourteen clocks to remain with the
1:13:20stewardship for completion according to
1:13:22Henriette's original intent.
1:13:25The brass table clock on the mantel to
1:13:26remain in the house as it had for forty
1:13:28years.
1:13:30The workbench to remain.
1:13:32The tools to remain. She wrote
1:13:33supplemental income to close the gap for
1:13:35Vigdis Geirsdóttir's treatment to be
1:13:37generated through other means, including
1:13:39but not limited to a community repair
1:13:41initiative to be announced in Beckwith
1:13:43Hollow before Thanksgiving.
1:13:45She did not know yet whether she could
1:13:47pull off the community repair
1:13:49initiative.
1:13:50She wrote it down anyway.
1:13:52Because her mother used to say, write
1:13:54down the thing you are afraid of
1:13:56promising.
1:13:57Then it becomes a thing you have to do.
1:14:00She closed the notebook. She walked back
1:14:02down the inside stairs.
1:14:05She stepped out of the arched doorway.
1:14:08She stood in the clearing in the
1:14:09slanting afternoon light.
1:14:12She thought about Yannick Thibault.
1:14:14She thought about Shoshana.
1:14:16She thought about Marguerite.
1:14:19She started walking back toward town.
1:14:21Yannick Thibault said yes before she
1:14:23finished the sentence.
1:14:25He said it with his whole face.
1:14:27He was 42 years old, a Louisiana
1:14:29transplant with a careful voice that
1:14:31still sometimes slid toward the Gulf
1:14:33when he was tired.
1:14:35And he had been running the Episcopal
1:14:37Church in Beckwith Hollow for 6 years
1:14:39without ever managing to fill all the
1:14:41pews on Easter.
1:14:43He had been looking Dell understood
1:14:45almost immediately for a reason to open
1:14:48the parish hall to something other than
1:14:49the usual quiet midweek Bible study. A
1:14:52community repair day, he repeated,
1:14:55picking up the shape of it.
1:14:57Here,
1:14:58in the hall,
1:15:00people would bring broken things.
1:15:02Dell would fix them.
1:15:04They would charge what people could
1:15:05give.
1:15:06All of it would go toward her friend's
1:15:07mother's treatment.
1:15:09He paused.
1:15:11He pushed his hair back from his
1:15:12forehead.
1:15:13He had been praying for about 4 years
1:15:15for exactly this kind of question to
1:15:17walk through that door, and he had been
1:15:19getting the wrong kind of questions
1:15:20instead. Yes, please. When? 2 weeks from
1:15:24Saturday, Dell told him.
1:15:262 weeks from Saturday it was.
1:15:28He could put it in the bulletin. He
1:15:30could call the paper in Charleston.
1:15:32He knew a reporter there who owed him a
1:15:34favor. Shoshana was less enthusiastic in
1:15:37tone, but her enthusiasm, Dell had
1:15:39learned to read, lived in actions.
1:15:42She would print flyers. She would post
1:15:44them on the bulletin board at the diner.
1:15:47She would put one in every coffee cup
1:15:48for a week.
1:15:50She would not say nice things about it.
1:15:52People would come anyway.
1:15:54Then she handed Dell a muffin and did
1:15:56not charge her. Marguerite's response
1:15:58was to volunteer her sister's sewing
1:16:00machine.
1:16:01Her sister had not been able to sew in
1:16:03two years because the timing was off.
1:16:06If Dell could fix the machine,
1:16:07Marguerite would call it a Christmas
1:16:09present to herself and pay $100.
1:16:12She paused and looked at Dell from
1:16:14across the garage floor.
1:16:16Dell knew she did not have to carry this
1:16:17alone, right?
1:16:19Dell was starting to understand that.
1:16:21Starting was good. Dell wrote to Perry
1:16:24that evening on paper in a note she slid
1:16:26under the door of the garage because
1:16:28Perry had already left for the day. The
1:16:30note said she had a counter offer. 28 to
1:16:33Casimir, 14 stay, repair day at the
1:16:36church two weeks from Saturday, every
1:16:38dollar to Vigdis.
1:16:39Plus Dell would take any sewing or small
1:16:41appliance work the town had for her from
1:16:43now until the end of the 90 days.
1:16:46She would not meet 48.
1:16:48She believed she could meet 38.
1:16:51She was asking Perry to try this with
1:16:53her for two weeks before signing.
1:16:56If Dell could not meet it, she would
1:16:58sign whatever Perry needed her to sign
1:17:00on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
1:17:02Her word on that. She signed it. She
1:17:05slid it under the door.
1:17:07Perry's answer came by text at 11:00
1:17:09that night.
1:17:11Two weeks.
1:17:12Thursday after next was her mother's
1:17:14intake appointment. If they could not
1:17:16meet 38 by then, they signed.
1:17:19Agreed.
1:17:21Dell lay on her camping pad on the
1:17:23hexagonal tile floor and read the text
1:17:26three times.
1:17:27Then she put the phone face down.
1:17:30Then she lay in the dark and listened to
1:17:31the brass clock ticking above her.
1:17:34She did not sleep for a long time. She
1:17:36thought about her mother again,
1:17:39[clears throat] about the certified
1:17:40letters, about the fire, about how in
1:17:43the end the thing that had killed Lucien
1:17:45Marchetti was not an electrical panel,
1:17:48but a man's belief that his own
1:17:51convenience was heavier than another
1:17:52person's warning.
1:17:54She thought about how she had come close
1:17:56in Oluwaseun's living room to being that
1:17:59kind of person. She thought about how
1:18:01she had not been,
1:18:03how she had instead taken the clock
1:18:04back, how she was going to redesign it,
1:18:07how she was going to go back when it was
1:18:09better.
1:18:10She thought about how in two weeks she
1:18:12was going to stand in a parish hall and
1:18:14ask her neighbors to bring her broken
1:18:16things.
1:18:17She thought about how if her mother
1:18:18could see her, her mother would call it
1:18:20skill in exchange for help, a trade. How
1:18:24women had kept each other alive since
1:18:26the beginning. Dell closed her eyes. The
1:18:28storm came three days before the repair
1:18:31day.
1:18:31Nobody had predicted it to be as bad as
1:18:33it was. The forecast had said rain. It
1:18:37had said wind gusts up to 40.
1:18:40It had not said the gusts would reach 70
1:18:42on the ridge, and it had not said the
1:18:44rain would turn to sleet, and it had not
1:18:47said the sleet would turn to ice before
1:18:49dawn. Dell was asleep in the lower room
1:18:51when the first piece of the dome gave
1:18:53way.
1:18:54The sound was like a car hitting a tree.
1:18:57She was on her feet before she was
1:18:58awake.
1:18:59She was at the arched window before she
1:19:01had put her boots on.
1:19:03She saw through the sheet of ice coming
1:19:05sideways a dark shape falling in the
1:19:07clearing,
1:19:08a sheet of green metal, the size of a
1:19:10door, the dome.
1:19:13She said it out loud to the empty room.
1:19:15No. No. No. Then she climbed the inside
1:19:18stairs in her socks, her boots in her
1:19:21hand, and she came up into the upper
1:19:22room and she saw it.
1:19:24A hole.
1:19:25A ragged dark hole in the metal dome
1:19:27above her, 4 ft across.
1:19:30Rain, sleet coming down in a hard gray
1:19:33column onto the workbench,
1:19:35onto the clocks, onto Henriette's
1:19:37leather notebook, onto the drawer, the
1:19:41floor.
1:19:42Dell moved. She did not think.
1:19:45Her hands knew what to do before her
1:19:47head did.
1:19:48She grabbed the drawer. She slammed it
1:19:50shut.
1:19:51She lifted the leather notebook.
1:19:53She shoved it under her jacket against
1:19:55her stomach.
1:19:56She lifted the row of clocks nearest the
1:19:58hole off their pegs with both hands at
1:20:00once. She carried them down the stairs.
1:20:03She came back.
1:20:05She did it again
1:20:06and again
1:20:08and again.
1:20:09She lost count.
1:20:11Her hair was wet.
1:20:13Her hands were wet.
1:20:15The hexagonal tile floor downstairs
1:20:17filled with clocks lined up on flannel
1:20:19because she had nothing else to put
1:20:20under them. Seventeen clocks got wet
1:20:23before she got them all down.
1:20:25Seventeen out of forty-two.
1:20:28She stood in the lower room with ice
1:20:30water running off her hair and she
1:20:32looked at the seventeen wet clocks and
1:20:34she told herself what to do out loud.
1:20:37Okay, dry them, open them, oil them,
1:20:41save them one at a time.
1:20:44Her mother's voice in her head said to
1:20:46start with the one closest to her.
1:20:48She started.
1:20:50She worked for three days. She did not
1:20:52stop except to drink water and to eat a
1:20:54sandwich. Marguerite drove up through
1:20:56the half-blocked road in a four-wheel
1:20:57pickup and left in a cooler by the arch
1:21:00door.
1:21:01She did not sleep except for twenty
1:21:03minutes at a time with her head down on
1:21:04the workbench.
1:21:06Her hands cracked at the knuckles.
1:21:08Her eyes burned.
1:21:10She opened every one of the seventeen
1:21:12clocks.
1:21:13She unseated every balance.
1:21:16She blew out every pivot with a small
1:21:18bulb she had used in high school to
1:21:20clean her mother's sewing machines.
1:21:23She dried every mainspring with a soft
1:21:25cloth.
1:21:26She re-oiled. Fifteen of them came back.
1:21:30Two did not.
1:21:31The pivots had rusted too fast and the
1:21:33mainsprings had seized.
1:21:36Dell wrote their names on a page in the
1:21:37notebook and set them aside on a shelf
1:21:39because she was not ready yet to call
1:21:41them lost.
1:21:43On the fourth morning, she walked out
1:21:44into the clearing.
1:21:46The dome had a hole in it.
1:21:48She stood under it and she looked up and
1:21:50she asked it what she was going to do
1:21:51about it. did not have money for a
1:21:53roofer. did not have money for a crane.
1:21:56She did not even have money for proper
1:21:58flashing.
1:21:59She had the toolbox.
1:22:01She had whatever Marguerite could lend
1:22:02her from the salvage yard.
1:22:04She had Yannick if he could get up the
1:22:06footpath.
1:22:07She had Shoshana who had already texted
1:22:10twice to say the flyers were up
1:22:12and the Charleston reporter had called
1:22:14her back.
1:22:15She went down the inside stairs. She
1:22:17knelt beside her mother's toolbox. She
1:22:20opened the lid. The rivet set was in the
1:22:22second tray.
1:22:24Her mother had bought it decades ago at
1:22:26an industrial supply auction in Dayton
1:22:28and had used it for years to tack frames
1:22:30back together on sewing machines whose
1:22:33owners could not afford a new one.
1:22:35Dale had used it under her mother's hand
1:22:37from the time she was 12.
1:22:40Dale lifted the rivet set.
1:22:42If you had tin and you had rivets, her
1:22:44mother used to say, you had a roof.
1:22:47Marguerite drove up two sheets of
1:22:48corrugated tin in the bed of the pickup.
1:22:51Yannick came with her.
1:22:53Shoshana came in her own car behind them
1:22:55with a thermos of coffee and a dog in
1:22:58the passenger seat that she said was for
1:23:00moral support.
1:23:02They stood at the base of the stone
1:23:04house and looked up at the dome.
1:23:06Yannick in his careful voice said that
1:23:08was high.
1:23:10Dale knew.
1:23:12That was very high, he added. She knew.
1:23:15He Marguerite had a ladder in the truck.
1:23:18She had a harness.
1:23:19They were going to tie Dale off to the
1:23:21chimney.
1:23:22She was not going up there without a
1:23:24line.
1:23:25Dale agreed.
1:23:26Shoshana announced her two jobs. She
1:23:29would hold the ladder.
1:23:30She would also yell at Dale if she did
1:23:32anything stupid.
1:23:34Dale almost laughed.
1:23:35She did not quite. She climbed the
1:23:37exterior stone staircase first. It was
1:23:40slick. She placed every foot.
1:23:43She reached the balcony. She took the
1:23:45harness from Marguerite who had followed
1:23:46her halfway up, and she buckled herself
1:23:49in, and she clipped the line to a bolt
1:23:51they had sunk into the chimney with a
1:23:53hand drill the hour before. climbed from
1:23:55the balcony onto the dome. The dome was
1:23:58pitched gently, but it was wet, and the
1:24:00moss was slick as oil.
1:24:02She crawled. She did not stand.
1:24:05She reached the hole on her hands and
1:24:07knees.
1:24:08She looked down through it.
1:24:10Her workbench.
1:24:12Henrietta's workbench.
1:24:14The place where a woman had made 42
1:24:16promises. Dell cut the first sheet of
1:24:18tin to shape with aviation snips.
1:24:21She shaped it to the curve.
1:24:23She set it over the hole.
1:24:25She drove rivets into the old metal with
1:24:27her mother's set, her mother's hammer,
1:24:29her mother's rhythm. One, two, three,
1:24:32four.
1:24:34Her hand moved the way it had moved on a
1:24:36thousand sewing machine frames in a
1:24:38factory in Columbus. Her hand
1:24:40remembered.
1:24:41She drove rivets for two days. She came
1:24:43down the exterior stone staircase on the
1:24:45second evening with blood on her
1:24:47knuckles and ice in her hair and a hole
1:24:49in the dome that was no longer a hole,
1:24:52but a patch, ugly, uneven holding.
1:24:55Marguerite was waiting at the base.
1:24:58She looked at Dell.
1:25:00She did not say anything for a long
1:25:01moment.
1:25:03It was not pretty, she said.
1:25:05No.
1:25:06But it was dry.
1:25:07Yes.
1:25:08Marguerite nodded. Dell sat down on the
1:25:11stone step beside the arched door.
1:25:14She let the toolbox fall against her
1:25:15knee.
1:25:17She looked at the clearing in the
1:25:18evening light.
1:25:19She was going to live.
1:25:21The house was going to live. 15 clocks
1:25:24were back on their pegs and two were
1:25:25waiting on a shelf and one was in a
1:25:27wooden box in the Subaru that would soon
1:25:30go back to Charleston with deeper
1:25:31numerals and a wrapped minute hand and a
1:25:34resonator case and a tiny brass reed
1:25:37that an engineer in Morgantown was
1:25:39finishing on his lab bench right then.
1:25:41She did not know yet whether the repair
1:25:43day would raise what it needed to raise.
1:25:46She did not know yet whether Perry would
1:25:48sign the Casamir papers in two weeks or
1:25:50ten.
1:25:51She did not know yet whether the hearing
1:25:53in front of the Beckwith County
1:25:54Commission in December would go the way
1:25:56she needed it to go.
1:25:58She knew that her mother's toolbox had
1:26:00opened.
1:26:01She knew that her mother's rivet set had
1:26:03worked. That was something. The last
1:26:05thing she did before she went inside was
1:26:07climb back up to the second floor.
1:26:10The dome above her was patched.
1:26:12The workbench was dry.
1:26:15She reached under the bench where she
1:26:16had tucked Henriette's leather notebook
1:26:18when she had grabbed it in the first
1:26:19hour of the storm.
1:26:21She lifted it out.
1:26:23She opened it on the bench.
1:26:25She turned to a page in the back she had
1:26:27not read yet.
1:26:29Something fell out.
1:26:31A cassette tape.
1:26:33Yellow label.
1:26:34Written in Henriette's slanted hand.
1:26:37Instructions.
1:26:39Do not lose. Dell picked it up. She held
1:26:42it in her palm. She did not have a
1:26:44cassette player. She was going to find
1:26:47one.
1:26:48Shoshana had a cassette player in the
1:26:50back of the shop because Shoshana had
1:26:52the kind of back room that collected
1:26:54objects the way a creek bed collects
1:26:56stones.
1:26:58Dell walked in on a Thursday morning
1:26:59with the yellow label tape in a sandwich
1:27:01bag in her jacket pocket.
1:27:04Shoshana looked up from the counter. She
1:27:05did not ask what the tape was.
1:27:08Second shelf from the bottom. Black box.
1:27:11Batteries in the drawer under the
1:27:12register.
1:27:14Take as long as Dell needed.
1:27:16She would make coffee.
1:27:18The player was a Panasonic from the 90s.
1:27:21Dust on the lid.
1:27:23One of the buttons was broken off and
1:27:25had been replaced with a cork from a
1:27:27wine bottle.
1:27:28Dell put four fresh AA batteries in it.
1:27:32She set it on a corner table by the back
1:27:34window. She slid the tape in.
1:27:37She pressed play.
1:27:38Static. Then a cough. Then a voice. A
1:27:42woman's voice. Lower than Dell had
1:27:44imagined. Steady.
1:27:47The accent was the hard mountain English
1:27:49that Beckwith Hollow still spoke in its
1:27:50oldest kitchens.
1:27:53Henriette Veltri had never sounded like
1:27:55Geneva, no matter where she had trained.
1:27:57She had sounded like these mountains. It
1:28:00was February of 1987, Henriette told the
1:28:03tape.
1:28:04She was starting to lose focus on
1:28:06anything smaller than her own
1:28:07fingernail.
1:28:08She was recording this because she might
1:28:10not be able to read her own notes much
1:28:12longer.
1:28:13She was going to describe the 42 in
1:28:15detail,
1:28:17who they were for,
1:28:18what they needed.
1:28:20If the person listening to this was not
1:28:22her, which was most likely then she was
1:28:24gone and she was sorry for leaving them
1:28:26unfinished.
1:28:27She would like whoever had come upon
1:28:29this to try.
1:28:30She would like them to ask the people
1:28:32whose name she said before they began.
1:28:35Please do not assume. Please do not
1:28:37decide for them. Dell's hand went to her
1:28:39mouth
1:28:40because Henriette, 39 years earlier, in
1:28:43a stone house in the woods had sat down
1:28:45at a tape recorder and had said please
1:28:47twice.
1:28:48Because Dell had three weeks earlier
1:28:50driven down to Charleston without asking
1:28:52and had learned the hard way why please
1:28:54do not assume was the beginning of every
1:28:56good thing. She wrote down the names as
1:28:58Henriette spoke them one by one. She
1:29:00wrote the descriptions, the
1:29:02accommodations, what each person had
1:29:04told Henriette by letter or in person
1:29:06about what their hands could read,
1:29:08about what their ears could still hold,
1:29:11about what in their lives would be made
1:29:13easier if time became a thing they could
1:29:15touch.
1:29:16Shoshana set a cup of coffee down on the
1:29:18table beside her at some point.
1:29:21Dell did not notice when. Oluwason
1:29:23Adatola was the fourth name on the tape.
1:29:26Henriette described her exactly as
1:29:28Oluwason had described herself.
1:29:31Smooth deep numerals, a rap minute hand,
1:29:35a resonator.
1:29:37The tape confirmed every single
1:29:38correction Oluwason had given Dell in
1:29:40her living room.
1:29:42Henriette had known.
1:29:44Henriette had planned it.
1:29:46The clock Dell had brought to Charleston
1:29:48had been incomplete, not because
1:29:49Henriette had not finished thinking it
1:29:51through,
1:29:52but because Henriette had died before
1:29:54her hands could catch up to her mind.
1:29:56Dell listened for an hour and twelve
1:29:58minutes.
1:30:00The tape was both sides full.
1:30:02When it clicked off at the end of side
1:30:04B, she sat for a long time without
1:30:06moving.
1:30:07Then she closed the notebook.
1:30:09Then she pulled the tape out gently.
1:30:12Then she walked up to the counter and
1:30:14asked Shoshana if she could borrow the
1:30:15player for a month.
1:30:17Shoshana told her to keep it.
1:30:19She had never liked it.
1:30:21Dell paused.
1:30:22Thank you. Don't.
1:30:25The repair day was Saturday. Dell did
1:30:27not sleep the night before. She lay on
1:30:29her camping pad on the hexagonal tile
1:30:32floor and listened to the brass clock
1:30:33tick above her and ran through her head
1:30:36over and over the small inventory of
1:30:38what she had set up in the parish hall
1:30:39of Yannick's church that afternoon.
1:30:42Two long trestle tables, three work
1:30:45lamps, a power strip, her mother's
1:30:47toolbox, a second toolbox borrowed from
1:30:50Marguerite, a row of small parts drawers
1:30:53labeled by hand,
1:30:55a hand-lettered sign at the door that
1:30:57Shoshana had made the day before in neat
1:30:59black marker, Delphine's repair day.
1:31:02Bring what is broken, pay what you can.
1:31:05All proceeds to Vigdis Gjerde's medical
1:31:08treatment. Dell had argued with Shoshana
1:31:10about putting her own name on the sign.
1:31:13Shoshana had said people needed to know
1:31:15who was doing the fixing,
1:31:16otherwise they walked away.
1:31:19Dell had let her win because arguing
1:31:20with Shoshana was like arguing with a
1:31:22river. She arrived at the church at 7:00
1:31:25in the morning.
1:31:26Yannick was already there pulling the
1:31:27heater up to a workable temperature.
1:31:30He wore jeans and a thermal shirt under
1:31:32his collar.
1:31:34He said good morning, and then he said
1:31:35nothing else because he could see her
1:31:37face. She set up.
1:31:39She laid out the tools.
1:31:41She hung her mother's loop on a cord
1:31:43around her neck.
1:31:44She put on her work apron, which had
1:31:46been her mother's work apron, which
1:31:48still had Lucienne's name embroidered in
1:31:49red thread on the chest pocket in a
1:31:51factory hand.
1:31:53The first person came at 10 minutes to
1:31:55eight. She was a woman in her seventies
1:31:57carrying a sewing machine in both arms
1:31:59like a baby.
1:32:01The machine was a Singer 1591 Treadle
1:32:04converted to electric.
1:32:06The woman set it down on the trestle
1:32:07table and told Dell it had belonged to
1:32:09her mother.
1:32:11It had stopped sewing in 2017.
1:32:14The man in Lewisburg had said it would
1:32:15cost $300 just to look at it. She did
1:32:18not have $300. She had 40.
1:32:21Dell told her to keep the 40 for now.
1:32:24They would see what it needed first. She
1:32:26opened the machine. The timing was off.
1:32:29The hook had rotated out of position
1:32:31because a set screw had backed itself
1:32:33halfway out.
1:32:35Dell tightened the screw. She adjusted
1:32:37the needle bar. She oiled the shaft. She
1:32:40closed the housing. She threaded it.
1:32:43She fed through a scrap of fabric
1:32:45Shoshana had cut from an old pillowcase.
1:32:47The Singer stitched. The woman put her
1:32:50hand on her chest.
1:32:51She did not say anything for a long
1:32:53moment.
1:32:54Then she asked what she owed.
1:32:56Whatever she could give Dell told her.
1:32:58The woman put $20 on the table.
1:33:01Then she put another 20.
1:33:03Then she promised she would send her
1:33:04daughter in with pies that afternoon and
1:33:07she walked out carrying her mother's
1:33:09machine the same way she had carried it
1:33:11in.
1:33:12At 10:00 there was a line out the parish
1:33:14hall door.
1:33:16Dell did not look up for the next 4
1:33:18hours. She fixed the toaster that had a
1:33:20loose terminal. She fixed a wall clock
1:33:22whose pendulum had come off its hook.
1:33:25She fixed a Vitamix that needed a new
1:33:26drive socket which she carved from a
1:33:28scrap of hardwood with Yannick's pocket
1:33:30knife because the proper part was in
1:33:32Pittsburgh and the pie maker's daughter
1:33:35needed her blender back by Thanksgiving.
1:33:37She fixed a boy's bicycle whose chain
1:33:39had jumped the derailleur.
1:33:42She fixed a lamp. She fixed a transistor
1:33:45radio from 1964
1:33:47whose owner a man of about 90 cried
1:33:49quietly when she handed it back working
1:33:52and told her he had been listening to
1:33:53the pirates on it since Roberto Clemente
1:33:56was alive. Shoshana made coffee.
1:33:59Yannick kept the line moving.
1:34:01Marguerite set up a second station at
1:34:03the end of the hall and took the small
1:34:04engine work.
1:34:06By 2:00 in the afternoon, the parish
1:34:07hall smelled of coffee and oil and the
1:34:09particular dust that comes off old
1:34:11appliances.
1:34:13By 4:00, the pies were on a side table.
1:34:15By 6:00, Perry had come and had not said
1:34:18anything and had tied an apron on and
1:34:20had started working on a watch whose
1:34:21crown had come loose.
1:34:23At 8:00, Yannick closed the doors. Dell
1:34:26sat down for the first time in 12 hours.
1:34:28Her hands were black. Her apron was
1:34:31black.
1:34:32There was a smudge of oil on her cheek
1:34:34that she did not know about yet.
1:34:36Yannick counted the money on the side
1:34:38table. He counted it twice.
1:34:41He counted it a third time.
1:34:43Then he looked up at Dell.
1:34:45$4,268
1:34:48and a lot of pies.
1:34:5011 pies, Shoshana announced from the
1:34:52back. Perry sat down on the folding
1:34:54chair across from Dell.
1:34:57She did not say anything for a long
1:34:58moment.
1:35:00Then she put her face in her hands.
1:35:03Dell reached across the table.
1:35:05She put her hand over Perry's wrist.
1:35:08She left it there.
1:35:10Neither of them spoke.
1:35:12The second repair day was two weeks
1:35:14later. It happened without Dell planning
1:35:17it.
1:35:18The Charleston reporter had come to the
1:35:19first one and had written 700 words in
1:35:22the next Sunday's edition under a
1:35:24headline that read, A Watchmaker's
1:35:26Daughter Keeps Her Promise.
1:35:29And the article had been shared on
1:35:30Facebook. And on the following Tuesday,
1:35:33Yannick called Dell at Marguerite's
1:35:35office.
1:35:37People were asking if they were doing it
1:35:38again.
1:35:40They did it again. They raised $710 and
1:35:43received a stand mixer which Dell
1:35:45repaired on the spot and a request from
1:35:47a woman named Celestine Boudreau for an
1:35:49apprentice placement for her 19-year-old
1:35:51granddaughter. Celestine was 63, lived
1:35:5412 miles outside Beckwith Hollow in a
1:35:56farmhouse that had been in her family
1:35:58since 1958.
1:36:01She had come to the repair day with the
1:36:02singer Treadle.
1:36:04She had stayed through the whole
1:36:05afternoon.
1:36:07She had watched Dell work.
1:36:09On the way out, she had stopped at the
1:36:11table where Dell was packing tools and
1:36:13had opened the subject plainly.
1:36:15She did not know Dell.
1:36:17She liked how Dell worked. Her
1:36:19granddaughter was lost.
1:36:21The girl had finished high school in
1:36:23June and had not found a direction.
1:36:25She needed hands.
1:36:27Would Dell take her on? Dell had opened
1:36:29her mouth to say she was not qualified,
1:36:32then she had closed it.
1:36:33Because she was qualified.
1:36:35Because her mother had trained her the
1:36:37exact way she would train someone else,
1:36:39which was to say by doing the work next
1:36:42to them, which was the only way skill
1:36:44had ever passed between women in her
1:36:46family.
1:36:47Because turning Celestine down would be
1:36:49exactly the kind of refusing to be asked
1:36:52that Dell had decided three weeks before
1:36:54in a living room in Charleston she was
1:36:56done doing. She would take her for three
1:36:58months, Dell told Celestine.
1:37:00$480.
1:37:03Celestine wrote the check on the spot.
1:37:05The granddaughter's name was Isadora
1:37:07Boudro.
1:37:08She was tall and quiet and had her
1:37:10grandmother's steady hands.
1:37:12She came to the garage three mornings a
1:37:14week starting in early December.
1:37:16Dell taught her how to open a sewing
1:37:18machine, how to listen for a bad
1:37:20bearing, how to clean a feed dog.
1:37:24Isadora did not say much.
1:37:26Dell did not mind.
1:37:28Her mother used to say the best
1:37:29apprentices listened more than they
1:37:31talked and the second best did not talk
1:37:33at all.
1:37:34Isadora was the second kind. Casimir
1:37:37Valois drove up on a Wednesday in the
1:37:39middle of December. He was tall. He was
1:37:42thin.
1:37:43He was in his early 50s.
1:37:45He wore a wool coat the color of pewter
1:37:46and leather gloves he did not take off
1:37:48even inside the Subaru dealership where
1:37:50he had parked.
1:37:52He walked into Marguerite's garage with
1:37:54Perry on one side of him and he looked
1:37:56Dell understood immediately like a man
1:37:58who had been dreading this meeting for a
1:37:59different reason than she had been
1:38:01dreading it. He would like to see the
1:38:03house, he said.
1:38:04Dell would like him to see the house.
1:38:07They climbed the footpath in silence.
1:38:09The air was cold.
1:38:11The ferns had died back and the forest
1:38:13floor was open now, brown and gold and
1:38:16gray.
1:38:17Casimir walked carefully.
1:38:19He did not slip once.
1:38:22When they came out into the clearing, he
1:38:23stopped.
1:38:25He stood for a long moment.
1:38:27He looked up at the stone and the metal
1:38:28dome and the patched tin that Dell had
1:38:31riveted into place three weeks earlier.
1:38:33He had not expected it to look like
1:38:35this, he said quietly.
1:38:37Dell asked what he had expected.
1:38:39Smaller.
1:38:41They went inside. He stood in the lower
1:38:43room.
1:38:44He looked at the brass clock on the
1:38:46mantel.
1:38:47He did not touch it. He climbed the
1:38:49inside stairs with Dell behind him, and
1:38:51he came up into the round upper room,
1:38:53and he stood in front of the wall of
1:38:55clocks, and he put one gloved hand
1:38:57against his own mouth.
1:38:59He stood like that for a long time.
1:39:01Then without turning around, he asked
1:39:03which ones. Dell had the list ready in
1:39:05the inventory notebook.
1:39:07She opened it. She handed it to him.
1:39:10He read it without speaking.
1:39:12He read it slowly.
1:39:1428 clocks.
1:39:16The ones Henriette had not spoken for.
1:39:18The ones the tape and the notebook had
1:39:19left unnamed.
1:39:22He looked up at the wall.
1:39:24The 14 stayed here, he said.
1:39:27The 14 stayed here, Dell confirmed, and
1:39:29the brass clock on the mantel.
1:39:32He gestured toward the stairs with one
1:39:33gloved hand, then let it drop.
1:39:36He understood the workbench and the
1:39:38tools stayed, too.
1:39:40Everything on the list stayed. He was
1:39:42asking about the 28 only.
1:39:45Yes. He walked along the wall.
1:39:48He stopped in front of each of the 28.
1:39:51He did not touch them.
1:39:53Dell understood watching him that she
1:39:55had been wrong about something.
1:39:57She had thought a collector was a man
1:39:59who put things behind glass to be looked
1:40:01at.
1:40:02Casimir was not that.
1:40:05Casimir was man who had spent his whole
1:40:07life trying to find things that belong
1:40:09somewhere else and bring them home.
1:40:11Except the home was his own house and he
1:40:13knew that was the compromise. 34,500
1:40:17he said at last
1:40:19for the 28.
1:40:20He would pay the long-term license fee
1:40:22on top.
1:40:24He would have the paperwork ready in 48
1:40:26hours.
1:40:27He would like each clock to be
1:40:29accompanied by a transcription of
1:40:30Henriette's notes about it
1:40:32if there were notes.
1:40:35There might not be for the unnamed ones.
1:40:38He understood that.
1:40:40But if there was anything,
1:40:41a sentence, a description,
1:40:44he would like it with the clock
1:40:46for the archive,
1:40:48for whatever he left behind when he was
1:40:50gone. Dell wrote the number in the
1:40:52notebook. 34,500
1:40:55plus the 4,268
1:40:57from the first repair day
1:40:59plus the 710 from the second
1:41:02plus the 480 from Celestine for the
1:41:05apprenticeship
1:41:06plus the 370 she had made in cash
1:41:09repairs at the garage over the course of
1:41:126 weeks. 40,328
1:41:15enough to cover Vigdis Hjorth's 38,000
1:41:18enough to leave 2,300 for Perry's gas
1:41:21and lodging during the chemotherapy
1:41:22months in Clarksburg.
1:41:25Enough.
1:41:27Dell looked up.
1:41:28They had an agreement, she told Casimir.
1:41:31Casimir Valois extended his hand across
1:41:34the workbench.
1:41:36Dell shook it.
1:41:37Her hand was still black at the knuckles
1:41:39from a motor she had rebuilt that
1:41:41morning. He did not seem to mind. The
1:41:43Beckwith County Commission met on
1:41:44December 18th in the small meeting room
1:41:46at the back of the courthouse.
1:41:49The room smelled of carpet cleaner and
1:41:51old coffee.
1:41:52The commissioners sat behind a long
1:41:54table on a slightly raised platform.
1:41:57There were three of them, two women and
1:41:59a man, all of them in their 50s,
1:42:02all of them looking tired in the
1:42:03specific way that people who sit on
1:42:05county commissions always look tired.
1:42:08Dell sat at the applicant's table in her
1:42:10best shirt, which was still a flannel
1:42:12because her best shirt was gone with the
1:42:13apartment, with the inventory notebook
1:42:15in front of her and the stewardship
1:42:17paperwork beside it.
1:42:19She wore her mother's apron folded on
1:42:21the table because she had decided at the
1:42:23last moment that she wanted it in the
1:42:25room. Marguerite was in the second row,
1:42:27Yannick was in the second row, Shoshana
1:42:30was in the second row, Perry was in the
1:42:32second row. Celestine had driven in from
1:42:34the farmhouse and had taken a seat in
1:42:36the first row.
1:42:38Isadora sat next to her grandmother with
1:42:40her hands folded in her lap. Oluwaseun
1:42:43Adetola called in at 4:04 a.m.
1:42:45on a video connection that the court
1:42:47clerk had set up on a laptop at the end
1:42:49of the applicant's table.
1:42:51Her face filled the small screen.
1:42:53Her clouded eyes were turned forward.
1:42:56The amber beads were around her neck. Bo
1:42:58Lemaitre had emailed a letter two days
1:43:00earlier. It was in the folder in front
1:43:02of Dell printed on the Morgantown Labs
1:43:04letterhead.
1:43:06The letter said he was partnering with
1:43:07Dell on the open source design of a
1:43:09tactile mechanical timepiece
1:43:12and that the stewardship of the Veltri
1:43:14property was essential to the
1:43:16continuation of that work. The lead
1:43:18commissioner, a woman named Yolanda
1:43:20Patterson, called the hearing to order
1:43:21at 6:00. Miss Marchetti had 10 minutes
1:43:24to present her proposal for a long-term
1:43:26stewardship license on the Veltri
1:43:28property.
1:43:30Please begin.
1:43:31Dell stood up. She did not look at her
1:43:33notes. She had come to Beckwith Hollow
1:43:3511 weeks earlier because her car had
1:43:37been running out of gas and because she
1:43:39had had nowhere else to go.
1:43:42She had signed a stewardship agreement
1:43:44on October 15th for $64
1:43:47because that had been almost all the
1:43:48money she had.
1:43:50In the 11 weeks since she had
1:43:52inventoried the Veltri property, she had
1:43:55patched the dome.
1:43:56She had saved 15 of 17 clocks that had
1:43:59been damaged in the storm on November
1:44:0123rd.
1:44:03She had completed the inventory report.
1:44:06She had filed the maintenance plan.
1:44:08She believed she had met the terms of
1:44:10the 90 day provisional stewardship. She
1:44:13paused. But that was not what she wanted
1:44:16to tell them about.
1:44:19Yolanda Patterson lifted her eyebrows.
1:44:22Please proceed.
1:44:24Dell lifted the inventory notebook.
1:44:27This house had been built by a woman
1:44:28named Henriette Veltree.
1:44:31She had died in 1988
1:44:33alone.
1:44:35The town with respect had forgotten her.
1:44:37Dell had spent 11 weeks reading what she
1:44:39had left behind. She had been a
1:44:41watchmaker. She had trained in Geneva.
1:44:43She had come home. She had made things
1:44:46with her hands. She had been losing her
1:44:48sight in the last five years of her life
1:44:50and she had known it and she had used
1:44:51the time she had left to begin a project
1:44:53of 42 tactile mechanical clocks for
1:44:55people who could not see them.
1:44:58She had finished none of them.
1:45:00She had planned to deliver the first in
1:45:01person to a woman named Olawason Adatola
1:45:04in Charleston who was on this call
1:45:06tonight
1:45:07and who had been waiting for that clock
1:45:08since 1982. Olawason's face on the
1:45:11laptop screen did not move. Dell had
1:45:14finished one clock for Miss Adatola. The
1:45:16first attempt had not been good enough.
1:45:19Miss Adatola had told her what was wrong
1:45:21with it.
1:45:22Dell had taken it back.
1:45:24She was remaking it with help from an
1:45:26engineer in Morgantown named Bo Lemetra
1:45:29whose letter was in the commission's
1:45:30packet.
1:45:32There were 13 other names in Henriette's
1:45:34notebook each with specific needs that
1:45:36Henriette had recorded on a cassette
1:45:38tape Dell had found three weeks earlier.
1:45:41Dell intended over the next 10 to 15
1:45:43years to complete those 13 remaining
1:45:45clocks and to deliver them in person to
1:45:47the people or the descendants of the
1:45:49people whose names Henriette had
1:45:50written. Dell paused.
1:45:53She was not asking the commission to let
1:45:55her keep this house because she wanted
1:45:56to own it. She did not.
1:45:59She was asking because the woman who had
1:46:01built it had left a job unfinished and
1:46:03she had the hands to finish it and she
1:46:05was tired of watching unfinished work be
1:46:07forgotten.
1:46:09She sat down.
1:46:10The room was quiet. Yolanda Patterson
1:46:12looked at the commissioner on her left.
1:46:15The commissioner on her left looked at
1:46:17the commissioner on her right.
1:46:19The commissioner on her right was
1:46:20looking at Oluwaseun on the laptop
1:46:22screen.
1:46:24Yolanda invited Ms. Adetola to add
1:46:26anything she wished. Oluwaseun's voice
1:46:29came through the small speaker clear and
1:46:30low.
1:46:31She would like to say that in October
1:46:33when Delphine Marchetti had come to her
1:46:35door,
1:46:36Del had brought a clock that was not
1:46:37finished. Oluwaseun had told her it was
1:46:40not finished. Del had listened. She had
1:46:43taken it back. She was remaking it.
1:46:46In Oluwaseun's experience, this did not
1:46:49happen. In her experience, people made a
1:46:51thing and when she told them it did not
1:46:53work, they explained to her why it
1:46:55should.
1:46:56Delphine had not explained anything to
1:46:58her. She had said thank you and she had
1:47:01driven home.
1:47:02If the commission was considering
1:47:04whether to let her keep that house,
1:47:06Oluwaseun would ask them to consider
1:47:08that most people would have argued with
1:47:09her and Del had not. Yolanda nodded
1:47:12slowly. She turned to Yannick. Yannick
1:47:14stood up. He did not have notes. His
1:47:17voice was careful.
1:47:19He had been in Beckwith Hollow six
1:47:21years. He had been praying for six years
1:47:24to see this town take care of its own
1:47:25again.
1:47:27In November, Delphine had opened his
1:47:29parish hall for a repair day and the
1:47:31entire town had walked through his front
1:47:33door for the first time since Easter of
1:47:35his first year.
1:47:37If the commission was looking for
1:47:39evidence that this stewardship was good
1:47:41for the Hollow, he would offer that
1:47:43evidence.
1:47:44He sat down. Marguerite stood up next
1:47:46without being invited.
1:47:48She was Marguerite Ozan.
1:47:51She had run the garage at the end of
1:47:52Main Street for 22 years.
1:47:55She had introduced Delphine to this
1:47:57program.
1:47:58She had done it because Del did decent
1:48:00work.
1:48:01She would like the record to show that
1:48:02Del had been paying her apprenticeship
1:48:04fee on time
1:48:06and that she had agreed to continue
1:48:07taking small appliance work out of
1:48:09Marguerite's shop.
1:48:11That was useful to this town.
1:48:14Thank you.
1:48:15She sat. Shoshana did not stand.
1:48:18From her seat, she offered a brief
1:48:20endorsement that mostly consisted of
1:48:21agreeing with everyone before her and
1:48:24adding that Dell was quiet in a good
1:48:26way.
1:48:27A short laugh moved through the room.
1:48:29Perry stood last. She did not look at
1:48:32Dell. She looked at the commissioners.
1:48:34Her name was Pernilla Gerda.
1:48:37Henrietta Veltri had been her great
1:48:38aunt.
1:48:40Her family had no legal claim to this
1:48:41property.
1:48:43She was not here to contest the
1:48:45stewardship. She was here to support it.
1:48:48Delphine Marchetti had been more careful
1:48:50with her great aunt's work in three
1:48:52months than her family had managed in 40
1:48:55years.
1:48:56She would like the commission to
1:48:57understand that any question of family
1:49:00interest was withdrawn.
1:49:02They would like the house to stay with
1:49:03Dell.
1:49:04She sat down. Yolanda Patterson folded
1:49:07her hands in front of her.
1:49:09Miss Marchetti, please stand.
1:49:11Dell stood. The Beckwith County
1:49:13Commission had reviewed her inventory
1:49:15and her maintenance plan as well as the
1:49:17use proposal she had submitted on
1:49:19December 1st. The use proposal was
1:49:21accepted. The long-term stewardship
1:49:24license was granted for a term of 10
1:49:26years, renewable at $240 per annum. She
1:49:30was not an owner. She was the steward.
1:49:33If at any point she ceased to maintain
1:49:36the property, the license reverted. Did
1:49:38she understand the terms? She
1:49:40understood. Then it was approved. She
1:49:42was to see the clerk after the hearing
1:49:44to execute the papers.
1:49:46Welcome to the stewardship, Miss
1:49:48Marchetti.
1:49:49Dell sat down.
1:49:51Her hands were on the inventory
1:49:53notebook.
1:49:54She looked down at them.
1:49:56She could not feel them for a moment.
1:49:59Then she could.
1:50:00Six weeks later, on the 2nd of February,
1:50:03Dell drove to Charleston again. The
1:50:06second clock was in the wooden box on
1:50:08the passenger seat.
1:50:09The numerals were deeper. The minute
1:50:11hand was wrapped in a fine silk thread,
1:50:14the color of old gold.
1:50:16The resonator case Bo had
1:50:18sat behind the brass.
1:50:20The came Bo had printed and mailed to
1:50:22her in December was installed under the
1:50:24dial, and the small brass reed inside
1:50:26the case tapped once a second, a soft
1:50:29precise tap so that a fingertip pressed
1:50:31against the back of the case could feel
1:50:33the time passing. Perry came with her
1:50:35this time.
1:50:37Perry drove the first half because Dell
1:50:38had been up until 2:00 in the morning
1:50:40the night before putting the last
1:50:41balance in.
1:50:43Vigdis Hjorth had completed her second
1:50:45round of chemotherapy the week before.
1:50:48The oncologist was cautiously
1:50:49optimistic.
1:50:51Perry had cried on the phone with Dell
1:50:53three times in January, each time for
1:50:55less than a minute and had hung up each
1:50:57time without apologizing.
1:50:59Olaug Vasan was waiting at her door. The
1:51:01slate cardigan, the amber beads, the
1:51:04silver roll.
1:51:06She did not say hello.
1:51:08She said Dell had brought her.
1:51:10Dell had brought Perry.
1:51:12Henriette had been her great aunt.
1:51:14Olaug Vasan turned her face toward
1:51:16Perry.
1:51:17She extended both hands, palms up.
1:51:20Perry placed her own hands in them.
1:51:22Olaug Vasan was very glad to meet her.
1:51:25They sat in the living room.
1:51:27The afternoon light came through the
1:51:28blue curtain.
1:51:30Dell unwrapped the clock on the coffee
1:51:32table.
1:51:33She described it again first.
1:51:36The brass case, the white dial,
1:51:39the 12 numerals deeper now,
1:51:41the hour hand short round at the tip,
1:51:44the minute hand wrapped in gold thread,
1:51:47the sweep second,
1:51:49the weight, the sound.
1:51:51She placed the clock in Olaug Vasan's
1:51:53hands. Olaug Vasan's fingers moved over
1:51:56the dial,
1:51:57found the 12,
1:51:59pressed harder than she had the first
1:52:00time, found the three, found the six.
1:52:05Her fingertip went to the minute hand.
1:52:07She stopped.
1:52:08Her face changed.
1:52:10She felt the thread. She turned the
1:52:12clock over. She found the resonator
1:52:14case. She pressed her thumb against it.
1:52:17The soft tap of the cam reached her
1:52:19thumb once,
1:52:20then again, then again.
1:52:23Oluwason did not speak for a long
1:52:25moment. She held the clock against her
1:52:27chest. She said so quietly that Dell
1:52:30almost did not hear it, that there she
1:52:32was.
1:52:33The three of them sat for a long time
1:52:35without talking.
1:52:37Then Oluwason went on.
1:52:40She had waited a long time.
1:52:43She had known there was no one left to
1:52:44wait for.
1:52:46She had waited anyway.
1:52:48That was a stupid habit.
1:52:50She kept the letters because the letters
1:52:52were real.
1:52:53The clock was going to be real.
1:52:55And now it was.
1:52:57Perry was crying quietly, not making any
1:53:00noise. Dell was not crying.
1:53:03She was watching Oluwason's hands on the
1:53:05brass. After a while, Oluwason
1:53:07straightened and shifted into practical
1:53:09register.
1:53:11She had 11 students at the school in
1:53:12Charleston.
1:53:14They were older women.
1:53:15They had lost their vision later in
1:53:17life. They were stubborn the way she was
1:53:19stubborn.
1:53:20She would like to pay Dell to make a
1:53:21clock for each of them. She would not
1:53:24tell them it was coming. She would take
1:53:25their measurements and their preferences
1:53:27in private.
1:53:28She would tell Dell what each one
1:53:30needed.
1:53:31The school would pay her a reasonable
1:53:33rate.
1:53:35She had asked the board the previous
1:53:36month.
1:53:37They had said yes. Dell asked how much
1:53:39was reasonable. $180 per clock,
1:53:43materials included. They could place one
1:53:46order every three months.
1:53:48If Dell needed more time, they would
1:53:50take more time.
1:53:52The school had waited this long.
1:53:54The school could wait a little longer.
1:53:57Dell wrote the number in her notebook.
1:53:59$180.
1:54:02Four clocks a year.
1:54:03$720
1:54:05annually from the Charleston school
1:54:07alone. Enough to pay the stewardship fee
1:54:09three times over. Enough to buy
1:54:11materials.
1:54:13Enough.
1:54:14Yes, Dell told her. Good, Oluwason said.
1:54:17Dell drove home in silence again, but it
1:54:20was a different silence than the first
1:54:21time.
1:54:22Perry slept in passenger seat for most
1:54:24of the drive back through the mountains.
1:54:27The late afternoon light turned to blue
1:54:29dusk and then to dark.
1:54:31The headlights picked out the yellow
1:54:32lines on the two lane.
1:54:34The Subaru's heater worked only on the
1:54:36lower vents as always and Dell drove
1:54:38with her hands cold and her feet warm.
1:54:41She thought about her mother. She
1:54:42thought about Rhett Carlyle. The legal
1:54:44aid lawyer had emailed her two weeks
1:54:46before.
1:54:48The fire marshal's office in Columbus
1:54:49had completed its investigation.
1:54:52The cause had been confirmed as a
1:54:54failure of the basement electrical
1:54:55panel.
1:54:57The three certified letters from Lucian
1:54:59Marchetti were in evidence.
1:55:01The Franklin County prosecutor had filed
1:55:03charges against Rhett Carlyle for
1:55:05involuntary manslaughter.
1:55:07The civil suit on Dell's behalf was
1:55:09scheduled for the following September.
1:55:11The lawyer had added at the end of the
1:55:13email that this was not a guaranteed
1:55:15outcome.
1:55:16These cases could be difficult.
1:55:18She would do everything she could. Dell
1:55:21had read the email three times.
1:55:23She had not cried.
1:55:25She had not felt relief.
1:55:27She had felt something smaller and more
1:55:29honest, which was the specific feeling
1:55:31of having been heard by a system that
1:55:33she had believed for three months would
1:55:35not hear her.
1:55:37Being heard was not the same as being
1:55:39made whole.
1:55:40Her mother was not coming back. But her
1:55:43mother's name was in a prosecutor's
1:55:44filing in Franklin County and her
1:55:47mother's handwriting on three certified
1:55:49letters was going to sit on a judge's
1:55:50desk.
1:55:51And her mother's warnings had moved
1:55:53finally from a drawer in a landlord's
1:55:55filing cabinet to a public record.
1:55:58Dell drove. She did not know yet whether
1:56:01the trial would end in a conviction.
1:56:03She did not know yet whether the civil
1:56:05suit would compensate her for anything.
1:56:08She knew only that she was no longer
1:56:09carrying the folder of 300 pages alone.
1:56:13She knew only that the file now sat with
1:56:15people who had the authority to do
1:56:16something about it.
1:56:18That was not nothing. That was a thing
1:56:20she had made happen by keeping the
1:56:22papers,
1:56:24by keeping her mother's handwriting, by
1:56:26sitting in a beckley shelter at four in
1:56:28the morning and refusing to let the
1:56:30folder go,
1:56:31she pulled into Marguerite's lot at 10
1:56:34past eight.
1:56:35Perry woke up.
1:56:37They did not say goodbye in words.
1:56:40They squeezed each other's hands once in
1:56:42the dark cab of the Subaru.
1:56:45Perry got out. She walked to her own
1:56:47truck. She drove away. Dell walked up
1:56:50the footpath in the dark with her
1:56:52flashlight. The forest smelled of wet
1:56:54leaves and cold stone.
1:56:57She reached the clearing.
1:56:58The stone house sat in its ring of trees
1:57:01under a cold sky, and the metal dome
1:57:03patched in its ugly brave rivets caught
1:57:06a little of the moonlight.
1:57:08She went inside.
1:57:10She lit the fire.
1:57:11The brass clock ticked on the mantel.
1:57:13She sat on the hearth with her hands
1:57:15held out to the heat.
1:57:17The first customer came the next
1:57:19morning. He was a man in his sixties.
1:57:22He walked into the garage with a
1:57:23stainless steel wristwatch in his palm.
1:57:26Omega Seamaster from 1972.
1:57:30The watch had belonged to his father.
1:57:33He explained who had worn it the day he
1:57:34died and had left it to him.
1:57:37The crown was loose.
1:57:39The mainspring would not take a wind.
1:57:42He did not want to send it out.
1:57:44He wanted somebody local to do it.
1:57:47Dell took the watch. She lifted the
1:57:49loop. She could fix the crown that day.
1:57:52The mainspring she would need to order.
1:57:54It would take a week.
1:57:56The total would probably be $45.
1:57:59The man repeated the number back as if
1:58:01testing it.
1:58:0345.
1:58:04Including the mainspring, Dell
1:58:06confirmed.
1:58:07He nodded and paid cash.
1:58:10He signed the paper slip Dell handed him
1:58:12with Marguerite's garage address at the
1:58:14top and a line that said Delphine
1:58:16Marchetti repair.
1:58:17He put the duplicate in his wallet. Dell
1:58:19wrote in the back of her inventory
1:58:21notebook on the first clean page,
1:58:24customer one,
1:58:25Omega Seamaster 1972,
1:58:29loose crown mainspring, $45.
1:58:32Pick up next Friday.
1:58:34She looked at the entry.
1:58:36She wrote underneath it February 3rd,
1:58:372027.
1:58:39She closed the notebook.
1:58:41The man walked out.
1:58:43The bell above the door jingled. Dell
1:58:45stood for a moment in the garage with
1:58:47her hands at her sides.
1:58:49She was wearing her mother's apron.
1:58:52The brass clock on the mantel at the
1:58:54Stone House, a mile and a quarter up the
1:58:56footpath, was still ticking.
1:58:58The 42 clocks on the wall of the upper
1:59:01room, minus the [clears throat] 28 that
1:59:03would leave for Richmond in a crate the
1:59:05following week, were waiting.
1:59:07The one clock in a box in Oluwaseun
1:59:09Adetola's living room in Charleston was
1:59:12ticking too now, and would keep ticking
1:59:14for as long as its owner wanted it to.
1:59:16Marguerite walked past the office door
1:59:18carrying a muffler.
1:59:19She glanced at the notebook.
1:59:22Customer one, huh?
1:59:24Dell nodded.
1:59:26Customer one.
1:59:28Marguerite kept walking.
1:59:30Dell should hang out a sign, she called
1:59:31over her shoulder.
1:59:33Dell thought about it.
1:59:35Maybe she would.
1:59:37The spring came early that year. By the
1:59:39end of March, the ferns had come back
1:59:40around the foundation of the Stone
1:59:42House. The ivy on the exterior spiral
1:59:45staircase had started to green at the
1:59:47tips.
1:59:48The arched windows on the second floor
1:59:50had new glass in them, which Yannick had
1:59:52helped Dell install over three weekends
1:59:55with sheets of tempered glass they had
1:59:56bought from a supply yard in Lewisburg
1:59:59at a discount that Marguerite had
2:00:00negotiated.
2:00:02The patched dome was still ugly, but it
2:00:04was also still dry. Dell slept in the
2:00:06lower room. The upper room was the
2:00:08workshop. Isadora came three mornings a
2:00:11week on her moped, which she parked next
2:00:13to Perry's Yamaha at the base of the
2:00:15footpath.
2:00:16The two of them walked up the footpath
2:00:18together in no apparent hurry. Dell was
2:00:20finishing a clock for a man named
2:00:22Theodore Okafor, whose name was number
2:00:24six on Henriette's list. He was still
2:00:27alive. He lived in Beckley where Dell
2:00:29had spent her nights on the road. He was
2:00:3178. He had asked through a letter Dell
2:00:34had mailed, and he had dictated to his
2:00:36nephew for the numerals to be very wide,
2:00:38and the hands to make a small click at
2:00:40the top of each hour loud enough that
2:00:41his great-granddaughter in the next room
2:00:43could hear it and come find him for
2:00:44bedtime. had designed the hour click.
2:00:47Dell was installing it that afternoon.
2:00:50The brass table clock on the mantel
2:00:51downstairs still ticked. Perry had
2:00:53brought a photograph of her mother the
2:00:55previous Sunday. Wegdis was in
2:00:57remission.
2:00:59The photograph showed her sitting on a
2:01:00porch in Clarksburg with a cup of coffee
2:01:03and a thin blue blanket around her
2:01:04shoulders.
2:01:06Her hair had grown back about an inch,
2:01:08soft and gray.
2:01:10She was smiling the small, careful smile
2:01:12of a woman who was not going to assume
2:01:14anything about tomorrow, but who was
2:01:16willing for the first time in a long
2:01:17time to assume something about today.
2:01:20Dell had framed the photograph. It sat
2:01:23on the mantel beside the brass clock.
2:01:26She was at the workbench on the first of
2:01:28April when she heard the knock at the
2:01:29arch door downstairs.
2:01:32She climbed down.
2:01:33She crossed the hexagonal tile floor.
2:01:36She opened the door.
2:01:38A woman stood on the stone step.
2:01:41She was in her 40s.
2:01:43She wore a navy windbreaker and carried
2:01:45a small cardboard box in both hands. She
2:01:48had the kind of face that looked
2:01:50uncertain about whether this was the
2:01:51right place. She was looking for
2:01:53Delphine Marchetti, she said.
2:01:56Dell was Delphine.
2:01:58Her mother was Oluwasin Adetola.
2:02:01She had asked the woman to bring Dell
2:02:03this. She had said Dell would know what
2:02:05to do with it.
2:02:07Dell took the box. It was light.
2:02:10She opened the lid.
2:02:11Inside were two things, a folded letter
2:02:15and a small brown leather box no larger
2:02:17than a deck of cards.
2:02:19Dell opened the leather box. Inside on a
2:02:22bed of cream silk was a watch, not a
2:02:24clock. A woman's wristwatch, small. The
2:02:28dial was blank. The hands were set.
2:02:31The case was brass, a little tarnished.
2:02:33The band was leather cracked and dark at
2:02:35the edges from being worn against skin
2:02:37for a long time.
2:02:39Dell lifted the letter. Oluwaseun had
2:02:42dictated it in her careful voice. Dell
2:02:44could hear it in the lines. Delphine.
2:02:48This watch had belonged to Oluwaseun's
2:02:49mother. She had worn it from the day she
2:02:52had married Oluwaseun's father in 1951
2:02:55until the day she had lost her sight in
2:02:571979.
2:02:59After that, she had taken it off because
2:03:01she had said a watch she could not read
2:03:04was a cruelty. She had kept it in a
2:03:06drawer for the rest of her life.
2:03:08Oluwaseun had had it in a drawer since
2:03:10her mother had passed in 1996.
2:03:13She would like Dell to make it readable.
2:03:15She would wear it herself.
2:03:18She did not need a tactile dial. She
2:03:21needed the hands to be shaped so she
2:03:22could tell them apart, and she needed
2:03:25Dell to put one of her resonator cases
2:03:27inside so she could feel it on her
2:03:28wrist.
2:03:30Dell would know what to do.
2:03:32Oluwaseun was paying for this one.
2:03:34$180.
2:03:37The school was paying for the others.
2:03:39This one was personal.
2:03:41Her mother had waited longer than she
2:03:43had.
2:03:44Let's not keep her waiting. Dell read
2:03:46the letter twice.
2:03:48She did not cry.
2:03:50A thing is not finished until it has
2:03:52been used, her mother used to say.
2:03:55A clock is not a clock until someone has
2:03:57looked at it to find out the time. A
2:03:59promise is not a promise until it has
2:04:01been kept.
2:04:03She set the box down on the hearth
2:04:04beside the brass clock. She looked up at
2:04:07the woman at the door and asked her to
2:04:09tell her mother the watch would be ready
2:04:11by June.
2:04:13The woman nodded.
2:04:14She did not say anything.
2:04:16She walked back down the footpath. Dell
2:04:19stood in the arched doorway and watched
2:04:21her go.
2:04:22The sun was on the dome. The patched tin
2:04:25caught a little of it.
2:04:27The forest around the clearing had come
2:04:29back into leaf. A single black bird sat
2:04:32on the chimney as it had the first day
2:04:34she had come up the footpath in October.
2:04:37It was possibly the same bird. It was
2:04:39possibly not. She did not know enough
2:04:42about birds to be sure. She turned
2:04:44around. She went back inside. She
2:04:47climbed the inside stairs. She sat at
2:04:49the workbench. She took the wristwatch
2:04:51out of its leather box. She lifted the
2:04:54loop. She began. Outside in the clearing
2:04:57the wind moved through the trees.
2:04:59Downstairs on the mantel the brass clock
2:05:01ticked.
2:05:03Above her head in the metal dome
2:05:05something small and alive moved and was
2:05:07gone again.
2:05:08And the house which had stood for 61
2:05:10years without being quite finished held
2:05:13its breath for a moment and then let it
2:05:15out again.
2:05:17Lucienne had kept her promise.
2:05:20Three certified letters in a folder in a
2:05:22Franklin County prosecutor's office.
2:05:24Henrietta had kept hers.
2:05:2642 clocks in rows waiting on a wall.
2:05:29Olouasian had kept hers. A woman at a
2:05:32door, a letter, a watch in a brown
2:05:34leather box.
2:05:36Dell lowered the loop. She picked up the
2:05:38small screwdriver her mother had called
2:05:40the stubborn one. She started with the
2:05:42back of the case.

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