What the Watchmaker Kept

Mio was reaching to turn the sign on the shop door to CLOSED when the bell above it rang.

"I've come to collect a watch I left for repair."

The man stood in the doorway with his wet umbrella still open. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and wore a gray coat. Mio paged through the ledger. The claim slip was under the name Shinohara, dated two months back. That was more than a month before her father died.

"This was one of my father's jobs," she said. "Give me a moment."

From a shelf in the back she took down a small box. Inside lay an old pocket watch. Engraved on the back cover were initials she did not recognize: K.S.

"Does it run?"

"My father's notebook says the repair was finished."

Mio wound the crown, and the second hand began to move. But as she pressed the case shut, something felt wrong under her fingertips. The back cover was a little too thick. Only a watchmaker's daughter would have noticed.

The man's eyes were following her fingers.

"Is something the matter?"

"No," she said, and made herself smile.

Her father had died of a heart attack. He was found slumped over his workbench, and the police had ruled out foul play. Yet one thing had stayed with Mio ever since: the tweezers still gripped in his right hand. Her father was not a man who left a job half done.

"The fee was paid in advance," she said. "Here you are."

The man did not take the watch.

"Would you open it for me? The inside of the back cover."

Mio held her breath.

"You've noticed too, haven't you?" he said quietly. "That watch belonged to my older brother. Two months ago he died in a warehouse at the harbor. They called it an accident. Before he died, he told me he had taken this in for repair. To hide something."

The rain came down harder. Mio switched on the lamp over the workbench and slid a case opener under the rim. The back cover was doubled. From the gap between its two layers slipped a thin folded slip of paper and a tiny memory card.

On the paper was a row of numbers and, in her father's handwriting, a single line: Give this to no one but the owner.

"So my father saw this."

"I think so. And someone found out that he had."

A chill crept up Mio's spine. Had this watch cost her father his life? And could she even trust the man in front of her? The slip said Shinohara, but who could prove that this man was really Shinohara?

"May I see some identification?"

Without a word he handed her his driver's license. Toru Shinohara. The photo was his. Still, her hands were shaking.

Just then, outside the shop, a car door slammed. Through the glass she saw the headlights of a black van go dark.

Shinohara switched off the lamp at once.

"Is there a back door?"

"Yes."

"Take those two things. Hurry."

Mio pushed the card and the paper into the pocket of her apron. Shinohara slipped the pocket watch into his coat. In the dark, his hand closed around her wrist. It was dry and warm. At the front of the shop, someone tried the doorknob. The door was locked. Then came a dull thud against the glass.

They came out the back into an alley, and the rain struck her face. Shinohara ran with her behind him, as if to shield her. Down a flight of stone steps, then into the shelter of the market's awnings. Their breath showed white in the cold. They stood so close that their shoulders touched, and she thought she could hear his heartbeat.

Mio clutched the card through her apron. What if this man was only borrowing the Shinohara name? What if he was on the side of the people who had killed her father? Here, under the awnings with nowhere to run, she was at his mercy. And yet her wrist still held the warmth of his hand. All the time they were running, he had not once asked her for the card.

"Why did you bring me with you?" she asked. "You could have run off with the watch."

Shinohara was silent for a moment.

"Your father called me," he said. "The night before he died. He said, 'I've seen what's inside the thing I was asked to fix. Whatever happens, I don't want my daughter mixed up in it.' He was going to meet me at the shop the next day. When I got there, an ambulance was parked out front."

Mio bit her lip. The last thing her father had worried about was her.

"For three weeks I couldn't make up my mind. If I came for the watch, I'd drag you into this. If I didn't, sooner or later they would come and search the shop."

A siren wailed in the distance. Only later would Mio learn that Shinohara had called the police himself. The van was stopped on the main street, and two men were taken away. They had claimed to be security guards for a harbor shipping company.

Before dawn, in a corridor at the police station, Shinohara held out a can of hot coffee from the vending machine.

"The card held records my brother had gathered on a smuggling ring," he said. "Now they'll have to look at my brother's case again. And your father's."

"I'm glad," Mio said, and only then noticed how hoarse her voice had become. Everything that had been wound so tight in her began to loosen. Shinohara sat down beside her, gently.

"I'm sorry I put you through that."

She shook her head. "You let my father finish his last job."

"What about the watch?" she asked. "You still haven't collected it."

Shinohara took the pocket watch from his coat. In the rush to shut it, the back cover had been bent a little out of true.

"Would you fix it for me? This time, with nothing hidden inside."

"It will take a while."

"I'll wait. I'll come back for it as many times as it takes."

Mio took the watch and held it to her ear. The second hand was ticking softly into the morning after the rain. Her father's hands had stopped at a certain hour, she thought. From here on, she would be the one to keep that time moving.