He did not answer my silence, instead looking around the kitchen as if calculating the cost of the wallpaper. He set his mug down with a hard click that made the spoons rattle in the sink.
At four, the creak of the third step on the hallway stairs signaled his return from upstairs. I met him at the landing, where the hallway closet doors stood open.
“We should start packing up the attic this weekend,” George said, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “It will save us a massive rush later.”
“No,” I said, standing on the creaking step to block his path. “Nothing leaves this house while he is still in his bed.”
George stepped closer, his jaw tight as he stared down at me.
“We do not have all the time in the world, Helen,” he snapped.
He pushed past me down the stairs, his quick steps echoing in the narrow space. From the bottom of the flight came the dry, hollow sound of George counting the moving boxes stacked in the hallway.
“Then you find a way to pay the nursing bills next week,” he said, folding the brochure and sliding it into his breast pocket. “Because I cannot keep carrying this family on my back.”
He left the living room to make a phone call in the driveway, his shoes clicking against the hardwood.
Upstairs, the hum of the oxygen concentrator seemed louder than usual, a steady, mechanical sigh that filled the hallway.
I found my father awake at eleven-thirty, his pale eyes fixed on the ceiling, his right hand resting on the heavy leather ledger by his pillow.
When I sat on the edge of the mattress, he reached slowly into the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out his old gold pocket watch, the metal dull from years of sitting in the dark.
“This watch has always kept perfect time, Helen, and now it is yours,” he whispered, his voice thin as dry paper.
He pressed the heavy metal disc into my palm, his fingers remarkably cold against my skin.
He closed his eyes again, his breathing slowing into a shallow, heavy rhythm that made the room feel very small.
I turned the watch over in my hand and noticed three lines of small, faint script engraved on the back casing, a detail I had never seen in all my years of polishing it.
The inscription read, October 12, 1994, with two initials, J.D., and a short phrase that did not make sense to me.
I did not have time to study it before the front gate clicked, signaling Julie’s arrival for her afternoon check.
We stood in the kitchen at three o’clock, watching the kettle heat up while the house remained perfectly quiet.
“He stopped breathing for nearly twenty seconds while I was sitting with him,” I said, looking at the clean white teacups on the counter. “It looked like he was struggling.”
Julie placed her hand gently on my shoulder, her fingers warm and steady.
