A Secret Kept, A Watch’s Weight
🔴 HE’S BEEN WEARING DAD’S OLD WATCH, BUT DAD IS BURIED WITH IT
I swear, the blood drained from my face when I saw it gleaming under the fluorescent lights of the grocery store.
The metallic scent of chlorine filled the air as I walked towards him, and then I saw it—Dad’s watch, the one we specifically put on his wrist before they closed the casket. “Where… Where did you get that?” I managed to choke out. He looked confused.
“It was Dad’s, right? Mom gave it to me last week,” he mumbled, not making eye contact, the watch glinting as he reached for a bag of chips. I feel sick. Mom would NEVER have done that. Dad cherished that watch more than anything in the world.
Everything Mom has done lately is so weird, she keeps staring out the window at night. Her skin is so dry and pale, and she doesn’t remember things I tell her. I’m starting to think she’s not even…
The phone rang, and it was Mom, her voice barely a whisper: “Don’t ask about the watch.”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…
My hand trembled, tightening around the phone. “Mom, what are you talking about? David has Dad’s watch! The one we buried him with!” My voice was shaking, raw with disbelief and fear. Her whisper grew more urgent, a dry rustling sound that sent a shiver down my spine. “Just… just don’t ask. Pretend you didn’t see it. Please. Don’t make it worse.” The line clicked dead.
Don’t ask? Pretend I didn’t see it? Worse? Worse than this nightmare I was living? Worse than my father’s grave potentially being disturbed? Worse than my mother, who was supposed to be my anchor, dissolving into this gaunt, distant stranger? I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I left the grocery cart right there, abandoned in the aisle, my mind racing with possibilities, each one more terrifying than the last. I had to get to Mom. Now.
The drive felt endless, every street light mocking me with its cold, artificial glare. The house was dark when I pulled up, an unnatural quiet hanging in the air. I fumbled with the key, my hands slick with sweat. Inside, the air was cold and stale, carrying the faint, lingering scent of something musty and forgotten. “Mom?” I called out, my voice barely above a whisper. No answer. I checked the living room, the kitchen, the dining room. Empty.
Then I saw her in the small den, Dad’s old armchair facing the blank television screen. She was sitting perfectly still, her posture stiff and unnatural. Her skin was pulled taut over her bones, dry and flaky, almost translucent under the dim light filtering in from the street. Her eyes, usually so full of life and warmth, were wide and vacant, staring at nothing.
“Mom?” I said her name louder this time, approaching her slowly. She didn’t flinch. I knelt beside her chair, trying to catch her gaze. “Mom, it’s me. What’s going on? David has the watch. The one from the funeral. Why did you give it to him? Where did you get it?”
She slowly turned her head towards me, her neck moving with a strange, jerky motion. A faint, unsettling smile touched her lips, and her eyes seemed to look *through* me rather than at me. “The watch?” she whispered, her voice a dry, brittle sound like leaves skittering across pavement. “He shouldn’t have it. It belongs… with him.”
“With who, Mom? Dad?” I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Where did you get it?”
She didn’t answer, just continued staring ahead, the unsettling smile fixed on her face. I scanned the room, feeling a growing sense of dread. My eyes landed on a small, antique wooden box on the side table. It was a box Dad used to keep old coins in, usually locked. It was slightly ajar now. Curiosity, a dangerous instinct in this moment, won out over fear. I reached for it.
Inside, nestled on a faded velvet lining, wasn’t coins. It was a collection of small, personal items – Dad’s old tie clip, a worn photograph from their wedding day… and tucked beneath them, wrapped in a fine silk handkerchief, was *another* watch. It looked identical, or near identical, to the one I had just seen gleaming on David’s wrist at the grocery store.
My breath hitched. Two watches? Why would Dad have two identical, cherished watches? And where did *this* one come from? I looked back at Mom. She was humming now, a tuneless, repetitive melody that sent shivers down my spine.
Then, a memory surfaced, faint but clear. Dad, years ago, sitting me down, talking about his watch. Not the one he wore every day, but *the* watch. The *real* one. He’d told me that the one he wore daily, the one I remembered seeing constantly on his wrist, was a meticulously crafted replica. It was his everyday companion, the one he wasn’t afraid to wear while fixing things in the garage or working in the garden. His *real* prize, a slightly different model given to him by his grandfather, was kept safe, hidden away. He’d shown it to me just once, briefly. It looked almost exactly the same.
The watch David was wearing wasn’t the one Dad was buried with. It was the replica. Mom, in her confused state, must have found the hidden box, found the real watch, and in a moment of delusion, believed it was the “daily” one, the one that *should* be worn, and given it to David. Her warning? Perhaps a fleeting moment of clarity, remembering it was meant to be hidden, or perhaps another facet of her rapidly deteriorating mind, a fear rooted in the idea that neither watch should be in the house, that they belonged with Dad.
The paleness, the dryness, the memory loss, the staring… they weren’t signs of something supernatural. They were symptoms, devastating and heartbreaking, of a severe illness I hadn’t recognized, stealing my mother away piece by piece, leaving a hollow shell behind. The watch, the terrifying puzzle piece that had triggered my worst fears, wasn’t evidence of a desecrated grave, but a heartbreaking symptom of my mother’s own descent, inadvertently revealing a small, harmless secret Dad had kept, magnified into something terrifying by her condition. There was no digging, no horror from the grave. Just a terrible, profound illness, and a mother who was slowly, irrevocably, being lost to me.