“…it was not Jason,” I told the old pawnbroker in a whisper, because the face on that little gray monitor belonged to a young man I knew well. He wore a black jacket and a ball cap, and he leaned across the counter of Riverside Pawn with a driver license in his hand and an easy, practiced smile. It was Dustin Fenn, the brother of my daughter in law Crystal. He had eaten at my table every Thanksgiving for ten years. He had called me Miss Norma and carried my groceries. And now he was holding up my late husband license, forged with a new photograph, to pawn the one thing Curtis loved.
The pawnbroker was a thin, courtly old man named Mr. Abernathy, with half glasses and sleeves rolled to the elbow. He saw my face and quietly poured me a paper cup of water. He said, “Mrs. Riggs, I have been in this trade forty one years, and I know a nervous seller when I see one. This boy kept looking over his shoulder. And he did not know that a man cannot walk through that door and sign the name of someone who has passed without my noticing.” He copied the video onto a small silver drive, and pressed it into my palm.
I took the watch from the velvet bag. It was heavy and cool in my hand, and the gold had worn soft along the edges, the way a wedding ring wears. I opened the lid and read the inscription by the window light. To Curtis from Daddy, 1961. I pressed it to my cheek. Mr. Abernathy refused my three hundred and fifty dollars. He said, gruffly, that he did not take money for stolen property, and that I should keep my purse closed and my chin up.
A pawn ticket in a Christmas bathrobe pocket, a security camera behind the counter, and a gold watch with a message inside the lid.
I called Jason first. He was at his job at the auto parts store. I said, “Son, I need you at my house at six tonight, and I need you to bring Crystal.” He asked if something was wrong. I said, “I will tell you at six.” Then I called Detective Alvarez of the Tulsa police, who had taken my report two years before and had written me a kind note on my birthday. He said he would be there at six thirty, and he would not come in a uniform. He said he had a feeling I would want to do this properly.
At six, they arrived, Jason in his work shirt, Crystal in a bright white coat with a designer bag over her arm. Dustin came, too, at Crystal request, because she had told him there was leftover ham. They sat in my little living room, the three of them, under the framed photographs of Curtis, and I served coffee in my good cups. I wore the faded pink bathrobe from Christmas over my church dress. Nobody commented. I sat down in my armchair, set the black velvet bag on my knee, and said, “Crystal, I have a question about a gift.”
She smiled uncertainly. I took the pawn ticket from the pocket and laid it on the coffee table. “This came in the robe you gave me. The robe you said cost seven dollars and ninety nine cents. I would like to know how it came to be in the pocket of a robe from a thrift store.” Crystal said, a little too quickly, that she had no idea. She said the robe was from a donation bin. She said, “Norma, I think you are confused.” I did not argue. I opened the velvet bag and let the watch slide into my palm.
Dustin went white. He looked at Crystal. Crystal looked at the carpet. Jason, who had been staring at the watch with an expression of pure bewilderment, said, “Mom, where did you find Dad watch?” I told him. I told him about the pawnshop, the camera, the forged license, the ticket that Crystal had used as a bookmark in her own robe and forgotten to take out when she pinned a Goodwill tag to the collar. And then, from the kitchen doorway, Detective Alvarez stepped forward, in a gray sweater, and politely asked Dustin to stand up.
Dustin admitted everything, in a cracked voice, with his hands shaking. He had owed money to a man in Broken Arrow. Crystal had told him about the watch, where Curtis kept it, which drawer. He took it the day of the service, while the family ate sandwiches in the fellowship hall. Crystal said she had only meant to borrow it. Jason turned to his wife and looked at her for a long, long time, and said, “Crystal, you knew. You stood at my father service.”
Dustin was charged, and pleaded to a reduced count, with probation and restitution. Crystal left for her mother house in Oklahoma City that same night, and Jason moved into my guest room for a month, silent and ashamed, mowing the lawn at dawn and fixing the porch rail without being asked. When he finally spoke, one evening over supper, he said, “Mom, I laughed at Christmas. I laughed loudest.” I said I remembered. I said I forgave him. But I said forgiveness was a thing that had to be earned in small ways, every day, for a long time.
On New Year Day, I took the watch to a jeweler on Peoria, who cleaned it, oiled it, and wound it with a tiny silver key. It ticked, softly, with a sound like a heart. I carried it to church the following Sunday, on a gold chain that Curtis had bought for me in 1989, and I tucked it into the pocket of my navy dress. During the hymn, I felt it against my ribs. At the end of the service, my grandson Micah, who was eleven, tugged my sleeve and asked, in a whisper, what I was keeping in my pocket that made a clicking sound. I showed him. I opened the lid and let him read the words, To Curtis from Daddy, 1961, and then I told him the whole story, in a whisper, in the back pew, while the choir sang the last verse. He listened with enormous eyes. Then he asked if he might hold it. I placed it in his small palms. He cupped it with both hands, as though it were a baby bird, and said solemnly, “Grandma, I will take care of it forever.” I believed him. I kept the pink robe, too. It was warm, and it fit.