Chapter 8 - The Broken Watch
Eight months into his new life, the engine of Daniel’s coupe finally threw a rod on the freeway. With no money to repair it, he sold the scrap metal to a junkyard for three hundred dollars and bought a used city bus pass and a pair of sturdy walking shoes.
Every morning, Daniel woke up at 5:00 AM to work a morning shift unloading crates at a wholesale produce market, followed by his evening shift at the trattoria. He had lost thirty pounds. The soft, doughy arrogance of his youth had been replaced by hard, lean muscle and hollow, haunted eyes. His hands were calloused, his skin weathered.
One Sunday afternoon—his only day off—Daniel decided to clean out the single winter coat he owned, an old wool jacket he had worn on the night of his thirty-fifth birthday party.
As he reached into the deep inner breast pocket, his fingers brushed against something hard, cool, and metallic.
He pulled it out.
His breath hitched in his throat.
It was the watch.
On that catastrophic night, after Margaret had walked out and the party had collapsed into confusion, Daniel had mindlessly scooped the scuffed Patek Philippe off the marble floor and shoved it into his coat pocket before driving to Oakridge. In the chaos of the eviction and the divorce, he had forgotten it existed.
Daniel held the timepiece in his trembling palms.
The gold casing was scratched along the bezel where it had hit the floor. The crystal face had a hairline fracture running across the Roman numerals. The leather strap was stiff with age.
Daniel sat at the rickety wooden table of his studio apartment, staring at it under the dim, buzzing lightbulb.
*“Seriously, Mom? A stupid old watch? Couldn't you afford something decent?”*
His own words echoed in his ears, sounding so grotesque, so deeply monstrous, that a wave of physical nausea washed over him.
He turned the watch over. On the back of the case, barely visible beneath decades of wear, was a tiny engraving he had never bothered to look for.
*To Thomas. From Dad. 1952. Sweat buys freedom. Honor keeps it.*
Daniel closed his eyes. Memories he had buried for twenty years came rushing back.
He remembered his grandfather—an old man with thick glasses and massive, scarred carpenter’s hands who smelled of cedar sawdust and pipe tobacco. Daniel remembered sitting on his grandfather's knee when he was seven years old, listening to the old man tell stories about surviving the postwar depression, working eighteen hours a day in a shipyard, saving every single nickel to put Thomas through engineering school.
His grandfather had bought this watch pawned in a junk shop for thirty dollars, polished it with kerosene, and worn it every day of his life as a reminder that a man’s worth is measured not by what he owns, but by what he builds and protects.
And Daniel had thrown it on the floor like garbage.
Tears streamed down Daniel’s face, splashing onto the cracked crystal.
"I'm sorry," Daniel whispered into the empty room, his voice breaking. "Grandpa... Dad... Mom... I'm so sorry."
The next morning, Daniel took his bus pass and rode two hours across the city to an old, dusty horologist's shop in downtown Los Angeles—*Krikorian Watch Restoration*.
The owner, Mr. Krikorian, an elderly Armenian craftsman with an eyeglass loupe strapped to his head, took the watch from Daniel’s hands. He examined it under a bright halogen lamp for five quiet minutes, turning it over with delicate tweezers.
"A 1948 reference," Krikorian murmured with reverence. "The movement inside is hand-wound, twenty-three jewels. A masterpiece of human engineering. But it has suffered trauma. The balance wheel is misaligned, the crystal is shattered, and the case has taken a severe impact."
"Can it be fixed?" Daniel asked, his voice strained with anxiety.
"It can," the old man replied. "I would have to fabricate two parts by hand and source authentic vintage crystal. It will take three months. And it will cost twelve hundred dollars."
Twelve hundred dollars was everything Daniel could save from both jobs over four months of eating rice, beans, and cabbage.
Daniel didn't hesitate for a single second.
"Do it," Daniel said firmly, pulling out his battered wallet and placing his weekly pay of two hundred dollars on the glass counter. "Here is the deposit. I will bring you the rest every Friday. Please... just make it work again."
Mr. Krikorian looked at Daniel’s rough, scarred hands, then looked into his clear, determined eyes.
"I will treat it with the respect it deserves, young man," the watchmaker said softly.
For the next four months, Daniel lived like a monk. He picked up extra shifts cleaning grease traps at the diner. He walked two miles each way in the rain to save bus fare. Every Friday afternoon, without fail, he walked into Krikorian’s shop and handed over whatever cash he had earned.
He wasn't saving the watch to sell it. He wasn't fixing it to bribe his mother.
May you like
He was fixing it because it was the only piece of his family’s soul he hadn't completely destroyed—and he could not bear to live in a world where it remained broken.
***
