Strangers With Secrets: A New Story Every Week

the bell above the door made no sound it had been broken for years unlike the sprawling antique fair we visited last week this place was small it was quiet a library of forgotten things from the back of the shop a man looked up his hands were busy with a porcelain doll a fine gold wire tracing the cracks in its face he did not smile he simply watched the woman who had entered his silence her name was alara his was silas they had never met but that wasn't entirely true alara moved between the narrow aisles the air smelled of wood polish and old paper and something else ozone like the air after a lightning strike

the shop wasn't filled with pristine relics it was filled with beautiful repairs a ceramic bowl held together with veins of gold a leather bound book with a spine of new darker leather every object had a story and then a second story about how it was saved silas's work was not about hiding the damage it was about honoring the scar he put the doll down he still hadn't spoken a word alara felt his eyes on her not like a shopkeeper like a watchman she stopped in front of a wall of clocks dozens of them mantle clocks cuckoo clocks simple kitchen clocks not a single one was ticking and every single one was stopped

at exactly 03:14 she didn't have to look closer to know she could feel it a moment frozen in time multiplied by 50 she turned to him they are not for sale his voice was low rough like unsanded wood she nodded not looking away from the clocks it's a powerful collection he finally moved from his workbench he was a tall man made smaller by a stoop in his shoulders he wiped his hands on a cloth it is not a collection he said it is a memorial she let the silence answer he would either fill it or he wouldn't he did not elara turned from the wall of stopped time her eyes scanned a tray of small

silver objects tarnished lockets single earrings a bent tie clip all of them broken all of them waiting she pointed with a single steady finger at a small heart shaped locket its clasp was snapped clean off i'll take this one silas looked from her face to the locket for the first time the stillness in his expression fractured something shifted a deep tectonic grief he looked back at her really looked at her as if seeing a ghost in the light of day he took a breath it was the loudest sound in the room

it belonged to my daughter the shop was not a business it was a promise a promise to fix what could be fixed because he couldn't fix the one thing that mattered the clocks were not a memorial to a person they were a memorial to a single second the last second three fourteen the moment a car slid on black ice the moment his world stopped ticking elara knew the time she knew the locket it had been a gift from her to her best friend the girl who never came home from her piano lesson she hadn't come here to buy back a memory she had come to see if the man who saved broken things had managed to save any part of himself

he picked up the locket he didn't look at the price tag he looked at the workbench where his fine gold wire and epoxy weeded the clasp can be mended