The Time Keepers

Chapter 71

CHAPTER 71

G RACE SAT NEXT TO A NH, LISTENING TO HER TRY TO REPEAT what she had learned in her conversation from Jack.

There was so much of the story that Grace still did not understand. But what she knew, not as the wife of a man who worked on watches and keeping time, but from her position as a woman who had experienced her own loss and pain, was that time did not always move in a linear path as her husband and father-in law believed. Instead, for some people, time radiated from a single epicenter, a point in time, where everything began and eventually returned. For Jack, the loss of Becky was that singular point around which everything revolved. Like the planets around the sun, his love radiated from that center. From the outside, it might appear that their love affair remained steeped in the memory of the past, not evolving the way a marriage might over time with the addition of children and the weight of age. But was it not something sacred to have one thing in your life that transcended time?

Grace’s heart felt cleaved between the sadness of knowing that Jack had spent seven years living in such close proximity to Becky, never revealing himself to her in fear of rejection. The other part of her heart was awed by how deeply he felt toward her that he would have taken such steps just to be as close to her as he could.

There was not a single clock on earth that could capture the minutes or hours of a love like this. And it went back to that note Harry had taped to the wall of the workshop:

Sundials can measure the hours in the day and reservoirs every drop of water. But no one has ever invented an instrument to quantify love.

Becky does not recognize the two women who are waiting for her in the principal’s office after classes have ended for the afternoon. But she finds herself silenced by their words as they explain why they’ve come.

She listens to the woman named Grace describe how her husband welcomed a wounded veteran into their lives, giving him a quiet and safe place to live above their family’s store, as well as a chance for him to learn a trade. She begins to cry when this woman describes the disfiguring wound, the cloudy blind eye, the face that tries to smile each day despite the difficulty of scar tissue where he endured his countless skin grafts.

But it is the part of the story that the Asian woman details, about him working as a janitor at the school for two years just so he could be close to her, that makes Becky sob into her hands.

She now knows who had laid those single flowers on her desk all those years ago. The one daffodil. The solitary rose. She thought it might have been another teacher who had a crush on her, but she could never quite figure out who it could be.

Jack had been there all that time.

The two women scanned the young teacher’s hand and observed no wedding band.

“We don’t know what you want to do with all this information,” Grace said gently. “But we thought it was important for you to know.”

Becky nodded. “Thank you,” she answered softly. “All these years, I wondered what had happened to Jack.” She managed to get out the words, not sharing with the women that she now realized there was no friend with a facial injury when Jack called—that it was him all along. She felt her stomach drop knowing she had caused him so much pain when he’d already suffered so much.

“I was never able to find out what happened to him, despite my efforts,” she explained. “Even after that first call, I knew he was alive, but I couldn’t ever locate him.”

She shook her head. “And all this time, he was right here … and then in the town next door.” She reached into her purse for a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “I don’t know how to feel about any of this,” she confessed. “It’s almost like you’re raising a corpse from the dead.”

Anh watched the young woman try to come to terms with the news she and Grace came to share.

“Miss,” she said slowly and carefully. “This Jack. He is such a good man. He did many courageous thing. But he tell me after all this time, you’re still sunshine at midnight for him.” Anh smiled just saying the words. “I never heard words like this before, to have sun during darkness. But it so beautiful, right?”

Grace smiled. “It really is a beautiful thought.”

“Thank you for telling me that,” Becky answered, her eyes still wet with tears. She looked down at her watch. “I have to get going,” she said, tapping her Timex with the thin leather band. “I’m so grateful for you telling me where Jack is.”