By the end of the week, I had visited nearly every place I could think of.
Pawn shops.
Secondhand stores.
Small businesses with dusty windows and old watches arranged beside jewelry.
I described the same details each time.
Steel casing.
Scratched glass.
Leather strap.
A watch bought in 1974.
Some people listened carefully.
Others barely looked up from their counters.
One man asked if it had any special markings.
I told him I didn't know of any.
He suggested I try another shop.
So I did.
I kept a list of the places I visited.
I crossed off each name when I left.
At first, the list made me feel useful.
I was doing something.
I was trying to undo what Scott had done.
But after enough empty counters, the list began to feel like evidence of how little control I had.
I could drive across the county.
I could ask the same questions until my voice became tired.
I could explain what the watch meant to our family.
None of that could make someone return an object they had already sold.
I still didn't tell Mom the whole truth.
When she called, I said I was looking.
She never asked for details.
Sometimes she asked whether I had found anything.
I always had to tell her no.
After a while, she stopped asking.
That hurt more than I expected.
I knew she was trying not to burden me.
I also knew she had started to accept that the watch might never come back.
One afternoon, I visited her.
The house smelled like the coffee she had made that morning.
Dad's slippers were still near the chair where he used to sit.
His reading glasses remained on the dresser.
I went into the bedroom to check whether Mom had moved anything while cleaning.
The dresser looked the same as it had before.
His glasses sat near the edge.
A small patch of bare wood lay beside them.
The empty space was obvious.
I stood there longer than I needed to.
Mom appeared in the doorway.
"I keep thinking I'll see it there," she said.
I turned toward her.
"The watch?"
She nodded.
"I know it's silly."
"It isn't."
She walked into the room and picked up Dad's glasses.
She folded them, even though they were already folded.
Then she set them back down.
"He always took those off before bed," she said. "Sometimes he'd forget where he put them, and I'd find them right here."
I could picture it.
Dad coming into the bedroom after a long day.
Dad removing his glasses.
Dad loosening the leather strap on his wrist and setting the watch down beside them.
It was an ordinary habit.
That was why it mattered.
Mom wasn't asking for a fortune.
She wasn't asking for something rare or valuable.
She wanted one familiar part of her life to remain where she expected it to be.
I felt ashamed that I still hadn't told her what Scott had admitted.
I also felt afraid of what would happen when I did.
She had lost her husband.
I didn't want her to discover that her son had taken something precious from the room where she was trying to keep his memory alive.
But my silence wasn't protecting her forever.
It was only delaying the moment when she would have to know.
I decided I would keep looking for a little longer.
If I found the watch, I could bring it home and explain what had happened afterward.
If I didn't, I would have to tell her.
That evening, I called Scott again.
He sounded distracted.
I asked whether he had thought any more about the watch.
He told me there was nothing to think about.
"You got your forty dollars," I said.
"I don't have it anymore."
The answer came too quickly.
I remembered the word gas.
Then I remembered how he had avoided telling me which shop he had visited.
Something about his explanation had never sat right with me.
I asked him again whether he had actually used the money for fuel.
He became defensive.
"Why are you interrogating me?"
"Because you took something from Mom."
"It wasn't hers."
I gripped the phone tighter.
"It belonged to Dad. And she was the one who had to wake up and discover it was gone."
Scott muttered something I couldn't make out.
Then he admitted that he hadn't gone to a gas station.
He had spent the money at a local tavern.
Forty dollars.
The price of a few drinks and a night he apparently wanted more than he wanted to respect our father's belongings.
I didn't shout.
I didn't need to.
For a moment, I couldn't find any words that felt useful.
Scott told me I was acting as though he had committed some terrible crime.
I reminded him that he could have asked for help.
He laughed without humor.
"I didn't want another lecture."
I ended the call.
I sat in my car outside Mom's house, staring at the steering wheel.
The cold had settled into the windows.
I had been trying to recover a watch, but now I understood that the money had never been the real issue.
Scott had known what he was taking.
He had known Mom would notice.
He had done it anyway.
I looked through the windshield at the house.
In the bedroom, I knew Dad's glasses were still on the dresser.
The empty place beside them remained.
And for the first time, I stopped believing that finding the watch would fix what my brother had broken.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Three Months After Dad’s Funeral, Two Strangers Arrived at Mom’s House Carrying Something We Had Almost Given Up On
The Forty Dollars My Brother Took From Dad’s Bedroom Meant More to Our Family Than Either of Us Understood
Part 3 of 24
