Scott called Mom on Sunday afternoon.
I was there when the phone rang.
She looked at the screen for several seconds before answering.
"Hello, Scott."
I couldn't hear his words clearly.
Mom listened without interrupting.
Then she said she understood.
She asked him to speak slowly.
I moved toward the kitchen, giving her some privacy.
I didn't want to turn the conversation into something I could report back to either of them.
But I stayed close enough to know when she needed me.
After a few minutes, Mom called my name.
"Jenny, could you come here?"
I returned to the living room.
She held the phone away from her ear.
"Your brother wants to speak with you."
I took it.
"Scott?"
"Yeah."
His voice sounded different.
Less impatient.
More tired.
He told me he had apologized to Mom for taking the watch.
He said he knew he had hurt her.
He also admitted that he had made excuses because he didn't want to face what he had done.
I listened.
For years, I had heard Scott explain his problems in ways that made them sound as if they had happened to him rather than resulted from his choices.
This time, he didn't blame the shop.
He didn't blame Dad.
He didn't blame Mom for keeping the watch where she could see it.
He said he had wanted money and had taken something he knew he shouldn't have touched.
I believed him.
But believing an apology did not mean the damage had disappeared.
"Why didn't you ask for help?" I said.
He was quiet.
"Because I knew what you'd say."
"What would I say?"
"That I needed to stop getting myself into trouble."
I leaned against the wall.
"Would that have been wrong?"
"No."
He sounded embarrassed.
"I just didn't want to hear it."
I thought about Dad.
He had heard those excuses for years.
He had helped Scott because he loved him.
But love had not stopped Scott from repeating the same mistakes.
Maybe Scott had finally begun to understand that being rescued was not the same as changing.
I didn't tell him that.
He needed to reach that conclusion himself.
"I can't promise Mom will be ready to forgive you right away," I said.
"I know."
"And getting the watch back doesn't make what happened okay."
"I know that, too."
We spoke for a few more minutes.
Then I handed the phone back to Mom.
She listened quietly.
When she finished, she placed the phone on the table.
Neither of us spoke at first.
Finally, she looked at me.
"He sounded sorry."
"He did."
She folded her hands in her lap.
"I wish he had thought about me before he took it."
"I know."
She didn't ask me to tell her that Scott had changed.
She didn't ask me to decide whether his apology was enough.
She was allowing herself to feel both things at once.
She could hear his regret and still remember the empty place on the dresser.
She could love her son and still be angry with him.
That seemed fair to me.
Later that afternoon, Mom asked me to bring the watch into the living room.
I carried the velvet box from the bedroom.
She opened it and looked at the polished face.
The new leather strap was still stiff.
She ran a finger along its edge.
"Your father would have replaced this himself," she said.
I smiled.
"He would have kept the old strap in a drawer, too."
"He kept everything."
We both laughed softly.
Then Mom grew quiet.
She lifted the watch and held it in both hands.
For a long time, she simply looked at it.
I wondered what she was thinking.
Maybe she was remembering the first year Dad wore it.
Maybe she was thinking about the note.
Maybe she was remembering the day the funeral home returned it in a plastic bag.
I didn't ask.
She finally placed it back in the box.
"I don't want this to be the only thing we talk about when we remember your father."
"It won't be."
She looked at me.
"We have so many years to remember."
I nodded.
We did.
We had stories about Dad's work.
We had his habits, his jokes, and his stubbornness.
We had the memories of him wearing the watch, even before we knew it contained anything.
The note had introduced a new question into our family.
Scott's actions had introduced an old hurt.
Neither one needed to erase everything else.
Before dinner, Mom returned the watch to the dresser.
She placed it beside the glasses and adjusted them until they were straight.
Then she closed the velvet lid halfway, leaving the watch visible.
I stood in the doorway and watched her.
She no longer looked as though she were waiting for something terrible to happen.
She looked like a woman trying to make room for a difficult truth without surrendering the rest of her life to it.
That was a small change.
But after the months we had endured, small changes mattered.
I left that evening knowing the family still had questions to answer.
I also knew that Scott had finally admitted the truth about his decision.
He had taken the watch because he wanted money.
He had spent the money carelessly.
He had hurt Mom.
And he was beginning to understand that an apology could not demand forgiveness as its reward.
For once, he had stopped asking us to make his mistake disappear.
Click here to continue reading: PART 17: The Watch Had Returned to Its Place Beside Dad’s Glasses, but Mom Was Still Trying to Understand Why He Had Hidden the Note
The Forty Dollars My Brother Took From Dad’s Bedroom Meant More to Our Family Than Either of Us Understood
Part 16 of 24
