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<\/p>\nThe first line was in my father\u2019s blocky mill-hand print, pressed so hard into the tissue that the letters had nearly gone through it. Dolly, if Ed Pruitt has done his job and this watch is in your hands, then Scott sold it. I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m sorry for the sale and I\u2019m sorry that I knew he would. Mom read it aloud, in a thin, wavering voice, sitting on the cold concrete step in her house slippers, with the velvet box open on her knees.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ed stood on the walk with his cap in both hands. The lawyer, Mr. Cole, had set his briefcase on the porch rail and not yet opened it. He seemed to understand that some things have to be read before they\u2019re explained. \u201cKeep going, Mom,\u201d I said. I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. I should tell you who we are, because the watch was only the visible part.<\/p>\n
My name is Jennifer Brennan Pruitt. Jenny, to family. I\u2019m forty-eight, a hospital billing supervisor in Youngstown, Ohio, which means I spend my days finding where the money went. My father, Harold Brennan, worked thirty-eight years at Republic Steel, first on the line and then as a foreman. He was a big, slow-talking man with burn scars on both forearms and a laugh you could hear across a parking lot. My mother, Dolores, taught second grade for thirty-one years and has never once let a child leave her room without a sentence of praise.<\/p>\n
They bought the brick ranch on Elm Street in 1978 for $34,500. They paid it off in 2003. Dad died in October, at seventy-nine, of a heart attack in the garage, with a socket wrench in his hand.<\/p>\n
He bought the watch in 1974, the week of his first full paycheck. A plain steel Timex with a scratched crystal and a leather band he replaced himself every few years with a new one from the same hardware store. He wore it to his wedding. He wore it in the delivery room, twice. He wore it to his retirement dinner. He wore it when he died. The funeral home returned it to Mom in a small plastic bag, and she set it on the dresser beside his reading glasses, where he\u2019d left it every night for fifty-one years.<\/p>\n
My brother, Scott, is fifty-two. He has Dad\u2019s shoulders and none of Dad\u2019s patience, and a charm that makes you forgive him before he\u2019s finished apologizing. He\u2019s been in money trouble for twenty years. A restaurant that failed. A landscaping business, then a car lot, then \u201cconsulting.\u201d Dad bailed him out six times that I know of. I kept a list once, in a notebook, and stopped at $91,000.<\/p>\n
The week after the funeral, Scott stayed at Mom\u2019s to help her sort things. When he left on Friday, the watch was gone.<\/p>\n
Mom noticed the next morning and called me, crying. \u201cMaybe I moved it, Jenny. Maybe I\u2019m losing my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
I called Scott. He answered on the fifth ring. \u201cDad\u2019s watch. Where is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
A long pause. Then, defensive and quick: \u201cIt was a cheap watch, Jen. Forty bucks, tops. I needed gas money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sold it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was going to sit in a drawer forever. Dad wouldn\u2019t have cared.\u201d<\/p>\n
I learned later from a woman at Riley\u2019s Tavern that he\u2019d spent it there the same night. Forty dollars. Fifty-one years.<\/p>\n
I drove to every pawn shop and secondhand store in Mahoning County. Nobody had it. Mom stopped mentioning it, but she left Dad\u2019s reading glasses on the dresser with an empty space beside them, like a place set at a table.<\/p>\n
Now, on the porch, in the January cold, she read the rest.<\/p>\n
Dolly, I\u2019m writing this in the basement on the night of November 9, 1981. You\u2019re upstairs with the baby. The mill laid off eleven hundred men this week, and I\u2019m one of the lucky ones who kept his job, and I haven\u2019t slept.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m going to tell you something I\u2019ve kept for a reason. There\u2019s a box at Mahoning National Bank, number 214, in my name and yours. The key is taped inside the lid of my father\u2019s tackle box in the garage. I\u2019ve put in it every spare dollar I could. I never told you because you\u2019d have said we should spend it, and you\u2019d have been right, but I couldn\u2019t stand to be a man who didn\u2019t have a floor.<\/em><\/p>\n If you\u2019re reading this, I\u2019m gone and the floor is yours.<\/em><\/p>\n I soldered the back of this watch myself so nobody would open it by accident. I wanted whoever found it to be someone who cared about the watch, not about what was in it. Ed Pruitt is the only honest man in the county who deals in watches. I asked him in 2019 to hold an eye out. He said he\u2019d know.<\/em><\/p>\n I love you. I always did.<\/em><\/p>\n Harold<\/em><\/p>\n Mom\u2019s voice broke on the last two words. She folded the tissue along its eight old creases and held it against her chest.<\/p>\n Mr. Cole cleared his throat gently.<\/p>\n \u201cMrs. Brennan, I\u2019m Raymond Cole. I practice estate law in Boardman. Mr. Pruitt called me the afternoon he opened the watch. I took the liberty of checking the bank.\u201d He opened his briefcase and took out a thin manila folder. \u201cBox 214 at what is now First Commonwealth. It\u2019s still active. The rental fees were paid annually, by a standing order, from an account in your husband\u2019s name alone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s in it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. I haven\u2019t opened it. It requires both holders, and your mother is the surviving one.\u201d He paused. \u201cBut I can tell you the account that pays the fee has received a deposit every month since 1981.\u201d<\/p>\n I stared at him. \u201cEvery month?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cForty years of them. I\u2019ve seen the ledger.\u201d<\/p>\n Mom made a small, startled sound.<\/p>\n \u201cThe deposits were small at first,\u201d Mr. Cole said. \u201cTwenty dollars. Then fifty. In the nineties, a hundred. After he retired, his pension came in and he kept doing it. There\u2019s a note in the file, in his handwriting, on every statement:\u00a0For Dolly.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n She put her hand over her mouth.<\/p>\n Ed Pruitt shifted on the walk. He was a heavyset man with a gray mustache and reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. His name was stitched over the pocket of his shirt. He turned his cap in his hands.<\/p>\n \u201cMa\u2019am, I want to say something,\u201d he said. \u201cThat young man, your son, came in on the fourth of October. He said it was his father\u2019s. He said he needed forty dollars. I looked at that watch, and I knew it was worth ten times that to somebody. Not in money. I took it anyway. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t know,\u201d Mom said.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew,\u201d Ed said quietly. \u201cI just didn\u2019t know why. I set it on the bench that night, and the back looked wrong. Solder. Nobody solders a Timex. I thought, there\u2019s a story in this, and I\u2019d rather be the man who found it than the man who sold it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you just sell it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHarold Brennan came in to my shop in 2019 and asked me a question. He said, \u2018Ed, if a plain steel Timex ever comes across your counter with a soldered back, will you hold it?\u2019 I said sure. I thought he was a sentimental old man.\u201d Ed\u2019s eyes were wet. \u201cHe was a careful one.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott arrived at noon, because I called him.<\/p>\n I\u2019d told him only, \u201cYou need to come to Mom\u2019s.\u201d He pulled into the driveway in a rusted Buick with a cracked windshield, unshaven, in yesterday\u2019s flannel. He saw Ed\u2019s truck, and the lawyer\u2019s sedan, and stopped at the foot of the porch steps.<\/p>\n He looked at the velvet box in Mom\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n I watched his face change. It went through surprise, and then something like fear, and then, slowly, the plain gray shame of a man who\u2019s been caught and knows it.<\/p>\n \u201cMom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSit down, Scott.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can explain, \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSit.\u201d<\/p>\n He sat on the bottom step, with his hands between his knees.<\/p>\n Mom held out the tissue. \u201cRead it.\u201d<\/p>\n The first line was in my father\u2019s blocky mill-hand print, pressed so hard into the tissue that the letters had nearly gone through it. Dolly, if Ed Pruitt has done … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21,22,1,5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aita","category-daily-article","category-reddit-stories","category-story","category-story-daily","category-viral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7682,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7678\/revisions\/7682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nextstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING THE NEXT \ud83d\udc49CHAPTER 2-My Brother Sold Dad\u2019s Watch for $40 After His Funeral\u2026 Three Months Later, the Shop Owner Came to Mom\u2019s Door<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"