Chapter 5 - The Old Man's Tobacco
The scent of stale pipe tobacco hung heavily in the humid air, wrapping around Martha and Julian like a physical shroud. Martha pressed her palms against her ears, her eyes shut tight as she shook her head violently.
“No. No, no, no,” she chanted under her breath, retreating until the back of her knees hit the wrought-iron patio table. “He's dead. We went to the funeral. We saw the casket lowered into the frozen ground.”
Julian didn't cover his ears. He knelt beside the open skimmer box, his jaw set in a hard, unyielding line. With slow, deliberate movements, he reached down into the dark PVC opening, ignoring the foul-smelling slime lining the interior. His fingers brushed against something metallic. With a sharp pull, he extracted a heavy brass pocket watch—the exact one their father had carried every single day until the autumn of his disappearance.
The crystal face of the watch was cracked, and the hands were frozen permanently at 4:15.
“You buried the watch with him,” Julian said, his voice dropping into a dangerous register as he looked up at his sister. “Or so you told me when we divided his estate.”
Martha opened her eyes, her chest heaving as she stared at the tarnished brass in his palm. The defiance drained out of her face, leaving behind an old, exhausted sorrow.
“I didn't bury it,” Martha whispered, her voice cracking. “I took it from his desk drawer the night the police came by. I kept it because I thought it was the only piece of him that wasn't rotten.”
Julian stood up, clutching the watch so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“If you took it from the desk, then whose body did we put in the family plot?” Julian demanded, his voice rising in pitch as he grabbed her arm. “Who was in that casket, Martha?”
Martha didn't flinch from his grip. Instead, a grim, humorless smile touched the corners of her mouth.
“Check the date carved inside the back case of that watch,” she challenged softly. “The one you just opened.”
Julian’s hand trembled as he flipped the brass cover open. Inside, engraved in their father’s meticulous cursive, was a date that occurred three years after the official date of his death.
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And then, the phone on the ground rang again, but this time, it wasn't an incoming call—it was a FaceTime request, and the video preview showed a live, panning view of them standing right on the patio from an angle beneath the pool tiles.
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