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“Well, one of us has to keep this company afloat,” Daniel says, straight-faced, his eyes mirth-filled.
“You’ve been working too much. You can’t be bothered to shave. I’m fairly certain this is the suit you wore yesterday. I thought you made a bet with me that you’d find someone to love.”
He tugs at his shirtsleeves and frowns. “Is it?”
“No,” I say.
He scoffs and pushes his hand through his sandy-brown hair. He looks so much like our dad that sometimes it shocks me. Sometimes it knocks me off-kilter. Like now. When he frowns at me, he looks just like Dad preparing to give me a lecture at age ten on not running down the hallways of Abry like a hooligan, because someday I was going to be working here.
“I’ve been working on it,” Daniel says. “I went sailing last month with a few?—”
“Stop right there. No.” I hold up my hand and Daniel grins at me, fully himself again.
He steps forward, and it’s then that I notice he has a box in his hand. It’s the plush gray velvet we package our watches in. When you open the velvet container, with its scripted gold lettering, you find a smaller white leather box. And inside the white leather, resting on satin, is an Abry watch.
The small velvet box is just like the one Aaron had on the Swiss travel book the last night I saw him. There’s a hollow thump in my chest at the thought.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the box.
Daniel puts on a smug look—a little-brother look that tells me he’s happy to know something I don’t. “I wondered if you knew. Apparently not.”
“Knew what?”
“I’m glad I get to be the first to show you.”
He steps across the wood floor of my office and slides the velvet box across the glossy white surface of my desk. The velvet whispers a smooth whooshing as he passes it to me.
A tingle of awareness, a frisson of a sea-salt breeze blowing the strands of my hair, a spark of electricity, crackles in the air around me.
“What is it?”
“Open it.” Daniel nods to the box then rocks back on his heels, an expectant smile on his face.
I take a deep breath, and instead of coffee I smell the memory of humid, loamy tropical forests and sea-salt waves cresting on white sand.
The gray velvet box sits in front of me, right in the middle of my desk. Even though it’s only four inches tall and four inches wide, the amount of energy pulsing around it makes it feel as if it’s as large as the room.
Slowly I reach forward and lift the velvet lid. It slides open with a smooth snap, and I let out a shallow, tight breath. I pull free the smaller white leather box. It’s cool in my hands, pebbled and soft.
My throat is tight, my mouth dry, and a slow tattoo starts in my chest. I lift the lid, and when I do, I let out a long, pained exhale.
I forgot.
Or maybe I didn’t forget, I just didn’t want to think about it.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Daniel asks, a smile in his voice. “Dad’d be proud. We already have record orders for a limited edition. You did good, Fi. You did good.”
I nod, unable to speak.
I don’t look at Daniel. Instead I stare into the face of the watch.
It’s my watch.
McCormick’s watch.
The one I dreamed up after our date to the top of the island.
The enamel on the face is the exact shade of the sea as it breaks over the reef and spills over the shore. It’s turquoise and cerulean, it’s indigo and sea-green, and it’s opal-white with waves that fall onto moonlit sand. Not truly. Not really. But that’s what it looks like. Peering into the dial, at the blue, at the diamonds glittering in the face, at the soft gold case, the smooth pearl and emerald bracelet, at the ticking of the watch in my hand, I’m transported to the island.
