For twenty-two years, Tibor’s watches had remained buried beneath a swimming pool.
Not gone.
Just waiting.
Waiting for a failing pipe.
Waiting for an unusual calcium deposit.
Waiting for someone experienced enough to notice.
And perhaps, as Eleanor believed, waiting for someone who would find something valuable and still understand one very simple thing.
Finding something that isn’t yours doesn’t make it yours.
It gives you a responsibility to handle it correctly.
Dad understood that immediately.
Maybe that was why everything else eventually worked itself out.
He got paid.
Martin recovered his father’s collection.
My job remained secure.
And a box that had spent twenty-two years beneath a swimming pool finally returned to the family it belonged to.
Dad glanced at the road ahead.
“Things done right have a way of coming back to the surface,” he said.
Then he drove us home.
THE END
