Pieces of Time

by Timothy Paterson

how much he loved her, and saying his final goodbye.

  Michelle knew that she must find Sophie, if she was still alive, and give her the journals. She knew in her heart that it is what John would have wanted. Michelle began searching the internet, trying to find Sophie. In late October, in a Boston phone directory, Michelle found a listing for a Dr. Charles Hunter Jr. When Michelle called the number, a man named Joe answered the phone. In answer to Michelle’s questions, he told Michelle that Sophie Hunter was his grandmother and that she still lived in Boston, in the very house where her grandfather had raised her. Joe told Michelle that his grandfather; Dr. Charles Hunter Sr. had died three years earlier.

  Michelle did not want to say anything about the pocket watch or the voice, over the phone, as she knew how crazy it would sound. She simply told Joe that she had something to give to Sophie.

  Joe told Michelle that he and his parents were going to Sophie’s house that weekend to help her celebrate her 82nd birthday. He invited Michelle to meet them there, and gave her the address of the house.

  On Saturday afternoon, Michelle arrived at Sophie’s house. When she knocked on the door, a tall dark haired young man answered it. “You must be Michelle,” he said. “I am Charles Joseph Hunter III, but I go by Joe, because it is a lot less confusing.” Joe invited Michelle into the house and led her into the living room where his parents and his grandmother were sitting.

  “Nana, this is Michelle Browning, the girl that I was telling you about.”

  Michelle shook hands with Joe’s parents, and then she shook hands with Sophie. “I feel like I know you already,” Michelle told Sophie. Then, she opened her purse, took out a small box, and handed it to Sophie. “Happy Birthday!” she said.

  Sophie opened the box and was speechless as she took the watch out of the box. “This is my grandfather’s watch,” she said. “How in the world did you find it? It was stolen from the house along with other items, while we were attending my grandfather’s funeral over sixty years ago.”

  “I bought it at an antique shop in Boston over a year ago,” replied Michelle.

  “But, how did you know that it belonged to my grandfather?” asked Sophie.

  As Michelle looked around the room, she saw that everyone was interested in the answer to that question. “I know that this is going to sound crazy, said Michelle, “but, the watch told me.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sophie with a puzzled look on her face.

  “I know that all of you may find this hard to believe, but it is the truth,” said Michelle. “Whenever I held the watch in my hands, I heard the voice of you grandfather in his thick Irish accent. Your grandfather was ashamed that he never learned to read and write, and he wanted to leave you a family history of sorts. He also wanted you to know how proud he was of you. Over the past year, I have written down all of your father’s thoughts of you, into notebooks. I do not know exactly how it worked, but somehow, that watch recorded your grandfather’s thoughts.”

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Finally, Sophie broke the silence. “Did you bring those notebooks with you?” she asked Michelle.

  “They’re in my car,” said Michelle. “I’ll go get them.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Joe and the two of them walked out to Michelle’s car. A few minutes later, Joe and Michelle entered the living room carrying over forty notebooks. They set then down on the coffee table in front of Sophie.

  Sophie was a little nervous, as she opened the first journal and began reading. After a while, she looked up at Michelle and said, “I believe you, Michelle. There is no way you could possibly know these details about my grandfather, unless you heard them directly from him. Thank you so much for these journals. They mean the world to me. I never got the chance to say goodbye to him. He died alone, because I didn’t get there in time.”

  Michelle reached for a notebook at the bottom of the stack and opened it to the last few pages. “I think you should read this first,” she told Sophie. “The last thoughts that your grandfather had before he died, were of you.”

  As Sophie read those last pages, she began to cry. She hugged Michelle and said, “Thank you so much for bringing my grandfather’s thoughts and memories to me. This is the best birthday present that I could ever ask for.”

  A thought suddenly came to Michelle. “By the way, did any of you ever find a secret room in your basement?” she asked Sophie.

  “There is no secret room in the basement,” said Joe. “I have spent hundreds of hours down there. I’m sure that I would have found something like that.”

  “Well, according to your great, great grandfather, he didn’t believe in banks, and he kept his life savings in that secret room,” said Michelle.

  “Well then,” said Joe, “shall we go look for it?”

  Michelle and Joe went down to the basement and made a thorough search. They were just about to give up and go back upstairs, when an idea came to Michelle. On one wall, was a wall-to-wall bookcase. “Joe” she said, “can you help me move these shelves.” Joe and Michelle tugged very hard and the bookcase began to pivot, as if it were on hinges. Behind the shelves, they saw a doorway carved into the wall. Using a flashlight, they walked into the hidden room. They found some shelves still filled with several jars filled with coins. They examined some of the coins and found that most were silver and gold coins, with dates from the 1860’s through the 1930’s. They also found a wooden box containing another of John Sullivan’s greatest treasure; the family bible that his mother gave to him before he left Ireland in 1870. They went back upstairs with the bible and two jars of the coins.

  While Sophie and Joe’s parents were looking at the journals, the bible and the coins, Joe and Michelle went out onto the front porch and sat on the porch swing. As they talked, they found that they had a lot in common. Joe was in his second year at Harvard Medical School. He was also single. He and Michelle hit it off right away, and Joe asked Michelle out on a date.

  Joe and Michelle continued to date for the rest of the school year, and they grew closer and closer. As Michelle’s junior year of college was ending, Joe proposed to her and Michelle eagerly accepted. That weekend Michelle got another surprise, when her grandfather showed up at her dorm room, just as she and Joe were leaving. He told Michelle that he was there to attend his Harvard class of 1952’s 60th reunion. When Michelle introduced Joe to her grandfather, Joe invited him to join them to dinner at his grandmother’s house.

  That evening, as the three of them pulled up in front of Sophie’s house, Mr. Browning looked at the house and said, “This house looks familiar. I know that I’ve seen it before.” When the door opened, Joe started to introduce Michelle’s grandfather to his grandmother, but it was not necessary.

  Mr. Browning smiled and said, “Sophie? Is that really you?” “

  “Carl?” asked Sophie “What has it been, fifty or sixty years?”

  “You two know each other?” asked Michelle and Joe at the same time.

  “I went to college with Sophie’s husband, Charles,” said her grandfather. I was dating your grandmother at the time and the four of us became good friends. Then, your grandmother and I moved to the west coast, and we lost contact with Charles and Sophie”

  After dinner, Joe and Michelle announced their engagement. After a congratulations toast, Sophie went into her bedroom and returned holding her grandfather’s pocket watch. She handed it to Joe and told him that she wanted him to have it. Then, she hugged Michelle and welcomed her into the family.

  Mr. Browning had some news of his own. “Since I have officially retired from the accounting firm, I was thinking about moving back to Boston. Now that I know Sophie is here, I am definitely moving back.

  Joe and Michelle were married two years later. At their wedding, Carl and Sophie announced their engagement. As a wedding present, Sophie gave Joe and Michelle
the deed to her house. She and Carl had already purchased a small cottage on Cape Cod where they planned to spend their remaining years together.

  As for Michelle, she was working on her Master’s degree in Business Administration and Joe was in his last year in Medical School. In their house, they had a special glass case on a shelf that held the pocket watch. It had not only brought peace to Sophie’s life, but it had also brought two couples together; Joe and Michelle, and Carl and Sophie. Every time Michelle looked at the watch, she could not help but smile. Because the watch had recorded pieces of time from John Sullivan’s life, and now Michelle and Joe were creating their own pieces of time.

  The End