I never intended to become the keeper of Ravenwood’s secrets. It happened gradually, like the slow unwinding of a watch spring.
The pocketwatch arrived on a Tuesday, carried by Martha Holloway, her eyes misty with memories. “It belonged to my father,” she said, placing it gently on my workbench. “Mayor James Holloway. Found it while clearing out the attic.”
The gold case was dented, the crystal cracked. A beautiful piece, American Waltham, circa 1920, the kind craftsmen took pride in creating.
“Dad treasured this watch. Carried it everywhere. Then one day, he just… stopped. Locked it away. Never spoke of it again.”
My fingers traced the engraving on the back, JH, and below it, smaller: Truth above all.
“Can you fix it?” Martha asked.
I nodded, already feeling the familiar pull. Some timepieces called to me louder than others. This one practically shouted.
“I’ll need time,” I said.
Martha smiled. “Isn’t that always the case with your line of work, Chelsea?”
After she left, I examined the watch under my magnifying lamp. The damage was extensive but repairable. The real challenge would emerge only once I opened the case.
My small workshop behind Main Street housed hundreds of timepieces in various states of repair. Grandfather clocks, cuckoos, delicate wristwatches, each with their own rhythm, their own secrets. I’d learned long ago not to question my strange gift. When my hands touched broken clocks, time occasionally folded back on itself, revealing fragments of the past.
I contemplated what I might see in the mayor’s watch. James Holloway had been Ravenwood’s most beloved public servant, leading the town through decades of prosperity until his unexpected death in 1978. Heart attack, they said.
My phone buzzed with a news alert, “Human Remains Discovered During Harbor Renovation.” The article mentioned workers finding a skeleton sealed in a hidden chamber beneath the old lighthouse keeper’s quarters.
I placed the pocketwatch on my workbench, suddenly uneasy. Some mysteries were better left unsolved.
But I knew I wouldn’t leave this one alone. The watch and the skeleton, appearing in the same week. The choice lay before me, repair the watch and potentially see something I couldn’t unsee, or return it with some excuse about irreparable damage.
My fingers brushed against the watch’s cracked face. Truth above all.
The following evening, I began dismantling the pocketwatch, carefully removing the hands and dial. The mechanism was gunked with decades of dirt and dried oil, but the craftsmanship remained evident.
As I worked to free a stuck gear, my fingertip grazed against something wedged deep within, a tiny, folded piece of paper. I extracted it carefully, unfolding it under my lamp. A series of numbers and letters, meaningless to me. Some kind of code.
I photographed it, then carefully returned it to its hiding place. Whatever secrets the mayor kept, they had remained undisturbed for decades.
I worked until midnight, cleaning each component meticulously. As I polished the balance wheel, the world around me shifted, the air grew thick, sounds muffled. I closed my eyes, surrendering to the vision.
Fog hung heavy over Ravenwood Harbor. A man in a dark overcoat, Mayor Holloway, decades younger, stood near the lighthouse. His fingers nervously checked his pocketwatch.
A boat appeared through the mist. Two men disembarked, leading a small group of frightened women and children down the pier.
“You have the money?” one man asked.
The mayor handed over an envelope. “Safe passage to Boston, as agreed.”
“Change of plans. Price went up.”
Holloway’s face hardened. “We had a deal.”
The man laughed. “Deal’s changed. Pay more, or they go back where they came from.”
One of the women clutched a young girl to her chest, eyes pleading.
“You’ll get your money,” Holloway said. “Tomorrow night.”
I gasped as the vision released me, nearly dropping the delicate balance wheel. Was Ravenwood’s beloved mayor involved in human trafficking? The thought felt impossible, yet I’d seen it with my own eyes.
The next morning, I walked to the harbor, coffee in hand, watching the forensic team work around the old lighthouse. Detective Marcus Lang noticed me and walked over.
“Chelsea Graham. Waiting for inspiration for your next clock design?”
I attempted a casual smile. “Just curious about the skeleton.”
“Aren’t we all.” He sipped his own coffee. “Found ID in the chamber. Man named Victor Sorokin, Russian immigrant. Disappeared in 1978.”
The same year the mayor died.
“Any leads?” I asked.
“After forty-five years? Not likely.”
I returned to my workshop and continued my repair work, dread building with each component I restored. By evening, the watch was nearly complete.
As I reattached the hands, another vision seized me, more violent this time.
The lighthouse. Mayor Holloway, again, but his face bruised, blood on his shirt. Victor Sorokin stood before him, a gun trained on the mayor’s chest.
“They’ll kill them all if you don’t deliver them,” Sorokin said.
“I won’t let you take those people,” Holloway replied. “They came for freedom.”
“They’re merchandise.”
A struggle. The gun fired. Both men fell.
The vision faded, leaving me shaking, tears streaming down my face.
The next morning, I visited Martha Holloway, bringing coffee and questions.
“Your father,” I began carefully. “Did he ever mention working with federal authorities?”
Martha stared at me. “How could you possibly know about that?”
“The watch,” I said simply.
She set down her cup. “Mom told me, years after he died. Dad worked with the FBI, tracking Soviet agents using our harbor for operations.”
I felt a wave of relief wash over me. “So he wasn’t—”
“A smuggler? God, no. He was a hero.” She retrieved a photo album, showing me newspaper clippings about immigrant families who’d settled in Ravenwood, restaurant owners, doctors, craftspeople. “He helped many escape the Soviet Union. Officially, the U.S. wasn’t involved. Dad risked everything.”
Pieces began falling into place, but not all of them.
I returned to my shop and found Detective Lang waiting.
“I need to see the Holloway watch,” he said without preamble.
“How did you—”
“Martha called me. We’re cousins.” His expression softened. “Chelsea, whatever you know, I need to hear it. The skeleton case just got complicated. We found a second set of remains.”
I showed him the watch and the coded paper. “James Holloway was helping people escape, wasn’t he? Political refugees.”
Lang nodded. “The feds reopened the case. The code you found might identify the second victim.”
I wasn’t ready to reveal how I knew what I knew. Instead, I completed the watch repair while Lang waited. As I wound it for the first time, the final vision came.
The lighthouse chamber. Mayor Holloway, mortally wounded, dragging himself toward a young woman hiding in the shadows.
“Take this,” he whispered, pressing the watch into her hands. “Find my daughter. Tell her ‘the angels sleep beneath the harbor lights.’ She’ll understand.”
The woman nodded, terrified.
“Go. Now. The passage leads to the church. Father Michael will help you.”
She escaped as Sorokin’s blood pooled beside the mayor’s.
The vision ended as the watch began ticking steadily in my palm.
I sat across from Martha in her living room the next day, the restored pocketwatch between us.
“Your father’s last words were ‘the angels sleep beneath the harbor lights,'” I said quietly. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Her face paled. “How could you possibly know that?”
I made a decision then. “The watch showed me.”
To her credit, Martha didn’t question my sanity. Instead, she led me to her garden, to a stone angel statue overlooking the harbor. She pressed a hidden latch, revealing a compartment containing a leather pouch.
Inside was a list of names, families the mayor had helped escape the Soviet Union.
“One family remained unaccounted for,” Martha explained. “The Petrovs. Father, mother, daughter. We never knew if they made it.”
I thought of the second skeleton. “I believe the father didn’t.”
That evening, Detective Lang confirmed the second set of remains belonged to Mikhail Petrov. But his wife and daughter were never found.
I wound the pocketwatch, hoping for one final glimpse, but instead felt a strange certainty. “The church,” I said. “We need to check St. Michael’s records from 1978.”
Father Michael was long dead, but the parish records remained. And there, in faded ink, was the answer, Anna Petrov, placed as a housekeeper with an elderly parishioner, later sponsored for citizenship. She’d taken a new name.
Anna became Ann Miller, Ravenwood’s current librarian.
We agreed to keep her secret. The people who had hunted these families were likely gone, but why take chances? The watch had led me to the truth, not for exposure, but for understanding.
I returned the pocketwatch to Martha, fully restored. “Your father was a hero,” I said.
“I always knew that,” she replied. “But now you’ve helped prove it.”
Later, browsing books at the library, I nodded to Ann Miller. Our eyes met briefly, hers knowing, mine acknowledging.
Some secrets deserve protecting. And some timepieces choose their keepers wisely.
As I walked home, I realized my gift came with responsibility. The past speaks through these broken clocks not just to reveal truth, but to guard it.
In my workshop, surrounded by timepieces, I listened to their collective ticking, a chorus of stories waiting to be heard, when the time was right.