It Was My Mother's

Rosalind’s gown pooled softly around her as she knelt on the cold marble floor, meeting the girl’s frightened gaze with as much gentleness as she could offer. “It’s okay,” she said softly, extending her hand carefully toward the girl’s trembling fingers. “I just want to see what you’re holding, sweetheart. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

The girl hesitated, her small body shaking with quiet sobs, before slowly, reluctantly opening her fingers. Resting in her dirty palm was an antique pocket watch, its bronze casing engraved with delicate floral patterns that seemed to catch and hold the hallway’s soft afternoon light. Rosalind felt her breath catch instantly in her throat, recognition flooding through her before she even fully processed what she was seeing.

“It was my mother’s,” she whispered, lifting the watch gently from the girl’s palm, her hands beginning to tremble uncontrollably. She turned it over slowly, running her thumb across the familiar engravings she had memorized as a child, watching her mother wind this exact watch every evening before bed for years.

Thomas frowned deeply, clearly confused by his bride’s sudden, visible distress. “Your mother’s watch?” he repeated, glancing between Rosalind and the crying child with growing bewilderment. “How would she have gotten your mother’s watch?”

Rosalind didn’t answer immediately, her mind racing through every possible explanation, each one crumbling instantly under the weight of a single, undeniable truth. This watch had been locked inside a small wooden box in her childhood bedroom for the past three years, ever since her mother’s funeral, untouched by anyone except Rosalind herself on the rare occasions she allowed herself to look at it.

“This isn’t possible,” Rosalind murmured, her voice barely audible, her eyes locked onto the watch as though it might somehow provide an explanation on its own. The golden afternoon light filtering through the hallway windows suddenly felt far colder than it had only minutes earlier.