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- Herausgeber: Seraphim Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
— Ask how you can win an hour in time —
Marae O’Conaire has much bigger problems than the fact her watch stopped at 3:57 p.m. When she brings her watch to a kindly repairman, she learns she has won a peculiar prize, a chance to re-live a single hour of her life. But Fate has strict rules about poking into the past, including the warning she can’t create a time-paradox. Can Marae make peace with the mistake she regrets most in this world?
This poignant tale about racism, regret and second chances is set in the historic mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts.
"A poignant short read around a theme from Norse mythology. Time is a gift, and sometimes, a last chance…" —Dale Amidei, author
"A very moving and dramatic story… if we had a chance to change our past, would we?" —Reader review
"Getting a do-over on your deepest regret is a one in a million opportunity!" —Reader review
What if you could do it over again?
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THE WATCHMAKER
(A Novelette)
by Anna Erishkigal
.
Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved
Synopsis
— Ask how you can win an hour in time —
.
Marae O’Conaire has much bigger problems than the fact her watch stopped at 3:57 p.m. When she brings her watch to a kindly repairman, she learns she has won a peculiar prize, a chance to re-live a single hour of her life. But Fate has strict rules about poking into the past, including the warning she can’t create a time-paradox. Can Marae make peace with the mistake she regrets most in this world?
This poignant tale about racism, regret and second chances is set in the historic mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts.
.
"A poignant short read around a theme from Norse mythology. Time is a gift, and sometimes, a last chance…" —Dale Amidei, author
.
"A very moving and dramatic story… if we had a chance to change our past, would we?" —Reader review
.
"Getting a do-over on your deepest regret is a one in a million opportunity!" —Reader review
.
What if you could do it over again?
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Table of Contents
Dedication
Map: Marae's Journey
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Picture: The Norns by H.L.M.
The Norns
Dear Reader
About the Author
Preview: The Auction
Other Books
Translated Editions of 'The Watchmaker'
Copyright Page
Dedication
I dedicate this book to Uncle Hubert, a kind man who devoted his life to the maintenance of small, meaningful things. We are certain that heaven shall run smoothly with you there to oil the gears.
Marae's Journey
Chapter 1
The watch stopped at 3:57 p.m. on Wednesday, January the 29th. It was an ordinary day, filled with worries about whether I would make it to the library on the opposite side of the river in time to finish a term paper. There'd been no sense of loss or overwhelming dread, for I had lived with those two emotions my entire life, just a feeling that suddenly I had run out of time. I must have looked at that watch twenty more times before I'd realized the clock on the wall had moved into the future, but the watch on my wrist remained stuck at 3:57 p.m.
I stared out the windows as the bus bumped past the textile mills which rose above Boardinghouse Park like an enormous, red-brick citadel. A hunter green pavilion stood abandoned in a shroud of snow, delicate icicles glistening in the lattice like angel's tears. Josh had taken me there once to listen to a concert, one of the free ones, when it had still been warm enough to sit outside. I clutched my fist to my chest and forced myself to look out the opposite window, feigning interest so the wizened old Vietnamese man who sat across the aisle would not think I was staring at him.
The bus turned the corner, past a three-story row of boarding houses which looked out of place in a city now comprised of storefronts and office space. During the Industrial Revolution, a whole generation of women had abandoned their farms to work in the textile mills the same way young people today abandon their small towns to attend the university which straddles the rivers. Then, as now, there are jobs to be held in the massive brick buildings which line the canals, only these days the mills produce a warp and weft of the high-tech ilk: technology, science and engineering jobs.
I fiddled with my watch, reminding myself that my decision had been a sensible one. I had come to this city to ensure a better life, to escape the trap my mother had fallen into of marriage young and too many children. I was a straight-A student. I was only twenty-two. I had my whole life mapped out in front of me. Why, oh why then, did it hurt so much to be right?
The bus dropped me at the Woolworth building even though there had been no department store here the entire four years I'd attended the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The streets were clogged with irritable drivers eager to get home to reunite with their families. The bus pulled away, leaving me standing in a snowbank in a downtown which had already begun to close up for the evening. The fading sunlight shone upon an enormous green clock which sat atop a verdigris pole, its black hands pointed at 3:45. Twelve minutes to go, no! The past was in the past. I turned my back to it and hurried away, twisting my watch as I clutched my coat to my neck.
Rock salt crunched beneath my boots as I walked up Central Street, almost landing flat on my backside when the sidewalk crossed the Lower Pawtucket Canal. A battalion of ice floes raced beneath the bridge, turning the partially melted snow above it into a treacherous sheen of black ice. I held onto the pristine painted railing, thankful the city had completed the new bridge before winter had come as that would have necessitated a trip kilometers out of my way. In a city dominated by one-way streets, two rivers and a network of canals, all distances are measured not as the crow flies, but how far you have to walk to get across the nearest bridge.
It was five city blocks past struggling small businesses to the address my smartphone flagged as my destination. I was greeted more than once, but I kept my head down, fearful eye contact might be an invitation to violence. A four-story brick building with a Mansard roof curved gracefully around the corner of Central and Middlesex Street in a gentle, feminine arc. I took the small, white box out of my purse and read the gold letters which spelled out 'Martyn Jewelers' in an ornate script.
This was the place. Here. Josh had bought the watch for me here.
Like most storefronts in the Lowell National Historical Park, the building had been restored to its Victorian era glory, with moderate plate-glass windows surrounded by thick black painted wooden trim. On one of those windows sat a large painted sign stating 'Retirement Sale.' Beneath it, a diminutive sign which 'watches repaired.'
I pushed open the door and cringed as jingle bells announced my entrance. It appeared the store had once been a lobby to the floors above, with square glass cases along the outer walls. Three of the cases sat empty, but the remaining two were neatly arranged with bracelets and jewelry, all spaced out to make it look like there was more inventory than there really was.
A tall, white-haired man leaned over the counter, listening intently to a woman who animatedly waved her hands. From her straight black hair and heavy accent she was Southeast Asian, possibly Cambodian, or maybe Vietnamese. The watchmaker wore a small monocle clipped to his glasses and peered through it at whatever had the woman so excited.
I glanced at my watch, but as it had for the past six weeks, the delicate gold hands remained stuck at 3:57 p.m. The watchmaker tilted his hand to indicate he would help me as soon as he finished with his existing customer. I gave him a wan, forced smile, signaling I would wait. He was wrinkled and thin, wearing a white pinstriped dress shirt and tie, possibly in his seventies, or maybe even eighties? No. The man had to be ninety if he was a day. He had a genteel, almost timeless quality about him, and after a while, I simply gave up trying to guess his age.
