Slowly I slipped the watch from my wrist while continuing to talk.

“It was one morning when there was more sun than clouds, and the sea was as smooth as oil. Shrimping and lobster season. The mussels were still too small. My father always took off his watch and put it away in his jacket pocket. The jacket was lying on the bench as a cushion. Then came the wave, building up just below the smooth surface until it hit a submerged reef on the sea bottom and started rising. After another line of rocks it grew to a height of a dozen feet above the sea level, loomed over us, and then crashed down on the boat so fast that my father, who was reaching over the side to pull up a lobster pot, was swept overboard.”

Carl had lowered his knife an inch or two. I was still holding the watch in my palm, and his eyes darted back and forth between it and my face.

“He knocked his head against the hull. I grabbed his hand and clung on to it for hours and hours. My father was floating on the waves, drifting in and out of consciousness. Blood was running from his ear. His other arm was broken. I was thirteen. And then the tide started to come in again. An hour before sunset I was too tired to hold on to him any longer.” Here I paused, as my memories circled like vultures.

MY FINGERS were cold and had turned blue, and my neck was as stiff as ironwood.

That awful feeling as my father’s beloved and powerful fingers started to slip from my grasp.

Watching him sink into the sea, his open eyes staring up at me as the dark deep swallowed him up.

Thinking about jumping into the water after him.

But I couldn’t follow him and save him. I wasn’t capable of diving into the sea.

My father’s eyes, still peering up at me out of the darkness.

Me, sitting there, holding my breath with the horror of it all—and then letting go of him.

And in losing my grip on him, I lost my grip on myself. I became a mere breathless, passive creature who wasn’t strong enough to save him and wasn’t quick enough to rescue him from the deep.

WHEN I’D RECOVERED my voice, I said to Carl, “This watch is his only possession I brought home with me that day. This watch . . . and his jacket.” And with those words I held the watch out to Carl, adding only, “Remember to wind it up before you adjust the time.”

Carl stared at me with his runny eyes and then batted my hand away. “You idiot,” he roared, and half staggered, half ran into the shadows, leaving the watch dangling from my fingers.