A chilly November evening in the riverside town of Willowbrook, thick with the scent of damp earth and fallen leaves, found Gregory lingering outside the window of an old antique shop. The clocks—small, delicate things with worn faces and slender hands—seemed to whisper secrets of the past. They reminded him of his grandfather, of days when he’d been just a boy, utterly spellbound by the workings of gears under his magnifying glass. Gregory watched the hands creep forward and suddenly realised: he wasn’t in any hurry. Not now. Not toward the end of an eighteen-year chapter. Inside, the decision had already been made. Outside, there was only grey rain, muddy puddles, and a cold that ached right down to his bones.
Gregory walked into the courtroom fifteen minutes late. His almost-ex-wife, Eleanor, sat by the window, hands neatly folded atop a stack of documents. Her face was calm, but her fingers fiddling with a corner of paper betrayed her tension. She didn’t look at him, didn’t glare—just waited as if this were a business meeting, not the final stroke of their shared story. He remembered the two of them assembling furniture in their first flat—bickering, laughing, drinking tea straight from the pot on the floor. The memory stung like a splinter, and he swallowed it whole, finding no words to give it shape.
The magistrate was brisk as the wind rattling the windows. Questions, signatures, stamps—it all took less than ten minutes. As if holidays, rows, nights curled under an old quilt could be neatly packed into paperwork.
On the way out, Eleanor said, “Don’t forget to have the papers notarised. Today.”
Gregory nodded. He wanted to say *sorry*, but didn’t know what for. Wanted to say *thank you*, but couldn’t think why. Instead, what came out was: “You—you look lovely.”
She glanced at him like he was a stranger, then walked away. Her footsteps dissolved into the drumming rain, but the faint trace of her perfume lingered, a ghost of what had been.
Gregory stood motionless in the courthouse corridor. A door slammed somewhere. Someone coughed. A phone rang. And he wondered: *Is this the end? Or the beginning?*
Instead of going home, he drove to his grandfather’s old workshop in a forgotten corner of Willowbrook, where time seemed to have paused. The cramped room with its low ceiling smelled of machine oil and dust. Shelves groaned under jars of screws, boxes of springs, and an ageing poster on horology. The key to the workshop still lived in his battered wallet, tucked in a frayed pocket. He unlocked the door, flicked the switch. The bulb blinked, then brightened, bathing everything in the same amber glow that had strained his eyes as a child.
The wall clock ticked as if keeping time with his heartbeat. Gregory sat at the old workbench, running his fingers over its rough surface—every nick, every scratch familiar. His hands shook, not from fear, but from the sudden sense that they had purpose again. From the drawer, he pulled out a broken pocket watch he’d never fixed years ago. Took it apart. Laid the gears on a cloth, breathing slow and steady. Reassembled it. Wound it.
*Tick. Tick.*
And then—time whispered back, as if to say, *I’m still here.*
The next day, he returned. And the day after that. Three weeks later, he peeled off the old sign and slapped up a new one: *Workshop Open*. The paper hung crookedly, clinging with stubborn tape, as if certain it belonged.
People trickled in. Elderly women brought heirloom clocks with cautious hope in their eyes. Men with expensive wristwatches arrived looking sheepish, as if a dead battery had unravelled their universe. Teenagers pitched wild ideas: “Could you make the numbers glow?” Gregory nodded, took their treasures into his hands, and fixed them. He listened. Sometimes, people spoke not about their watches, but about what else had broken—marriages, dreams, hearts. He’d slot in a gear, and the mechanism would whir back to life.
Then one day, a young woman walked in—slight, with chestnut hair and an easy smile. Her name was Sophie. She carried her father’s old watch, its case battered, hands frozen. She watched Gregory with doubt, as if afraid nothing could bring it back.
“Can you fix it?” she asked softly.
He nodded. Worked carefully, stopping now and then, as if listening not just to the mechanism, but to the quiet sorrow in her silence.
A month later, Sophie returned—without the watch, but with a paper bag holding tea and a homemade apple tart. Then she came again, just because. One evening, as they sorted through a box of tiny screws, she said abruptly, “You don’t just mend clocks. You piece people back together. Quietly. Without them even noticing.”
Gregory smiled—not politely, but because he couldn’t help it. His heart, frozen solid that grey day in court, had begun to thaw.
A year later, the very watch he’d repaired for Sophie ticked away in their shared flat. Beside it sat books, a vase of dried daisies, and a photo of them by the river. Gregory was still late—for the farmer’s market, for the train, for evening drinks, for a life that now felt warm and real.
When Sophie asked, “Where were you?” he’d say, “Where time comes alive. Where you don’t lose it—you find it.”
And that was enough. Because time didn’t just tick inside clocks anymore. It walked beside them, in their steps, in their laughter, in the road ahead.
