This silver pocket watch with the broken chain belongs to Sean. There are certain things I know about Sean’s pocket watch. I know I’ve never seen him without it. I know it makes the faintest sound, like a tag on a cat’s collar, announcing his entrance before his booming voice.

Listen to your mother, Caleb—

Take some responsibility in the family—

I’d roll my eyes while Caleb’s shoulders would tighten, and I could feel him bristling. Imagined the words he had said to Sean: What do you do with the money, Sean? You’re not my father. There was something weighty and solid between their interactions, and I couldn’t quite crack it. The truth was, I hadn’t really tried. I let him say nothing about it: Just leave it, Jessa. I never pushed.

Sean had a tendency to open and close the pocket watch in his hand, when debating what to say. He did it a lot, whenever Caleb would talk. As if weighing his choices: Say something; let it go; cut deep; swipe shallow.

And I know it probably broke in a fight with Caleb.

I know because it all matches up now—the broken chain, and Caleb’s face, and what came after.

He was supposed to meet me and some friends from the cross-country team out for dinner, a Friday night in late July. He didn’t show up; he didn’t answer his phone. But we were less than a mile from his house, so while the rest of them went out for ice cream after, I walked over to Caleb’s.

I showed up at his house. All the cars were still there. And then I saw him, coming down the front steps with a garbage bag in his hand, his expression unfocused.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps, turned his face to the side, but it was too late. I saw the mark near his jawline. A raw cut in a straight line, the skin red and swollen around it.

“What happened?” I asked. It would’ve been easy to ignore it; it could’ve been anything: playing a pickup game of football in the road, Mia accidentally knocking her head into his. But it was in the way he hid it that pulled my focus.

“What are you doing here, Jessa?”

“You were supposed to meet me for dinner,” I said.

His face went pale as I reached for the mark, and he jerked back. “Got in a fight,” he said, his voice so much smaller than I was used to. He looked over his shoulder, into the house, the door slightly ajar. There was a shadow-shaped person in the darkness where anyone could’ve been looking out.

I lowered my voice, my eyes gone wide. “With Sean?” I asked. I peered at the entrance of the house again, but the shadow was gone.

He blew out a slow breath, took my arm, and pulled me to the side of the house. “I said some things.”

“And he hit you?” He didn’t say anything, just set his jaw firmer. “Does your mom know?”

He looked at the front door again. I heard the faint sound of Mia crying.

“She kicked him out,” he said.

Finally, I thought. His car was still there, though.

“You can’t be here, Jessa. Not today.”

“He’s leaving?”

“Yeah, he’s leaving.”

“Come with me,” I begged him. And I thought he considered it, for a moment, before he closed his eyes and backed away.

“I can’t. I need to be here.”

“We can call the police,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Please, Jessa. Don’t call the police. Don’t make it a thing. It’s over. It’s done.”

“But what if he comes back? What if he does something else—”

“We don’t all have perfect lives with perfect families,” he barked, and I jerked back. Like he saw me as a character from a storybook. My house, a set. My family, an act.

And then he took a slow, steady breath. “Please. Just leave it, Jessa,” he said. And I did, walking back alone. Seeing Hailey through the glass windows, everyone smiling, everyone laughing—but I couldn’t go inside. All of us, storybook characters to him. Like he couldn’t be bothered to see beneath the surface.

I called Julian, asking for him to come pick me up. And I sent Hailey a text, saying I was staying at Caleb’s. Keeping his secret; becoming part of it.

I called him later, to make sure he was okay. He responded late at night with a text, telling me Sean was gone, but they were going to take Mia away for a trip to the Poconos, to make it easier—and he’d let me know when he was back home.

“This is Sean’s,” I whisper to Max in the dark garage. I take the watch from him and hold it closer to my face. There’s something brown and rusted stuck between the link to the chain. Blood, I think. I wonder if it’s Caleb’s blood. Dried and caked in, the only thing left of him. It’s sitting in the garage, next to items I have packed up, as if maybe his mother intends to sell this, too.

I see things again, in the dark, behind closed window shades and a locked door:

Sean’s clothes are still here, in suitcases. His pocket watch, his wedding band. Boxes of Caleb’s things, left behind.

The rugs are gone, bound up in the garage, ready to be taken to the dump; the watch has blood. They’re stripping the house down, piece by piece—and suddenly the scene replays, from a different angle.

She kicked him out. He’s leaving.

It’s over. It’s done.

But what if that wasn’t what happened at all?

Don’t call the police. Don’t make it a thing.

My breath catches, and I can’t focus. All these things I’ve been sorting through. Digging deeper, looking for the Caleb I thought I knew better than anyone. Only to discover something worse, something I don’t want to imagine at all.

Caleb, I think, what have you done?

Inside, Eve answers a ringing phone. “Thanks for returning my call. Yes, I have some large items I’d like to sell,” she says, and I can hear her scribbling down some notes.

I need to get out of this garage. I pull back the window shades as quietly as I can, but the windows are just for decoration—they don’t open. I suppose I could break them, throw something through, and make a run for it, but not without drawing attention to myself.

I remember where the circuit breaker is, feel Caleb beside me as I go to it. I do the same maneuver, using the side of my hand to take the entire house offline. I flick it all back on, then open the garage door, and hope she will think it’s an unexpected, unexplained part of the power surge.

Max takes my hand, pulling me around the corner of the garage, in hopes we won’t be seen. He has the box of photos tucked under his other arm, from upstairs. I hear the door from the house to the garage swing open, but we don’t look back.

It’s not until we’re around the corner, tucked out of sight, catching our breath with our hands on our knees, that I realize, in the clenched fist of my other hand, I still have Sean’s pocket watch.