“Sweetheart… why is your face covered in bruises?” my father asked the second he walked into my birthday party. Before I could answer, my husband smirked and said, “Yeah, that was me. I slapped her instead of saying happy birthday.” My father slowly took off his watch and told me, “Go outside. Now.” Through the kitchen window, I watched my mother-in-law crawl out first… and then everything changed.

“The case is clean,” my father told me, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a warmth I hadn’t seen in years. “The movement was serviced last week. It keeps time to within two seconds a month.”

I lifted the heavy steel from the velvet. The metal was cool against my skin, substantial and immovable.

“I don’t need to track the minutes anymore, Dad,” I told him, smiling faintly.

“You aren’t tracking minutes, sweetheart,” he answered, reaching over to squeeze my fingers. “You’re taking them back.”

I fastened the heavy steel strap around my left wrist. It settled firmly over the faint, pale line where my skin had healed, heavy enough to remind me of where I had stood, light enough to let me move forward.

I looked down at the flickering yellow flame of the single candle, took a deep, unrestricted breath into lungs that finally knew how to expand, and blew the fire out.