The bell over the jeweler’s door rings too bright for the hushed shop, a ping that feels wrong for January light. The lake sends a soft seiche through town; I hear the pressure change pull the chime thinner and then dump it at my feet. I step in with my hands visible and my questions folded small.
The counter glass reflects my face in pieces—mouth, eyes, locket chain at my throat like a compacted truth. Velvet trays hold neat rows of watches waiting for wrists they’ll try to improve. The air smells like polishing compound, old carpet, and percolated coffee. Somewhere in back a sonic cleaner whispers, a bath for tired metal.
“Help you?” the man behind the counter asks. He wears a loupe like a third eye resting on his forehead. His hair is careful, his fingers steadied by years of tiny decisions.
“I hope so,” I say, setting my voice to town-warm. “I’m not here to buy. I’m here to ask about work you did years ago. Regatta season.”
Ruth drifts a step behind me and becomes dog-walker polite, retired-cop precise. She’s already clocked the exit, the bell, the camera over the register. The jeweler glances at her, glances at me, then looks down at a steel diver with a bezel like a saw blade made gentle.
“We do a lot around regatta,” he says. “Bracelets, engravings, battery swaps. The club likes a deadline.”
I slide a paper through the narrow opening at the counter’s edge. It’s a photocopy of the Meridian Mariner manual we pulled from Locker 217, the model number circled in Ruth’s steady hand. The copy smells faintly of toner and old rope—phantom from the annex, or imagination.
“I’m looking for this line,” I say. “Limited-run. The club ran a promotion about it—an ad. Some were purchased as gifts. A few were engraved.”
He doesn’t touch the paper. He studies it as if the model number might catch fire and tell on me. “You’re the podcaster,” he says finally. Not a question.
“I am,” I say. “I’m also careful.”
Ruth lifts a palm, open. “We’re not here to put you on the show,” she says. “We’re here to make sure a photo isn’t thrown out as an internet rumor. We’ll ask narrow questions. We’ll accept narrow answers.”
He breathes out, a measured thing that fits a jeweler’s life. “What’s ‘narrow’?”
I let the room breathe once, twice. “Did you engrave a Meridian Mariner for Everett Crane the month before regatta week the year Celia Brighton disappeared?”
The sonic cleaner in the back clucks against its own rhythm. His face stays neutral, but his hand goes to the loupe. He drops it into place and looks at me through magnification, which should be unnerving but feels like honesty.
“Why would you need my answer if you already know the name?” he asks.
“Because the town likes discretion more than truth,” I say. “And the defense will say ‘no provenance.’ I want a date, and I want a receipt that doesn’t live only in someone’s memory. I want to marry a reflection in a tower window to a paper trail that doesn’t blink.”
Ruth clears her throat, then sets a small stack of documents on the counter without pushing them over. Chain-of-custody forms. A polite letterhead from a pro bono firm. The jeweler doesn’t reach.
“Everybody needs me to be brave for whatever side they’re on,” he says, and it’s not quite accusation, not quite surrender.
“I need you to be exact,” I say. “Brave is optional.”
He considers that long enough for the lake’s hush to touch the windows. In the watery silence, I hear a tugboat’s diesel breath carry under the door, wet rope and cold metal in my throat. Regatta culture presses in from invisible angles—photos of crews ring the town like halos that won’t let a different story in.
He takes the manual copy at last and taps the circled number. “We sold five,” he says. “Three direct. Two through the club’s block order. One of those two came back to me for engraving.”
“Name?” Ruth asks.
He gives me a look that asks how much I’ll burn. I answer by not moving. We sit inside the tick of the wall clock and the faint hiss of the cleaner.
“Crane,” he says, voice level. “Everett. He wanted E.C. with a date and a line from a rowing toast. I suggested we keep the text minimal to preserve the backing. He insisted on the date.”
The air in my lungs sharpens. “Which date?”
He nods toward the back. “I’ll check the book.”
He disappears through a swinging door, and time goes elastic in the shop. I look at the display, at a tray of locket blanks next to birthstone charms, and I hate how brass shines before it remembers what hands have done. The theme sits on the counter between us like a sermon: stories save and stories exploit. Recording pins the dead to a place where bells breathe for them. Meanwhile the town polishes donations and calls it care.
Ruth leans in. “Careful with the questions when he comes back,” she murmurs. “We need the receipt and the date. Everything else can ride in inference.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But I want him to say it out loud.”
“Want is not the job,” she says, and she’s right. The job is making room for a ten-second clip and a reflection to prove the clock that surrounded both.
He returns with a thin ledger and a drawer-tray of triplicate slips the color of nicotine. He lays the ledger flat, covers part of it with a blotter, and rotates, offering me a rectangle of the past.
“June ninth,” he says. “Engraving completed June ninth. Regatta opened the first week of July that year. You know the rest.”
Everett’s name sits in neat penmanship next to a model number that matches our manual. Beneath it, in the comments column, I read backcase: E.C. — For the Count. I swallow the flash of anger before it can rattle my tone.
“May I copy the receipt?” I ask. “And may I photograph the book with everything else masked out?”
He hesitates, then nods. “Masked,” he says, “or I won’t do it.”
Ruth is already tearing a strip of Post-it to block out the adjacent lines. She works like a surgeon with a scalpel made of adhesive. I lift my phone. The shop’s light throws tiny galaxies into the glass; dust plays stars for the camera. I take three shots, bracketing the exposure, then step back.
“I can duplicate this one,” he says, tapping the triplicate. “You can have the yellow copy. I’ll sign it in front of a notary. She’s next door at the shipping store.”
The cautious knot in my sternum loosens half a notch. “Thank you,” I say. My voice tries to thank too much; I rein it in. “Would you include a statement that you performed the engraving, that you verified the serial matched the model ordered, and that the date reflects completion prior to regatta events that year?”
He waits a beat to make sure I won’t add adjectives, then nods. “I’ll write exactly that.”
While he fills the form, I let myself look around. Photos on the far wall capture graduations, engagements, a few old regatta winners holding cups that need polishing. In one frame, a younger Everett shakes a commodore’s hand. The jeweler returns the pen to its slot and rips the yellow sheet with a practiced snap.
“We’ll need the club material too,” Ruth says, tone neighborly instead of legal. “Newsletter, ad—whatever was in circulation.”
“They left a stack by the door that year,” he says. “Hang on.”
He turns to a low cabinet, draws out a cardboard archive box, and flips through folders that whisper like reeds. He pulls a glossy newsletter with pennants printed along the margin and sets it down. I recognize the layout; I saw a similar spread in Ruth’s milk crates. The Meridian Mariner ad winks with stainless seduction and a tagline about tradition, time, and water.
I shoot the page: full frame, close-up on the bezel, a proof with my hand in the corner so later I can show scale. The watch in the ad and the reflection in the tower window hum to each other across time. I feel the locket at my throat go heavy and real.
“Let’s go next door,” he says. “Before I change my mind.”
He locks the register, flips a sign to Back in 10, and leads us into the bite of lake air. Diesel rides the wind and smears the smell of wet rope along the awnings. The door to the shipping store moans in its track, and the notary looks up from a stack of overnight envelopes.
“Hi, Tasha,” the jeweler says, already resigned. “I need your stamp.”
Tasha is brisk kindness in a cardigan. “Statement?” she asks.
“Statement,” he confirms.
We stand at the high counter while he writes in careful, unornamented print: I, Nathan Hale, owner, confirm engraving of Meridian Mariner model … The date slots, the serial slots, Everett Crane’s name sits there like a dare. He signs. Tasha stamps with a satisfying thunk, the ink cold and dark even before it dries. Ruth initial-marks the chain-of-custody copy and hands me a manila envelope like I might drop it and lose the last six months if I don’t respect its mouth.
“You going to put my name on the internet?” he asks as we step back into the hallway between storefronts.
“Not until a court requires it,” I say. “And even then, I’ll let the filing speak. I don’t do pile-ons.”
He studies my face a beat that feels longer than honesty, then nods once. “Then take a photo of this, too,” he says, tapping the newsletter. “But do me a favor—show the ad, not my storefront.”
“Deal,” I say.
We return to the jewelry shop for his keys and I catch the scent of coffee gone warm and stale, the kind that keeps busy hands steady. The bell tings the same bright note, thinner again as the wind shifts—the seiche is on a second inhale, the lake rearranging the town’s hearing.
“One more narrow question,” I say, stopping at the door. “The engraving phrase—‘For the Count’—was that his wording?”
He rubs his knuckle with his thumb, a reflex learned under bright lamps. “Close enough,” he says. “He said something about counting down from the tower. I suggested we keep it discreet. He laughed. He said the ones who mattered would know.”
Heat flushes in my chest and then finds a place to live where it won’t wreck my voice. “Thank you,” I say again, not to erase what he just said but to mark that it landed.
Ruth pockets the receipt duplicate with a small triumphant nod. “This ties the reflection to the order to the man,” she murmurs. “No more ‘could be anyone’s cuff.’”
“Now we date the photo with the ad circulation,” I say. “We print the metadata; we map the watch to the man to the day.”
The jeweler re-latches his door, and we step into the wind that has started to taste like sleet. A gull skates the pressure wave over the breakwater and screams its own complaint at the town, bright and raw. I tuck the manila against my ribs and feel my energy spike past cautious into something like purpose with teeth.
“Coffee?” Ruth asks. “We should scan this before the afternoon calls start.”
“Back at my studio,” I say. “I want to get the newsletter spread under the flatbed light. And I want to back the receipt in triplicate.”
We cross the street, and the Facebook swap group’s moderator walks past with a tote bag that reads GOOD FAMILIES GIVE in cheerful font. She doesn’t meet my eyes. The swap group will like a neat receipt less than a neat kitchen photo, I know. But paper holds.
At the car, I pause. A faint electronic hiss rides the silence—a tight, consistent shush that doesn’t belong to wind, or lake, or radiator. I tilt my head. It fades when a delivery truck grinds by and returns when the street quiets. Ruth keys the ignition; the hiss blends with the heater on low.
“Hear that?” I ask.
“I hear the town,” she says, squinting at the rearview, then back at the newsprint in my hands. “And I hear our next step.”
I nod and climb in, the envelope crackling like a paper bell. The lake shifts again and somewhere behind the shops, St. Brigid’s breathes through the slats of its tower. I ask the question that keeps pace with the heater’s faint whisper as we roll toward the studio: now that I’ve tied a reflection to a name and a date, what else in my life has a sound I haven’t traced yet—waiting to tell me who put it there?