Richard read it standing up. He couldn’t make himself sit down.

Richie,

If you’re reading this, I’m gone, and the watch is gone with Claire. Don’t be angry with her. She’s only doing what I asked. What I should have done myself fifty-eight years ago.

You asked me for that watch when you were eight years old. I told you it wasn’t mine to give. I wasn’t being stubborn, son. I was telling you the truth. It was never mine. It belongs to a man I have never met, and I have owed it to him since before you were born.

I was a coward about it my whole life. Claire isn’t.

I made her promise not to tell you until it was done. You’ve wanted that watch since you were a boy, and I know you. You would have asked her to wait. To let the family keep it, just for a while. And I could not risk you saying no. Not this time.

I also couldn’t stand for you to learn what kind of man your father really was. Maybe that’s the worst part of me.

If you want to understand, go to 418 Mill Creek Road, Cookeville, Tennessee.

Be kind to him. He’s owed more than I ever gave.

Dad

Linda had read it over his shoulder. Her hand was pressed to her mouth.

“What kind of man he really was,” she whispered. “Rich, what does that mean? What did Dad do?”

Richard didn’t answer. He was already reaching for his keys.

It was six hours to Cookeville. He drove them with the letter on the passenger seat and the photograph of the two soldiers face up beside it, and every mile, his mind went somewhere darker.

Had his father stolen that watch? Taken it off a dead man? Done something over there that he’d carried in silence for half a century?

Somewhere in Kentucky, Richard pulled over and scrolled to Officer Pruitt’s number. His thumb hovered over it.

He put the phone down. Not yet. Not until he knew.

It was just after nine at night when his headlights found the mailbox. 418 Mill Creek Road. A small white farmhouse with a porch light on and wind chimes turning slowly in the breeze.

Parked in the gravel driveway was an old blue Corolla.

Richard sat in the dark with the engine off, the way he suddenly realized someone else might once have done, long ago.

Through the screen door, he could see into a warm yellow kitchen. Claire sat at the table. Across from her was a man about Richard’s age, with gray hair and a flannel shirt, holding the gold watch in both hands like it might shatter.

His shoulders were shaking.

Richard climbed the porch steps. A board creaked under his boot. The man looked up.

And Richard’s breath stopped in his throat.

He knew that face. He had seen it every single day of his life, on his father’s nightstand, grinning beside a young Walter Hayes in the jungle.

Fifty-eight years older. But the same face.