The Man Who Kept The Clock

Moving day came too soon

On the first morning of the new year, Daniel Mercer wound the brass clock the way he had every Sunday for the last eleven years.

He did it before coffee. Before the news. Before he allowed himself to think about anything else.

The clock sat on the mantel above the fireplace. It was old, heavy, and louder than it had any right to be. Tick. Tick. Tick. It filled the house. When the house was full, he did not feel so alone.

Daniel lived in the same narrow two story home he had shared with his wife, Laura. The paint on the porch railing had begun to peel. The shrubs leaned in too close to the walkway. Inside, everything remained arranged the way she had left it. Her blue ceramic bowl still rested on the kitchen counter. Her coat still hung in the hall closet. He had not moved it.

She had been gone eleven years.

Cancer, the doctors had said gently. As if softness made the word smaller.

The clock had been her idea. She bought it at an estate sale the spring before she got sick. “Every house needs a heartbeat,” she had told him. He had laughed at the time. Now he understood.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Daniel turned the key until he felt resistance. He never forced it. He respected the limit.

He stepped back and listened.

Outside, neighbors were already dragging trash bins to the curb. Fireworks debris littered the street from the night before. Somewhere a dog barked at nothing. The world was beginning another year with noise and movement.

Daniel preferred the steady rhythm inside.

He walked into the kitchen and poured coffee into a chipped mug. Steam rose. He stared at it as if it might spell out instructions for the year ahead.

Seventy two years old. Retired mechanic. No children. A few old friends who called on holidays. That was the sum of it.

He carried the mug into the living room and sat in his chair. The leather had cracked along the arms where his hands rested night after night. He could still picture Laura sitting on the sofa across from him, reading mystery novels and shaking her head when he guessed the ending too soon.

“You rush everything,” she used to say. “Sit with it a while.”

He had not rushed her illness. He had sat with that as long as he could.

The clock ticked louder in the quiet.

Around ten, there was a knock at the door.

Daniel frowned. No one visited without calling. He set the mug down and walked slowly to the front hall. When he opened the door, a young woman stood on the porch holding a clipboard.

She looked no older than thirty. Dark hair pulled back. Red scarf wrapped tight against the cold.

“Mr. Mercer?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“My name is Evelyn Carter. I’m with the city redevelopment office. I tried calling last week.”

He did not check voicemail. Too many telemarketers.

“What do you want?” he asked, not unkindly.

She glanced at the house, then back at him. “The city approved the Lincoln Street expansion project. They’ll be widening the road this spring. Your property line falls inside the new boundary.”

He stared at her.

“We’ll need to purchase the house,” she continued carefully. “You’ll receive compensation at market value, of course. There are relocation options available.”

Daniel felt something hollow open in his chest.

“You’re taking my house.”

“It’s not personal, sir. The project’s been in planning for years.”

He looked past her at the street. Survey flags dotted the sidewalk in small bursts of orange. He had noticed them but assumed they were for utility work.

“How long?” he asked.

“Construction begins in May. We’d need you relocated by April 30.”

Four months.

He nodded once. “Leave the papers.”

She handed him an envelope. “There will be community meetings if you have questions.”

“I won’t.”

She hesitated, then said softly, “I’m sorry.”

After she left, Daniel closed the door and leaned against it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He walked back into the living room and looked at the mantel. The clock stared back, steady and certain.

They were going to tear down the house.

The walls Laura had painted. The doorway where she had marked imaginary children’s heights as a joke. The kitchen where she had burned the first turkey they ever tried to cook.

All of it would be flattened for asphalt.

Daniel sat in his chair and pressed his palms into his knees.

He had fixed engines his whole life. When something broke, you replaced the part. When rust spread too far, you scrapped the body and salvaged what you could.

Was that what this was?

He rose and walked to the mantel. He lifted the clock carefully. It was heavier than he remembered.

If the house went, the clock would come with him.

But where?

An apartment? A retirement complex? Some clean white room where neighbors complained about noise?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He carried the clock into the kitchen and set it on the table. The sound felt wrong in that room.

Daniel opened the hall closet and stared at Laura’s coat. After a long moment, he reached out and touched the sleeve.

“I guess we’re moving,” he said quietly.

The words sounded foolish in an empty house.

That afternoon, he did something he had not done in years. He began opening drawers.

Photographs. Old tax returns. Greeting cards. He made two piles on the dining table. Keep. Throw away.

At first the throw away pile was small. By evening, it had grown.

He found a photo of himself and Laura standing on the porch the day they bought the house. He was younger than he remembered. She was laughing at something outside the frame.

He sat down heavily in a chair.

The house had never been the heartbeat.

She had.

The clock only reminded him of what used to be.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The sound no longer comforted him. It trapped him.

Daniel stood and carried the clock back to the living room. He set it on the mantel one last time.

He did not wind it.

Instead, he sat in his chair and waited.

An hour passed. The ticking slowed. The space between each beat stretched wider, thinner.

Tick.

… Tick.

… … Tick.

Finally, silence.

The quiet felt enormous. He expected panic, but none came.

He looked around the room. The furniture. The faded curtains. The small cracks in the ceiling plaster.

It was just wood and nails.

Laura was not in the walls.

She was in the way he still folded towels the way she taught him. In the way he could hear her teasing him when he burned toast. In the way he had learned patience sitting beside her hospital bed.

The house was a container. He had mistaken it for the thing itself.

Daniel rose slowly and went to the hall closet. He took Laura’s coat down and folded it carefully into a box. Not to erase it. To carry it.

Over the next weeks, he worked steadily. He called a realtor recommended by the city. He toured a small townhouse on Maple Avenue. It had sunlight in the kitchen and a narrow porch just big enough for two chairs.

On moving day in April, Daniel stood alone in the empty living room.

The mantel was bare.

He held the brass clock in his hands.

He considered winding it, just once more.

Instead, he opened the small back panel and removed the key. He placed the key in his pocket and closed the panel again.

The clock would stay silent.

At the townhouse, he set it on a shelf by the window. It caught the light in the late afternoon.

That evening, he sat on the porch with a cup of coffee. Children rode bikes down the street. A woman across the way waved. He nodded back.

The house on Lincoln Street would be gone by summer.

But he was still here.

For the first time in eleven years, the silence did not feel like loss. It felt like space.

Daniel took the key from his pocket and turned it in his fingers.

He would wind the clock again one day.

Just not because he was afraid of the quiet.

And when he finally did, it would not be to hold on to the past.

It would be to mark the time he still had left.