Same blue accessible-space markings.

Same cracked curb.

The weather was cooler.

September had taken the sharpest edge off summer.

I parked in the same space.

For a while I stayed in the car.

Then I got out.

My prosthetic fit properly now.

No blister.

I stepped onto the asphalt and looked at the spot where the watch had fallen.

There was nothing there.

Of course there wasn’t.

Cars had come and gone.

Rain had fallen.

Receipts had blown away.

Oil spots had dried.

The world was very good at refusing to preserve the places where something important happened.

That was why people had to.

A patrol cruiser turned into the lot.

For a moment my body reacted before my mind did.

My left shoulder tightened.

My hand stopped moving.

The cruiser passed my row, continued toward the pharmacy entrance, and parked near the curb.

A young officer got out.

Not Miller.

I had never seen him before.

He noticed me because I was looking at him.

He nodded.

“Afternoon, sir.”

“Afternoon.”

That was all.

He went inside the pharmacy.

I stood beside my car.

No revelation.

No dramatic reconciliation with the uniform.

One ordinary interaction did not repair another.

It did not have to.

My secure handset was in a locked drawer at home.

I had no assignment that day.

No authority worth mentioning.

No one in the lot knew my former title, my contract, the systems I had designed, or who would answer if I pressed a button.

For the first time since the incident, that felt exactly right.

I crossed toward the pharmacy.

At the curb, I stopped.

Not because I had forgotten which leg was gone.

Because the angle was uneven.

Because I was seventy-one.

Because sometimes a person stops at a curb.

I shifted the cane into my left hand, checked my footing, and stepped down.

Behind me, somewhere inside the patrol cruiser, a radio came alive.

Routine traffic.

A license plate.

A request for backup across town.

Nothing to do with me.

I lifted my wrist.

The repaired silver case caught the afternoon light.

The scar along its edge remained visible.

The second hand moved past twelve.

Then one.

Then two.

Steady.

My father had been right all those years ago.

A useful watch was supposed to get scratched.

You did not preserve it by hiding it from the world.

You preserved it by keeping the mechanism honest.

I lowered my hand and walked inside.