leather band. The one he’d pressed into my hand in the hospital, two days before he died, and said, “You keep this, Becky. You’re the one who’ll keep time for everybody.”
The one I’d left in the top drawer of my nightstand the morning the police came to my house.
Monica saw me looking at it. She didn’t cover it up. She turned her wrist a little so the sun caught the glass.
“Pick up your money,” I told her. My voice was shaking, but I kept going. “You already
