I was never one to meddle in the past. My father always said, “What’s gone is gone, no sense in digging it up.” And for the longest time, I believed him. But after he passed, something changed. Grief has a way of making you look for answers in places you’ve never thought to search.
That’s how I found myself sorting through his things—a task I had dreaded for weeks. I was in his study, surrounded by the scent of old leather and tobacco, flipping through dusty papers and boxes of memorabilia he had collected over the years. Some things were familiar: the postcards from places he had visited, the dog-eared novels he read a dozen times over. But then, I came across a small, polished wooden box I had never seen before, hidden deep inside his desk drawer.
Curiosity pulled me in as I pried open the lid. Inside was an old, worn pocket watch. The silver casing was tarnished, and the glass was scratched, but there was something about it—something that made me pause. I held it in my hands, feeling its weight, knowing it was more than just an old timepiece.
Beneath the watch, a folded piece of paper lay neatly, yellowed with age. I unfolded it carefully, my heart beginning to race.
It was a letter. Addressed to someone I had never heard of: Eliza.
Dear Eliza,
I know we said goodbye years ago, and it was supposed to stay that way. But I’ve held onto this watch, just as I’ve held onto the memories of our time together. I often wonder if I made the right decision, leaving as I did. But I didn’t have a choice. You and I both know the cost.
I wish things had been different. I wish I could have stayed.
With love always,
- James
James. That was my father. But who was Eliza? And what had he left behind?
I stared at the letter, my mind spinning. In all my thirty-two years, I had never heard of anyone named Eliza. My father had been married to my mother for as long as I could remember, and he had never spoken of any other woman, any other life. I folded the letter carefully, my hands trembling, and placed it back in the box with the watch.
The questions came fast, each one crashing into me like waves in a storm. Had he loved someone before my mother? Was Eliza a part of his life he had tried to forget, or worse—something he had hidden?
That evening, I couldn’t shake the thought of her. Eliza. The name repeated itself in my head like a forgotten melody. I needed to know more. The next morning, I went to visit my Aunt Linda, my father’s older sister and the one person who might have some answers.
When I arrived, she welcomed me with her usual warmth, though it quickly faded when I mentioned the name.
“Eliza?” Her face tightened. “Where did you hear that name?”
I pulled the letter from my jacket pocket and handed it to her. She took it slowly, her expression unreadable as she scanned the words. When she finished, she sighed deeply and placed the paper on the table.
“I suppose it was only a matter of time before you found out,” she said, her voice heavy with something I couldn’t quite place.
I leaned forward, my heart pounding. “Who is she, Aunt Linda? Who was Eliza?”
She looked out the window, her eyes distant. “Eliza was… someone your father knew a long time ago. They were in love, deeply in love. But circumstances pulled them apart.” She paused, as if considering how much to say. “She was his first love, but she wasn’t just any woman. Eliza was…” She hesitated, then met my eyes. “She was your mother’s sister.”
I blinked, stunned. “What? My mother’s sister? But—” I struggled to find the words. “Mom never mentioned her.”
Linda nodded sadly. “They had a falling out long before you were born. Your mother never forgave Eliza for what happened between her and your father.”
The room seemed to close in on me. “So Dad… and Aunt Eliza… they were together? Before he married Mom?”
“Yes,” Linda said quietly. “They were engaged, actually. But then something happened that forced them apart. Your mother was involved, but I don’t know all the details. What I do know is that your father never stopped loving her, even after he married your mother. He stayed, of course, but I think a part of him always belonged to Eliza.”
My head spun. My father, the man I had always admired for his loyalty and strength, had carried a secret like this for his entire life. He had loved someone else, someone forbidden—someone my mother had banished from our lives.
I spent the next few days in a daze, trying to process everything. I replayed my father’s words from the letter over and over in my mind: “I wish I could have stayed.” Had he spent his life regretting the choice he made? Was his love for my mother just an act of duty?
One afternoon, as I sat alone in my father’s study, the pocket watch in my hand, I heard my mother’s voice behind me.
“I see you’ve found it.”
I turned, startled. She stood in the doorway, her face lined with age and something that looked like resignation.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about her?” I asked, my voice soft but filled with a quiet anger.
She stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the watch. “There was nothing to tell,” she said, though her voice lacked conviction. “Your father made his choice. He chose to stay with me, and that’s what mattered.”
“But he didn’t love you, did he?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, and my mother flinched.
She sat down across from me, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “He did love me,” she said, though the words sounded hollow. “He loved both of us, in different ways. But he stayed. And sometimes, that’s enough.”
I looked at her, trying to understand. “Why didn’t you let us know her? Why did you erase her from our lives?”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t look away. “Because I couldn’t bear to live in her shadow,” she whispered. “I couldn’t let you grow up knowing that you were born because of a choice he regretted.”
The words hung in the air between us, heavy and unforgiving. The weight of the past, of the choices made long before I was born, settled over me like a blanket. My mother had lived her life pretending to be the only woman my father loved, but deep down, she had always known the truth.
In the weeks that followed, I thought about Eliza often. I wondered where she was, if she was still alive, and if she ever thought about us—about the family she had lost. I wondered if I could forgive my father for the life he had hidden from me, and if I could forgive my mother for burying the past so deeply.
The pocket watch, now a symbol of all the time lost, sat on my desk, a reminder of the secrets that had shaped my family. And as I looked at it, I realized that the only way forward was to stop trying to fix the past and start making peace with it.
Maybe, in the end, that’s what my father had tried to do all along.
End.
