The spring breeze swept through the city, thawing the ice and snow that coated its streets. Bob watches it with a triangular eye, and curls its form tighter around an antique vase as the intern opens shop. Three hours pass, a granny or two hobble in, a couple teenagers that ogle the books and candlestands and leave without buying.


The shop has more clocks now than ever before, a fact that the intern approaches with practiced apathy – he saves his apprehension for the vase by the window, dustless, never rusting despite its iron handles. Three years it has stood there, and no one’s ever bought it. Customers would approach, grab at it with sweaty fingers, then go blank-eyed and turn away, interest caught by some other ancient relic, over and over, without fail.


No one ever believed him when he said it was haunted. Maybe the air conditioning just doesn’t hit that spot right, they would say.


Regardless, he stares at it as he polishes old cutlery, again, again, again.


Twitching with every tick of the clocks, the triangular eye peers skyward and watches a pigeon leap from a rooftop.


*


Marie-Anne sat across her, mug of coffee cradled in her hands. They don’t speak – the clock ticks away.


The still of the air is disturbed by a sigh. “Coffee good?”


“You never answered,” Marie-Anne says to the tabletop.


The woman swallows blank. “I don’t have a phone,” she murmurs.


Marie-Anne looks around. “You do.”


“Well, you don’t.”


“I called, anyhow.”


“You didn’t,” the woman protests through gritted teeth.


“I did. I asked Phil to call you.”


“Phil doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him. We argue and then someone slams the phone down before we get to anything.”


A raised eyebrow. “And that’s my fault?”


“No.”


Silence reigns again. They don’t meet each other’s eyes, stewing in spite and pettiness. Red crawls up the woman’s cheeks.


“You have a clock,” Marie-Anne says.


The woman looks to where she gestures, at the grandfather clock with its cuckoo and carved flowers. She nods.


“And Forget-Me-Nots,” her friend continues carefully, “and your shoes are missing…”


“I didn’t take you as superstitious.”


“And I you.”


“I’m not.”


Marie-Anne purses her lips in disbelief. Embarrassed, the woman looks away, to where the window curtains dance in the April currents. Absently, she notes the air smells like coming rain.


“I don’t know a soul in this city but him,” she says finally. “He died and the epidemic came and I was alone. Can you blame me? I couldn’t even get a cat.”


Marie-Anne shifts on the couch and follows the woman’s gaze to the city horizon, readjusting her grip on her cooling mug.


“I know it hasn’t been that long.” She pauses as the woman bows her head, speaking only when she moves no further. “You can mourn him without trapping him.”


“He wanted to stay with me.”


“He’s dead, Annalise.”


Birds chirp outside still, the vibrations of their little throats carrying through the open window. Around the coffee table spreads a deathly silence – a bubble that flattens all noise. The clack of something heavy being dropped onto the tabletop catches the woman’s attention.


Among the mugs and cards and balls of yarn, a hammer sticks out like a sore thumb.


“Let him go.”