The Watchmaker's Doctor ✔️

XXIV

2005, Thirteen Years Backwards

If your murderer confessed in front of you, you were expected to react. Enraged, unbelieving, hateful. Something. But if you were still standing, alive after the fact, maybe the crime didn't have that much impact. Yet, Anaya remained in shock. And shock kept her going.

"How do you live with that?" This time it sounded like a question to her ears. Feeling so responsible for Kait's death herself, her search for a way to know how outweighed her need to ask why. At least for now.

Clearly, that was not what he heard. "Oh, come on. Don't act like I robbed you of a perfect life. You'd been raped and abused by Antonio, were self-medicating your bipolar disorder, refusing to get help and distancing yourself from your family and everyone else who dared to come near you. You went back and overcame your biggest regret. You'd have none of what you have now if I hadn't intervened when I did. Aren't you infinitely happier now?"

In the strangest way, his justification made her feel better about her role in Kait's death. Perhaps it was because she'd lived her life again and chosen to go to college that her friend stayed at home, got a job she loved and had really been making a difference. Albeit short, Kait's life had been fulfilling, this time around.

Wait!

"So, if you killed me, I don't have to die at thirty-five, because it isn't my time to die. I was never meant to..." The realization of that hit her, and she wobbled over to their bench on shaky legs, grasping the wooden arm to try to find a bit of reality to hang on to.

"Very good, Ana. No, you don't. Murder is not the natural end of anyone's time here on Earth. My decision to shorten your life has nothing to do with how long you are destined to live. You may still die at thirty-five, just a few minutes later, of other causes or live a hundred years this time. Now you see why I saw no other way but to kill you to bring you into my realm." He paused, as if expecting some kind of miraculous understanding.

When it seemed he finally realized that he would get less than none, he continued. "The human mind is as sharp as we allow it to be. Your death, and the immediacy of having to decide within minutes, gave you no real alternative. Without the urgency or the trauma, I was sure you were capable of seeing through the gaps in what I told you then. You would never have relented. Being a doctor, you might have even been successful at having me committed, like my wife tried to do the first time I told her. I never made the mistake of trying to tell a rational human being that they are going to die, again. Especially if they have cancer, and need to consciously decide to relive all the pain."

"Your wife..."

"She died this year. Like she has every time. I moved back here a few months ago, much earlier than I did the last time around. I didn't want to live that life anymore. St. Jude is the patron of desperate cases and lost causes, after all."

It was too much new information for Anaya to process. She focused on what she needed to know.

"And you can travel back in time, erase your mistakes, choose a different way of life all because of the watch? What if it broke? And what does your... gift have to do with your claim to having Alexandria's Genesis – the purple eyes, living to over one hundred and fifty, being a 'perfect human being?'"

"With all that you have seen, I would have expected you to be less of a skeptic by now. That, however, is a conversation for another time. In any case, my heritage is unrelated to my abilities as a watchmaker. But yes, even if it were demolished, I could rebuild the watch. But the knowledge to create it, I would never impart."

Incredible. In front of Anaya stood her killer, but in return for arranging her death, he'd given her a better life. Shouldn't she abhor him for murdering her in cold blood? What if she'd only been maimed and not finished? Would whoever he hired have pulled out a gun, or would he have written her off as disabled, and discarded her, only to look for another apprentice?

She asked the only question she could. "What do you want from me?"

Greg sat down next to her and considered the horizon again. "For now, just to bear this burden with me. Having been able to share it in whole with somebody else is relief enough. For a while."

"And later..."

"The watch will pass to you."

He had a knack for robbing her of words as well as breath. She stuttered out the only one that remained: "What?"

"Time is not as flexible as people think. Yes, some may bend it, and I can travel through it, but certain outcomes can never be changed. I've finished all that I set out to do. I'm done. But to pass on, I must pass it on. So, I forced its hands by ending your life before your time, then bringing you back. And now the watch belongs to you from that day onwards, when it dawns once more."

"The day you paid a hit man to run me over, you mean?" Her anger frothed again.

Greg got up to leave, and continued as if she hadn't even spoken. "If you fail to show at the same time and place so I can give it to you again, I will turn back time until you do."

"Does the whole world have to rewind, too?"

"I suppose you could call it a reincarnation of sorts, without them all having to die. Death is the certain outcome. But the path you take can vary each time."

He walked away as casually as if they'd been discussing the weather. Anaya was left, without an inkling of what she was supposed to do with her to-be-acquired superpower. In this relatively short conversation, Greg had become the personification of all that she hated about time.

He was unrelenting, unmerciful, and singularly focused. Nothing stood in his way or hindered his journey. Until his end itself.

Or her new beginning.

~ The End ~
Follow Anaya and her time travels in full length novels in The Watchmaker Chronicles series.

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G.