On her final night, Clara sat at the bench, exhausted. She reached for her father's old magnifying loupe, and noticed a small, velvet-lined indentation inside the case. There it was: a tiny gold gear, engraved with a single word: Now.
With trembling fingers, Clara placed the gear into the heart of the watch. She wound the crown, the tension building until—click.
The watch didn't just tick; it hummed with a warmth that vibrated through her palm. In that moment, the silence of the shop didn't feel like death anymore; it felt like a pause between breaths. Clara realized that "finding time" wasn't about the past or the years they missed. It was about the seconds she had left.
She didn't pack her bags the next morning. Instead, she flipped the sign on the door from Closed to Open, and for the first time in a long time, the clocks began to sing.