Annette’s One Pleasure

Thanks to a challenge from Neil MacDonald, whose response to my first story “An Unfulfilled Life” was – “I wonder, and this would make another exercise, what was Annette’s one pleasure? Her one saving grace. I know she had one” I’ve broken the Friday Fictioneer rules and posted a second story. Rochelle, I asked Neil and he said he would take the blame.

Picture by Sandra Crook

Late at night, after the children
tuck themselves into bed
and her husband gently kisses her forehead
and trundles upstairs
Annette slides her father’s chest of watchmaking tools
off the very top shelf in the kitchen.

When she opens the lid
the parts and bits seem to whisper their own names:
Pinion, Arbor, Ebauche, Tourbillon, Incabloc.
Just as Father had,
Annette gently, carefully, fits piece against piece,
cog into spring
challenged by the one thing that
connects her to the gentle person
who loved her best.
She will forever keep the box secret.

(94 words)