When God Stood Silently By

Inspired by true events.

The tea burned my hands as I cradled the mug, letting its heat bleed into my skin. I didn’t even like tea, but the coffee had run out days before he died, and like everything else about him, this cup felt like a compromise. I made it because I needed something to hold onto as I sifted through my father’s things. His study was a time capsule, cluttered with old receipts, unopened mail, and books stacked haphazardly along every surface. A watch repairman for as long as I could recall, there were bits and pieces of time pieces everywhere. Time keeping wasn’t his hobby. It was his obsession.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to find anything. My father and I hadn’t been close, not in the way people meant when they said that word. In most ways, I barely knew him. He was always quiet, distant—one of those people who seem to carry something heavy you couldn’t name. He did his duty, but always with the sort of sadness that made me believe wholly that I had done something wrong—something that disappointed him—that I never had been and never would be good enough to rank the sort of affection I always wished he’d grant me.