"Where did you get this?"
Amara set the water glass down on the kitchen counter hard enough that the sound traveled. She crossed into the family room with a speed that tried to look casual and failed. The olive-green knit pulled slightly across her chest as she reached toward her son.
"Honey, give that to me."
Julian stepped back, not in defiance so much as in the proud refusal of a curator who has been asked to surrender a museum piece. The watch slid. He pushed it back up his arm with two fingers.
"It was beside Mommy's bed."
The sentence landed in the family room like a dropped plate that had not yet finished breaking. Sophia's pencil stopped. Carlos stood slowly, socks soft on the hardwood, navy sweater suddenly too warm. He took the watch from Julian's wrist with careful hands — the hands of a father who knew how not to frighten a child while everything inside him rearranged. The silver was heavy. Expensive. Not his. He turned it once, saw the unfamiliar weight of the clasp, the absence of the small scratch his own watch had carried for years on the underside.
"This isn't mine."
Amara's almond eyes flicked from the watch to Carlos's face and back again. The gold hoops trembled when she swallowed. Her voice arrived too quickly, polished the way her makeup was polished — a surface meant to hold under ordinary pressure.