Someone Joined the Group Chat
horror◐ TeenMom made everyone come to the kitchen. Phones face up on the table, like a weird séance. Dad looked at the photo for a long time without talking. "That's my father," he said. "That's his watch. I buried him wearing that watch." All five phones buzzed at once, right there on the table. The gray circle: "It still works. Listen." And from upstairs, faint but real: tick. tick. tick.
Dad followed the ticking to the attic. We crowded behind him with our phone flashlights. It was in a shoebox of old baby clothes. Grandpa's watch. Ticking. Set to the exact right time, and nobody had wound it in sixteen years. Under it, a folded note in handwriting that made Dad sit down on the attic floor. "Sorry I missed the parties. I never missed a single one." The gray circle left the chat on its own that night. 5 members. Now at every birthday, one balloon always slips loose and drifts to the ceiling. We let it stay up there. Dad waves at it when he thinks no one's watching.