When the Eight-Year-Old Boy We Were Adopting Came Home With Everything He Owned in a Black Bag—Then My Missing Brother’s Watch Fell Onto His Bed

D.M.

David Mercer.

My brother.

My older brother who had disappeared twelve years earlier.

The pocket watch he had worn almost every day from the time our grandfather gave it to him at sixteen.

I had seen that watch at breakfast.

Christmas.

Graduation.