Henderson gave me a handwritten receipt stamped with his shop’s logo.

“Have a look at the inside of the back case before you put that watch away,” the jeweler said.

I popped the silver back plate open with my fingernail and turned the inner rim toward the light.

“There’s a unit serial code stamped into the brass ring behind the mainspring,” Henderson said.

“That mark only went to quartermaster officers who served in the nineteen seventy-four division deployment to Germany.”

“My father never talked about his time in Europe when we were kids,” I said.