They lived together in a small shotgun house on Elysian Fields Avenue. She grew older; he grew younger. At thirty, he looked twenty-five. At thirty-five, he looked twenty. Daisy, meanwhile, found her first gray hair. Then her second. Then her tenth.

They never saw each other again. But Benjamin never forgot the way she smelled of lilacs and regret.

Daisy visited the clock on the anniversary of his death every year. She would stand beneath it, close her eyes, and listen. And if she listened closely enough, she could almost hear it ticking backward—a sound like footsteps retreating into the past, into the arms of a blind clockmaker's son, into a place where time was just a story we told ourselves to make the leaving bearable.

"Cat is easy. Spell 'Mississippi.'"

"We're passing each other," she said one night, lying in bed, tracing the lines on his smooth face. "I'm going one way. You're going the other."

They did. For a few perfect years, they were the same age: thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine. He looked thirty-seven; she looked thirty-seven. They danced in the kitchen to old jazz records. They planted a garden. They adopted a stray dog named Mississippi. For the first time in his life, Benjamin felt normal.