I told him the watch wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that he had asked me to sell the one thing his father left him because he said his business was in trouble, when he actually wanted to impress a woman he’d never even introduced to me. He said he hadn’t known how to tell me, because he thought I’d disapprove of the proposal. I asked him why he thought I would object to him getting married. He looked down at the floor and said, “Because you don’t know her.”
I asked him how long he’d known her. He said almost a year. Then I asked how long he’d been planning the proposal. He admitted he’d been saving for months, but when he came up short, he decided the watch was the easiest thing to sell. I told him that watch wasn’t his to sell. His father had left it to him in his will, but the paperwork specifically said it was to remain with the family unless he reached an agreement with his siblings. He hadn’t told any of them.
That evening I called his sister and asked whether she knew about the watch. She didn’t. Neither did his brother. Then she told me something that made me stop talking: the woman he’d proposed to had contacted her two weeks earlier asking about the family’s money. Suddenly the missing watch wasn’t just about a proposal anymore. I told my son he had until the next morning to tell me exactly what he’d done with it. He called me at 7:12 the next morning, and his first words were, “Mom, you need to come with me. There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”
