The medal was wrapped in an oily cloth at the back of the workshop drawer.
Claire nearly mistook it for a broken machine part.
Her husband, Ben, cleaned the surface with his thumb.
There was a name engraved on the reverse.
His grandfather’s.
Across the workbench, Claire’s father sat down.
“Where did you find that?”
Ben turned the medal toward him.
“Why do you have this?”
The old man looked at it for a long time.
Then he pulled a thick service album from a shelf.
Inside were rows of photographs: young men in uniform, names printed beneath their faces.
Ben found his grandfather halfway through.
“My family thought this medal was lost.”
Claire’s father nodded.
“It was.”
He had borrowed it for a display organized after their unit returned home. When the exhibition was dismantled, the medal ended up in his belongings.
At first, he intended to post it.
Then he misplaced it.
By the time he found it again, years had passed. Embarrassment became another excuse.
“You stayed in touch,” Ben said.
“Christmas cards.”
“And you never mentioned it.”
“No.”
Ben closed the album.
His grandfather had died the previous spring.
There would be no pleased surprise, no chance to place the medal in his hand.
Claire’s father offered to pay for restoration.
Ben shook his head.
“What I want is everything you remember about him.”
They began the following Saturday.
Claire recorded while her father spoke about shared meals, terrible weather, and a young man who sang while doing jobs everyone else complained about.
Sometimes Ben interrupted with a question.
Sometimes the old man had to stop.
Later, Ben placed the medal beside his grandfather’s photograph.
Underneath, he kept a copy of the recording.
The medal had come back late.
The stories had arrived while someone could still tell them.
End of Narrative
