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King auction hall in Erie, Pennsylvania, a year after he had moved to Salt Lake City. He had paid nearly one thousand dollars more than he had intended to for the clock, the price escalating to match not its worth, but his desire. The day of the auction, he had visited the piece no fewer than a dozen times and obsessed over it, regarding all who came near it with wanton jealousy. He had never desired a piece so intensely and wanted the clock no matter the price.
    That desire was a candle to the furnace he had just felt at MaryAnne’s side. What he had prayed in desperation, he meantjust as fervently in the peace of resolution—that he would truly have given everything he owned to know that MaryAnne would be all right.

    â€œWe have chosen for our daughter the name of MaryAnne’s mother—Andrea. What a thing it is to be introduced to one’s child. I find a new side to my being that even the gentility of MaryAnne could not produce from my brutal soul.”
    David Parkin’s Diary. January 18, 1909
    The birth of the child was greeted with great celebration by the thirty-four employees at the Parkin Machinery Company. Knitted booties and gowns came in from all quarters, each secretary, or clerk’s wife, attempting to outdo the other.
    Lawrence brought Andrea a homemade rattle that he had crafted by bendingbrass strips into a ball and covering it with sewed leather, concealing inside two miniature harness bells.
    Once again, the Parkin home was adorned with flowers, many from neighbors and business associates, but most from David, who felt as if he had completed a great bargain in marrying one lady and only five months later found himself with two.
    If the child’s sireship was David and MaryAnne’s secret, it seemed of little importance, as the child could not have been more his. It gave David great pleasure to be told that the child looked like her father, and, curiously, Andrea seemed to resemble him more than his wife. This fact was so frequently called to attention that David finally asked MaryAnne if he bore a resemblance to Andrea’s real father.
    â€œYou are her real father,” she answered. When he pressed her harder, she only replied, “He was not so handsome.”
    Andrea was a pretty child with large, piercing brown eyes that rested above sculptured rose cheeks. At first, her hair came in platinum wisps that curled on top until it grew long and fell to her shoulders in gilded chestnut coils. She had the delicate features of a porcelain doll, and whenever MaryAnne took her out in public, they were accosted by other women who strained to catch a glimpse of the infant, then squealed in delight that such a petite creation should cross their path.
    In a strange ritual not fully understood even by its practitioners, every acquaintance of the Parkins who possessed a male child staked their claim on Andrea for their son, which only served, if it were possible, to add to MaryAnne and David’s pride.

    â€œIn the year A.D. 69 the Roman emperor Vitellius paid the chief priest of Gaul,whose responsibility it was to determine the beginning and end of spring, a quarter of a billion dollars to extend spring by one minute. The emperor then boasted that he had purchased that which all man cannot. Time.
    â€œVitellius was a fool.”
    David Parkin’s Diary. April 18, 1909
    With the birth of Andrea, David was born anew. If MaryAnne had given David’s life meaning, Andrea gave meaning to his future. Since his own childhood had been spent in the blackness of mines and the company of adults, David had never been with children, and now he heralded each new stage of his daughter’s development with the ecstasy of scientific discovery. The day Andrea first rolled over in her crib, he inwardly cursed the world that it had not stopped to acknowledge the marvel.It was as if he was finding the childhood he was denied, and, through Andrea, seized the wonder of it all—a