A House Full of Clocks
Written by Studio AM.
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When Aunt Sela left Mara the narrow blue house, every room contained a clock. A kitchen clock chimed; a painted bird jumped from another. Travel clocks crowded a shelf. Mara planned to sell them. Their ticking made sleep feel like waiting. Then she found a note beneath the kitchen clock: “This one ran fast when your mother missed the train.” Other notes recalled repairs, a blackout, and shared soup.
The notes did not make the clocks valuable antiques. Most were common and several were broken. They did something stranger: they turned incorrect time into precise memory. Mara spent Saturday matching notes with objects. She heard Aunt Sela’s voice in the brisk descriptions but found no instruction to keep anything.
On Sunday, the dealer named a modest price for the whole collection. Mara sold most of it. She kept the kitchen clock, even though it gained seven minutes each day, and gave the painted bird to her brother. Then she placed the notes in a plain box.
That night the house was nearly quiet. Mara missed the layered ticking, but she also heard rain at the window. She understood that preserving a life did not require preserving every object it had touched. The notes and two clocks kept those family stories close. The fast clock chimed early, and Mara smiled without correcting it.
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Questions
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Question 1 of 4
What is the main idea of the story?
The answer is A: Mara learns to preserve selected objects and stories without keeping every clock connected to her aunt’s life.
Her final choices balance release with preservation rather than treating the collection as all or nothing.
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Question 2 of 4
Why does Mara keep the inaccurate kitchen clock?
The answer is B: Its note connects the clock with a meaningful family memory.
She keeps it after learning the story about her mother and the missed train.
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Question 3 of 4
What does “modest” mean when describing the dealer’s price?
The answer is C: not especially large
The clocks are common and broken, so the offered price is limited rather than high.
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Question 4 of 4
What does Mara give her brother?
The answer is D: the clock with the painted bird
The third paragraph says she gives the painted-bird clock to her brother.
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