Eddie treasures a silver pocket watch given to him by elderly Mr. De Veer, a wealthy wheelchair user with a military past. The watch comes to symbolize Eddie’s ambition for greatness and his resilience in the face of hardship. He initially worries that someone will think he stole the watch, so Mr. De Veer characterizes it as a loan rather than as a gift. When Mr. De Veer passes, however, Eddie doesn’t return the watch to his sister; he keeps it for himself.

Even though when Eddie sells most of his possessions after losing everything in the stock market crash, he never lets go of the watch. The fact that the watch is on loan, and not properly Eddie’s, resurfaces when he is separated from it during his faked drowning, in an effort to dupe Styles’s men. Years later, Anna finds the watch, with Mr. De Veer’s initials engraved into it, during her dive into New York Harbor—she assumes that Eddie has sunk along with it. She sleeps with the watch under her pillow, as though it is a talisman with properties that can be transferred to her. As she struggles to forgive Eddie later when they are reunited, she realizes that it was easier to deal with her father when was an idealized memory—contained in the watch—rather than the flawed man who abandoned her family.