I woke up at 2 a.m. to 18 missed calls from my daughter and a text: “Dad, help! Come fast!!” My heart pounded as I jumped into the car, speeding through the empty streets toward her apartment. When she opened the door—safe, calm, and confused—my legs nearly gave out. “Dad,” she said, glancing at her phone, “I never texted you.”
We stood there stunned, my daughter scrolling through her messages to prove her silence. Her fiancé chimed in, equally puzzled, and we chalked it up to some strange glitch. But just as I turned to leave, another text appeared—and this one made my blood run cold. It read, “I’m still waiting. Where are you?”
I froze on the sidewalk, hands shaking, as I opened the message thread. The number looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it—until I realized it used to belong to my youngest daughter, Amy, who died last year in a car accident. I called the number, expecting nothing… but a young woman answered, crying. Her car had broken down, and she was trying to reach her father—mine was the number she dialed by mistake.
As I guided a tow truck to her location, tears blurred my vision. A stranger’s plea, through Amy’s old number, had reached me like a message from beyond. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe something more. But I drove home with a quiet certainty: sometimes, love doesn’t end—it just finds new ways to echo through the night.