Seventeen Missed Calls… From the Daughter I Lost

When I burst through the door, my daughter and her fiancé looked up from the couch, confused.

“Dad? What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked.

“You texted me! You called me!” I said, holding up my phone with shaking hands.

She frowned. “No, I didn’t.”
But when I showed her the message, her face went completely pale. She whispered, barely audible, “Dad… this is Helen’s phone number.”

For a moment, everything around me blurred. Helen. My youngest daughter. The one I lost last year in a car accident. She was only nineteen. My sweet girl with the brightest laugh.

My daughter’s eyes met mine, and we both just stood there—silent, stunned, aching. I felt that old wound split open again, raw and sharp.

I stepped outside to catch my breath, but before I could even pull myself together, another text came through. This time I froze on the spot.

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