“Because the sender knew personal details about her. They also knew when I called.”
My father stared at me.
“You think I did this?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
He sank onto the couch.
For a moment, he looked much older than he had the day before.
“I would never hurt her.”
“Then help me understand.”
He rubbed his palms against his knees.
“I cannot.”
I walked through the house while he watched me. Nothing appeared unusual. The kitchen was clean. His laptop sat on the dining table. His phone lay beside it.
“May I look at your phone?” I asked.
His hesitation lasted only a second.
“Of course.”
There were no hidden applications.
No suspicious calls. No unknown contacts.
Then I noticed a notification from the security system.
“You installed cameras?”
“After someone broke into the garage last year.”
“Where are they?”
“Front porch, driveway, and back door.”
I opened the application.
The footage from the previous evening showed my father returning home alone. He went inside at 10:17 p.m.
A few minutes later, someone crossed the edge of the driveway.
The figure wore a hood and kept their face turned away.
My pulse quickened.
“Who is that?”
My father leaned closer.
“I do not know.”
The person stopped near his car, then disappeared from view.
I rewound the recording.
This time, I noticed the shoes.
White sneakers with a dark stripe along the side.
I had seen them before.
Not recently, but often enough to remember.
My father looked at me.
“Lola?”
I closed the application.
“I need to check something.”
I drove home and pulled an old storage box from my closet. Inside were photographs, birthday cards, and papers that had belonged to Mom.
At the bottom, I found a picture from her final summer.
My aunt Sabrina stood beside her, smiling at the camera.
On her feet were the same white sneakers.
Sabrina had been my mother’s younger sister.
After Mom died, she helped my father with everything. She cooked meals, handled paperwork, and stayed with him when I returned to college.
Then she withdrew from us.
