“So do I.”
That night, I called my best friend, Rachel.
And I asked her for a favor I never imagined I would have to ask anyone.
“Go on one date with him.”
There was silence.
Then she laughed.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
Her laughter stopped.
“Lola, that is your father.”
“I know.”
“And he knows me.”
“He has only met you a few times.”
“That does not make this less strange.”
I explained everything.
I told her about the six women.
The successful dates.
The promises to meet again.
The sudden disappearances.
And the way my father was slowly losing his confidence.
Rachel stayed quiet for a long time.
“So you want me to investigate him?”
“I want you to tell me what happens.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to say when he recognizes me?”
“Tell him we met through the app. He might remember your face, but he won’t remember your name.”
Rachel groaned.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“It could ruin my friendship with you.”
“It won’t.”
“It could ruin your relationship with your father.”
That possibility frightened me.
But I kept my voice steady.
“I need to know.”
After a long pause, Rachel agreed.
The date went even better than I expected.
Later that night, she called me.
“Your dad is wonderful,” she said.
“I can’t believe nobody gave him a chance.”
Relief rushed through me.
“So nothing strange happened?”
“Nothing. He was kind, funny and respectful. We talked for almost three hours.”
“Did he mention another date?”
“He asked if I wanted to have dinner again next Friday.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
For the first time in weeks, I slept without imagining the worst.
Then the next morning, Rachel disappeared too.
I called her before work.
No answer.
I called again during lunch.
Straight to voicemail.
I sent messages asking whether she was all right.
None of them were delivered.
By evening, she finally texted me.
Just four words.
Don’t contact me. Please.
I stared at the screen.
That was not Rachel.
Rachel would never send a message like that without an explanation.
Even during our worst disagreement, she would have called me and argued until both of us ran out of things to say.
I drove straight to her apartment.
Her car was still there.
The lights in her apartment were on.
But nobody answered the door.
I knocked until my knuckles hurt.
I called her name through the door.
I tried her phone again.
Nothing.
A neighbor stepped into the hallway.
“Is everything all right?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
I went back downstairs and sat in my car.
For almost an hour, I watched her windows.
I kept waiting for a curtain to move.
Nothing happened.
The next afternoon, Rachel finally called.
Her voice sounded shaky.
“I can’t explain over the phone.”
“When can we meet?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
I barely slept that night.
The next morning, I caught her just outside her office before she went inside.
She looked exhausted.
Her face was pale.
And she kept glancing toward the building entrance as if she wanted an excuse to disappear.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“What did my father do?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she pulled out her phone.
Her fingers were trembling so badly that I had to take it from her.
The screen showed a message from an unknown number.
Stay away from him. You have no idea what he is capable of.
Below the message was a photograph.
It showed Rachel leaving the restaurant with my father.
Someone had taken the photograph from across the street.
My stomach tightened.
“When did you get this?”
“About twenty minutes after I got home.”
I swiped upward.
There were more messages.
The sender knew Rachel’s address.
They knew where she worked.
They even knew the name of her younger brother, Graham.
Then I saw the final message.
My blood ran cold.
If you contact him or Lola again, Graham will learn what happened in Philadelphia.
I looked at Rachel.
“What happened in Philadelphia?”
Her eyes filled with shame.
“Nothing criminal.”
She swallowed.
“Graham was struggling with addiction three years ago. He disappeared for two days. I found him in a motel and brought him home.”
She looked down.
“Nobody knows except my family.”
“How could this person know?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you tell me not to contact you?”
Rachel folded her arms tightly around herself.
“Because the message arrived seconds after you called.”
She looked at me.
“Whoever sent it knew you were trying to reach me.”
A cold wave moved through my body.
That meant someone was watching both of us.
I asked Rachel to forward every message and photograph to me.
She hesitated.
Then agreed.
“Please be careful, Lola,” she said.
“This is not some rejected woman or jealous stranger.”
“You think my father is involved?”
Rachel looked toward the street.
“I think someone close to him is.”
I wanted to defend my father.
I wanted to tell her she was wrong.
But I remembered how quickly he had become angry when I questioned the disappearances.
And suddenly, I wasn’t sure of anything.
I left Rachel outside her office and drove straight to my father’s house.
He opened the door wearing an old sweatshirt and slippers.
His hair was uncombed.
Dark circles rested beneath his eyes.
“Lola,” he said.
Then he frowned.
“Rachel hasn’t answered me. Did I do something wrong?”
The pain in his voice sounded real.
I stepped inside without responding.
He followed me into the living room.
“Lola, what happened?”
“Someone threatened her.”
His face went completely still.
“What?”
I showed him the messages.
He read them slowly.
His expression changed from confusion to fear.
“This happened after our date?”
“Yes.”
He handed the phone back.
“We should call the police.”
“I already told Rachel we should.”
“Then why are you here?”
I studied his face.
“Because the person who sent those messages 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 rested beside it.
I stopped.
“May I look at your phone?”
He hesitated for only a second.
“Of course.”
There were no hidden applications.
No suspicious calls.
No strange contacts.
Nothing that immediately suggested he had been involved.
Then I noticed a notification on his phone.
It was from his home 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 security application.
The footage from the previous evening showed my father returning home alone.
He entered the house at 10:17 p.m.
A few minutes later, someone crossed the edge of the driveway.
The person wore a hood.
Their face was turned away from the camera.
My pulse quickened.
“Who is that?”
My father leaned closer to the screen.
“I don’t know.”
The person stopped near his car.
Then disappeared from view.
I rewound the recording.
Again.
And again.
Then I noticed something.
The shoes.
White sneakers.
With a dark stripe along the side.
I had seen those shoes 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.
I searched through them until I found a picture from her final summer.
My aunt Sabrina stood beside her.
They were both smiling at the camera.
And on Sabrina’s feet were the same white sneakers.
My mother’s younger sister had always been close to our family.
After Mom died, Sabrina helped my father with everything.
She cooked meals.
Handled paperwork.
Stayed with him when I returned to college.
But then she slowly withdrew.
She said it hurt too much to visit the house.
I had believed her.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I called Rachel.
“Do you remember meeting my aunt Sabrina?”
“Once, at your graduation party.”
“Did you tell her about Graham?”
Rachel went silent.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“She found me crying in the bathroom. I told her everything.”
I closed my eyes.
The final piece had fallen into place.
Sabrina knew Rachel’s secret.
She knew my father’s schedule.
She knew my habits.
And she had once had access to the house.
I drove to her apartment before I could lose my nerve.
She answered the door wearing workout clothes.
Her white sneakers were sitting beside the entrance.
My heart sank.
When I showed her the camera footage, the color drained from her face.
“You followed Rachel,” I said.
Sabrina stepped backward.
“Lola, you don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Her eyes hardened.
“Your father was supposed to love your mother forever.”
“He did.”
“No.”
Her voice trembled.
“He replaced her.”
My anger rose.
“He spent twelve years alone.”
“And that made dating acceptable?”
Her voice suddenly became louder.
“Your mother gave him everything. Then he smiled at strangers as if she had never existed.”
I stared at her.
“You threatened six women.”
“I warned them.”
“You terrified them.”
“I protected your mother’s place in his life.”
“You protected nothing.”
Sabrina’s eyes filled with tears.
She admitted that she had found the women through my father’s dating profile.
She researched them.
She followed them after their dates.
And she sent messages using temporary phone numbers.
Most of the women became frightened and blocked my father.
One by one, they disappeared.
Exactly as I had suspected.
Rachel had been different.
Because Sabrina already knew her.
And because she knew Rachel had something she could use against her.
“Why did you involve Graham?” I asked.
Sabrina looked away.
“She wouldn’t have listened otherwise.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“You threatened her with her own brother.”
“I needed her to stay away.”
“She was afraid.”
“I know.”
“You made her believe someone was watching her.”
Sabrina started crying.
But I couldn’t comfort her.
Not this time.
I thought about my father.
About the years he had spent grieving.
About every woman who had offered him another chance at happiness.
And about how Sabrina had secretly destroyed every opportunity.
“You did not honor Mom,” I said.
Sabrina looked up.
“You used her.”
She covered her face.
I left without comforting her.
Rachel reported the threats.
My father gave the police the security footage.
Sabrina later accepted responsibility and entered counseling as part of the legal process.
But the damage had already been done.
Six women had been frightened away from my father.
Six chances at companionship had been stolen from him.
And my father blamed himself for every one of them.
At first, he even considered giving up dating completely.
“I should never have started,” he told me.
We were sitting together at the kitchen table one evening.
The same table where Mom used to leave her coffee cup.
The same place where my father had once told me he didn’t need anyone because he had me.
I reached across the table and took his hand.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“You should never have been made to feel guilty for wanting to live.”
He looked down.
“I thought maybe your mother would be disappointed.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
I smiled sadly.
“I know Mom.”
He was quiet.
Then I squeezed his hand.
“You should have started living sooner.”
Months passed before my father tried again.
This time, he approached dating differently.
He didn’t hide the fact that he was still grieving.
He didn’t pretend Mom hadn’t existed.
He didn’t apologize for loving her.
But he also didn’t apologize for wanting companionship.
Eventually, he met a woman named Jocelyn.
Before their first date, he called me.
“I think I’m going to do this.”
“Then do it.”
“I’m nervous.”
“You should be.”
He laughed.
“That’s helpful.”
“I’m serious. Being nervous means you care.”
He went.
And when he came home, he called me.
“We talked for four hours.”
“Did you have a good time?”
He laughed.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to see her again?”
There was a pause.
“I think so.”
The next morning, my phone rang.
For a moment, I was afraid.
I thought about the six women before her.
I imagined another disappearance.
Another unanswered message.
Another wound.
Instead, my father said something that made me smile.
“She texted me.”
“She did?”
“She wants to see me again.”
I laughed.
“Then go.”
Months later, Jocelyn was still there.
She did not disappear.
She didn’t receive threatening messages.
Nobody followed her.
Nobody warned her away.
And my father slowly began becoming the man I remembered from childhood.
One evening, I visited him unexpectedly.
Before I even opened the front door, I could hear music.
Actual music.
I stopped on the porch.
For a moment, I simply stood there listening.
Then I heard my father laugh.
Not the polite laugh he had learned over the years.
His real laugh.
The one that came from somewhere deep inside him.
I opened the door.
Jocelyn was sitting at the kitchen table.
My father was making coffee.
And music was playing from the old speaker in the corner.
He looked up.
“Lola!”
I smiled.
“Hey, Dad.”
He grinned.
For the first time in twelve years, the house didn’t sound like a place waiting for someone to return.
It sounded alive.
And standing there, watching my father laugh again, I realized something I wish I had understood much earlier.
Loving the person you lost does not mean you have to stop living.
Grief can stay with you without becoming your entire life.
And remembering Mom didn’t require my father to remain lonely forever.
For twelve years, he had believed moving forward might somehow mean leaving her behind.
In the end, he learned that it meant carrying her with him while finally allowing himself to take another step.
And this time, nobody was going to make him turn around.