At 2:13 in the morning, my phone tore through the darkness beside my bed.
For a few seconds, I didn’t understand what I was hearing.
The house was cold. The floor bit into the soles of my feet when I climbed out of bed. Outside, the porch flag snapped softly in the wind, and somewhere down the street, a dog barked once before everything went quiet again.
Then I saw the name on my screen.
Lily.
My fourteen-year-old granddaughter.
I answered immediately.
“Grandpa…”
Her voice was so thin that I almost didn’t recognize it.
“I’m at the police station.”
I felt every bit of sleep disappear.
“What happened?”
She took a shaky breath.
“My stepmother hurt me. But she told them I attacked her first.”
There was a pause.
“Dad believes her.”
For three seconds, I wasn’t a retired man standing in an old T-shirt in the middle of the night.
I was simply a grandfather hearing a child trying desperately not to cry because she was afraid someone would punish her for making noise.
