Because here’s what happened when I decided Mike’s un-sent text was not going to be the last word of their story.
I stared at his phone until the screen went dark. Then I tapped it awake again, just to see the words one more time.
“I miss you.”
Three tiny words glowing in that gray bubble, stuck in limbo.
My first instinct was to put the phone back in the bag and shove it into the back of a closet. Let it stay there with the other things I wasn’t ready to touch yet—his winter coat, his favorite hoodie, the shoebox with ticket stubs and old birthday cards.
But something about that text wouldn’t let me go.
I walked around the house like a ghost, carrying Mike’s phone in my hand. I made it as far as the living room, then the hallway, then back to the kitchen. I stood there, barefoot on the cold tile, the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock suddenly deafening.
Emily came in, earbuds dangling, her hair in a messy bun. “Mom, have you seen my…?”
She stopped when she saw my face. Her eyes flicked to the phone in my hand.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded far away. “They gave it back.”
She swallowed. “Does it… does it have any pictures?”
“A few,” I said. “But that’s not what I need to show you.”
We sat at the kitchen table like it was any other afternoon—only there was a missing chair and an empty place where his coffee mug used to sit. I turned the phone so she could see the screen and opened the draft.
She read it slowly, her lips moving over each word.
“Hey Dad. I know we haven’t talked…”
By the time she got to “I miss you,” her chin was trembling.
“He was going to call him,” she whispered. “He was actually going to fix it.”
“I think so,” I said.
We sat there in silence. It felt like someone had opened a window in the middle of winter and a cold wind had blown right through us.
“Does Grandpa know?” she asked.
“Not yet.” My throat tightened. “I don’t even know if I should tell him.”
She looked at me with the kind of sharp, clear honesty only sixteen-year-olds have. “If Dad wanted to fix it, and you know that, and Grandpa doesn’t… don’t you think that’s worse?”
The truth of it landed like a stone.
After she went upstairs, I stayed at the table, turning the phone over and over in my hands. Mike’s father’s number was right there, pressed into the glass like a fossil. I could almost hear Mike’s voice in my head, half exasperated, half amused.
“Come on, Sarah. We’re the grown-ups. Someone has to go first.”
The last time I’d talked to his dad—Frank—was at Thanksgiving, almost a year before the accident.
He’d sat at the end of the table, stubborn jaw, gruff tone, making some comment that lit Mike up like a match. Voices rose, chairs scraped, and suddenly it was “That’s it, I’m done,” and “You never listen,” and “Fine, don’t call me then.”
And then nobody did.
I picked up my own phone. My thumb hovered over his name.
I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. It was stupid. It was just a phone call. But it felt like I was standing on the edge of something high, about to step off.
I dialed before I could change my mind.
The line rang once. Twice. Three times.
“Hello?” His voice sounded older. Rougher. Less sure of itself.
“Frank?” I said. “It’s… it’s Sarah.”
There was a pause on the other end, a tiny eternity.
“Oh,” he said finally. “Sarah. I, uh… I’ve been meaning to call.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said softly. “But that’s okay. I haven’t either.”
He let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped in his chest for months.
“How are you?” he asked, and the question was so ridiculous, so impossible, that I almost laughed.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m… breathing. Emily’s hanging in there. We miss him.”
“Yeah,” he said. His voice cracked on the single syllable. “Me too.”
We sat there, connected by a thin line and thousands of unsaid words.
“Why did you call?” he asked finally, not unkindly.
I looked at Mike’s phone, still on the table in front of me, the draft glowing like a tiny lighthouse.
“Because of this,” I said.
I told him about the plastic bag.
The keys. The ring. The phone. I read the text out loud, my voice shaking on the words Mike had never gotten to say.
On the other end, I heard nothing but breathing. Then a sound I’d never heard from that man in the entire time I’d known him.
He was crying.
Not the neat, controlled sniffles people do at funerals. A raw, broken sound, like something inside him had finally cracked.
“He… he wrote that?” he asked.
“He did.”
“And he never sent it.”
“No.”
There was a shuffle, like he’d sat down hard in a chair.
“I thought he hated me,” he said. “I thought he… I thought I’d lost him for good.”
“He was trying,” I said. “I think he was on his way back to you. He just… he ran out of time.”
The words hung there between us, terrible and true.
“I should’ve called him,” Frank whispered. “I’m his father. I should’ve… I should’ve…”
I closed my eyes. “We all thought we had more time.”
We stayed on the phone for almost an hour.
We talked about the stupid fight without naming it. We talked about Mike as a kid, about the time he broke his arm falling out of a tree, about the way he used to laugh with his whole body.
At one point, Frank cleared his throat. “How’s Emily?”
“She pretends she’s fine,” I said. “You know teenagers.”
“I don’t,” he said quietly. “Not really. I messed that up with Mike and his sister. Thought being tough meant being distant.”
I hesitated. Then I said, “Do you want to talk to her?”
There was a clatter on his end, like he’d dropped something. “Now?”
“Now,” I said. “If you want. If you’re ready to send the text.”
He let out a shaky breath that turned into a nervous laugh. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Start with ‘Hi,’” I told him. “The rest can be messy.”
I called for Emily. She came downstairs, eyebrows knit, phone in her hand. I put my hand over the microphone.
“It’s Grandpa,” I whispered. “He wants to talk to you.”
Her eyes widened. For a second, I saw something that looked a lot like Mike’s stubbornness flash across her face. The urge to say no. To protect herself.
But then she glanced at the phone on the table, Mike’s unsent message still on the screen. She straightened her shoulders.
“Okay,” she said, and took the phone.
“Hi, Grandpa.”
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