It began with a sound. The kind that doesn’t demand your attention, but somehow gets it anyway. A soft, steady tapping against the glass.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, coffee slowly cooling beside me, when the rain started. At first, it was almost polite. A hesitant drizzle. Then it grew more confident, more insistent, until it settled into a steady, unbroken rhythm. Outside, everything felt muted. Grey. Heavy in a way only rain can manage.
Then my phone lit up.
A name I hadn’t seen in years.
My heart jumped in my chest, sharp and sudden. I stared at the screen longer than I meant to. My thumb hovered, uncertain.
I didn’t answer.
Not because I didn’t want to. And not because I was angry. Honestly, it was because I didn’t know how to cross that wide, silent stretch that had grown between us over so many years. A distance built not by one moment, but by many quiet ones. A father and a daughter, separated not by a single fight, but by silence that slowly became the norm.
Some silences gro…
