Chapter 61 A Name I Buried

Chapter 61 A Name I Buried
POV: Zara

My thumb hit the green button before my brain caught up with my hand.

"Naomi?" My voice cracked on the second syllable. "Naomi, are you"

The screen stayed dark for a second, just shapes moving in low light; the call connected but nobody was saying anything on the other end. Eli leaned in close beside me, his jaw tight, both of us staring at a video feed that showed nothing but the corner of a ceiling and the edge of what looked like his own bedroom curtains.

Then the call dropped. Just like that. No warning, no goodbye, the screen going black and bouncing back to my home screen as if none of it had happened at all.

"That was my room," Eli said, already standing, already moving toward the door. "That background, Zara, that was my room."

"Go," I said. "Go check; I'll call you the second"

He was already gone, footsteps pounding down the stairs, his car door slamming outside a few seconds later. I sat there on my bed with my phone still warm in my hand, my whole body buzzing with a fear that had nowhere left to go, and I made myself breathe, in for four counts, out for four counts, the way my mom taught me back when nightmares used to wake me up at seven years old.

I was still sitting there, still breathing, when my phone buzzed one more time.

I almost didn't look. I'd flinched at every single buzz for two straight days, my nervous system worn down to nothing, and for one second I considered just letting it ring out the way I had everything else that wasn't Eli or Naomi.

Then I glanced down anyway.

And every bit of air left my lungs at once.

Dad.

Just that. One word, saved in my contacts years ago by a version of me who still believed he'd call again someday, who never deleted the number even after two years of silence because some stubborn part of her couldn't make herself do it.

The phone kept buzzing in my hand, his name lighting up over and over, and I just stared at it like it was something dangerous, something that might bite me if I touched it wrong.

He hadn't called in two years. Not on my birthday. Not on Christmas. Not on the day I graduated middle school, or the day I started high school, or any of the thousand smaller days in between when a kid waits for her father to remember she exists. And now, out of absolutely nowhere, on the exact night my best friend might be missing again, and a stranger was taking pictures through my bedroom window, his name was sitting on my screen demanding to be answered.

I didn't answer it.

I watched it ring all the way through instead, four buzzes, five, six, my thumb hovering an inch above the screen the entire time without ever coming down, until finally it stopped on its own and the screen went still and quiet, as nothing had happened at all.

A missed call notification sat there afterward. Dad. One missed call. No voicemail.

I don't know how long I looked at it. Long enough that my legs went numb under me. Long enough that the streetlight outside my window finished its slow flicker into full orange and settled there, steady, while I stayed exactly where I was.

I slid off the bed and onto the floor without really deciding to, my back against the side of the mattress, my knees pulled up to my chest the same way they used to fold up when I was small and scared and waiting for a door downstairs to open that never did.

Why now.

That was the only thought that would actually form, over and over, looping through my head with no answer attached to it. Why now, out of every single day he could have called, every birthday he skipped, every recital and report card and ordinary Tuesday he let pass without a word. Why tonight, when my whole life already felt like it was cracking open at every seam.

A small, ugly part of me wondered if it even mattered why. If maybe I should just answer next time, hear whatever excuse he'd built over two years of silence, let him explain himself the way some tired, hopeful seven-year-old still living somewhere inside me had always wanted him to.

A bigger part of me knew better. I knew what answering would cost. I knew that letting him back in, even for one phone call, even just to hear his voice, would crack something open that I might not be able to close again, not on a night when I already had nothing left to spare.

I sat on that floor until my phone buzzed one final time. Not a call this time. A text, from the same saved name, three words long, sitting there glowing in the dark like it had been waiting its whole life to land exactly now.

I need to talk. It's about Naomi's mom.