The Last Call

The iphone vibrated against the mahogany desk, its screen illuminating the dark office with a ghostly blue glow. 3:47 AM. Sarah's thumb hovered over Decline, but she answered anyway.

'You sound like a zombie,' Mark said, his voice tinny through the earbuds.

'Three days of closing,' she replied, rubbing her eyes. 'What do you want?'

Outside, the city lay under snow. Somewhere in the darkness, a cable snapped—a downed power line—sparking against the wet pavement like a dying star.

'I'm at the hospital,' Mark said. 'It's Dad.'

The words hit her like something heavy and wild, like a bear waking from hibernation. Their father—the man who'd taught them to ride bikes, who'd left when Sarah was twelve, who'd sent a birthday card every year with a twenty-dollar bill tucked inside—was suddenly, urgently present.

'Heart attack,' Mark continued. 'He's asking for you.'

She thought about the years of silence, the unanswered emails, the way her iphone would show his caller ID and she'd let it go to voicemail. He'd become something undead in her life—a presence that wouldn't fully die but couldn't truly live either.

'I'm not going,' she heard herself say.

Mark's breath hitched. 'Sarah, this might be—'

'He left us, Mark. Mom died alone. I'm not driving three hours in a blizzard to hold his hand.'

The cable outside flared again, brighter this time. The building's emergency lights flickered on, bathing the office in an amber glow. Sarah thought about the zombie metaphor she'd used earlier—something that moved without heart, driven by forces beyond its control. Was that what she'd become?

'He told me something,' Mark said quietly. 'Before the pain got bad. He said he'd been bearing something for thirty years. A secret about why he left.'

Sarah stood up, her chair scraping against the floor. She looked at the iphone in her hand, then out the window where the fallen cable still sputtered in the snow.

'I'm coming,' she said.

She grabbed her coat and headed into the night, toward whatever truth—or final lie—lay waiting at the end of the road.