“What happened?” I whispered.
He looked at the people gathered in the room and said only one thing:
I will explain later. For now, pretend that everything is fine.
After that, I couldn’t hear the birthday song anymore. Everyone clapped while I stared at the kitchen door. Strange things had been going on in our house for the past week. Dad woke up at night with the slightest noise, kept the curtains closed and repeatedly checked the front door. Two days earlier he had returned from work unusually early and spent a lot of time talking to someone on the phone. When I walked into the kitchen, the call quickly ended.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“A wrong number,” he replied.
But I had heard his last sentence:
Don’t come near my daughter.
Guests left around ten o’clock at night. Grandma offered to stay with us, but Dad stubbornly refused. He didn’t even let me open the door when the last guests left. He himself stood by the entrance, waited until his cars walked away and then locked the door and also placed the upper latch. By then, I was convinced that someone was watching us.
