“I’ve got a possible… situation. Gate 14. A minor. Unaccompanied.”
It took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of me sitting in a sterile, beige room painted with cheerful, mocking primary colors. Plastic chairs. A teddy bear with one eye missing sitting on a shelf. The room smelled like hand sanitizer and stale coffee.
A woman named Mrs. VGA—I saw the name on her badge—knelt in front of me. She smelled like spearmint gum and the lotion my teacher used.
“Sweetheart, is there anyone else we can call? Any other family members?”
I hesitated. My world had just been reduced to my mother, and my mother had just… evaporated. Mom always said Dad didn’t care. That he was a ghost. A man made of money and empty promises.
“He’s gone, Leah. It’s just us now. He chose his business over you.”
But I had a secret. Deep in the back of my mind, I had a password. A string of numbers I’d seen once in her old, worn-out address book, written in tiny, faded script next to a name I wasn’t supposed to say. Gordon Calvinson. I’d memorized it, repeating it in my head at night like a prayer I didn’t understand.
My fingers were shaking so hard I could barely point at the phone on her desk.
“I… I have another number,” I stuttered.
“My… my daddy’s.”
Mrs. VGA’s expression was pitying. She was probably expecting a dead line. A voicemail. Another parent who wouldn’t pick up. I recited the number. She dialed. She put it on speakerphone, her pen hovering over a yellow legal pad.
One ring. Two rings. Three rings. A sharp click .
“Gordon Calvinson speaking.”
His voice was deep. Clear. It sounded… real. It wasn’t the voice of a ghost. Mrs. VGA looked at me, her eyebrows raised, prompting me. I couldn’t breathe.
“Sir, this is—” she began.
“Daddy?”
The word was so small, I wasn’t sure I’d said it. But the silence on the other end of the line was absolute. Then, a sharp, choked intake of breath.
