The voice note arrived three years after Daniel's funeral.
I was standing in the supermarket, deciding between two brands of coffee, when my phone vibrated.
1 New Voice Message.
Unknown number.
Normally, I would have ignored it.
But something made me press play.
For three seconds, there was only static.
Then I heard him.
“Hey, Maya.”
The jar slipped from my hand.
It hit the floor but didn't break.
Neither did I.
Not immediately.
I stood frozen in the middle of the aisle while strangers moved around me, shopping carts rattling across the tiles.
The voice continued.
“It's me. I know you're going to think this is impossible.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
Daniel.
It was Daniel's voice.
The same deep, gentle voice that had once whispered good morning into my hair.
The same voice that had asked me to marry him beneath the lights of a restaurant overlooking the sea.
The same voice I had listened to for the last time on the night he died.
My heart began to pound.
Then the message stopped.
I pressed play again.
“Hey, Maya. It's me. I know you're going to think this is impossible.”
Static.
Nothing else.
I listened to it seventeen times before I finally left the supermarket.
I drove home without remembering the journey.
Daniel had been dead for three years.
There had been a funeral.
A coffin.
A grave.
I had watched them lower him into the ground while rain soaked through my black dress.
I had placed a white rose on his coffin.
I had spent months learning how to breathe without him.
Dead people didn't send voice notes.
Yet there he was.
Saying my name.
That evening, I called the number.
It rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then a woman answered.
“Hello?”
I nearly dropped the phone.
“Who is this?”
There was a pause.
“You called me.”
“No. This number sent me a voice note.”
“I've had this number for six months.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did you send a recording?”
“What recording?”
I played the message through the speaker.
Silence.
When it ended, the woman whispered, “That's not my voice.”
“I know.”
“Who is it?”
I closed my eyes.
“My fiancé.”
Another pause.
Then, gently, she asked, “Is he with you?”
“No.”
I swallowed.
“He died three years ago.”
She hung up.
I didn't blame her.
I barely believed myself.
That night, I sat on the floor of my bedroom with Daniel's old box in front of me.
I had kept everything.
His watch.
His university ID.
The ticket from our first movie date.
A photograph of us at the beach.
And his old phone.
The police had returned it after his death.
It had been damaged in the accident and never turned on again.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I opened my laptop and searched for ways to recover deleted audio files.
By midnight, I had found nothing useful.
At 2:13 in the morning, my phone vibrated again.
I stopped breathing.
Another voice note.
Same unknown number.
My hand trembled as I pressed play.
Daniel spoke.
This time, his voice was quieter.
More urgent.
“Maya, listen carefully.”
I covered my mouth.
“If this reaches you, it means they didn't find me in time.”
The recording crackled.
Then I heard something in the background.
A sound I couldn't identify.
Metal scraping against metal.
Daniel inhaled sharply.
“Don't trust—”
The message ended.
I stared at the screen.
Voice message received: 2:13 AM.
Don't trust who?
I played it again.
And again.
Then, on the sixth listen, I heard something else.
A woman's voice.
Faint.
Almost hidden beneath the static.
She said only one word.
“Daniel.”
I knew that voice.
Because I had heard it at his funeral.
It belonged to his younger sister.
Elena.