All the women my father dated seemed eager to see him again, but then they vanished before dawn. When my best friend agreed to investigate, a chilling message proved it was no coincidence.

My father lost my mother 12 years ago.

She was old enough to understand what death meant, but not old enough to understand what she could do to the person left behind.

My father changed after the funeral.

Before Mom died, he filled every room he entered with life.

She sang while preparing the coffee.

He told terrible jokes during dinner and laughed before he got to the punchline.

There was always music playing at home.

After that, the house fell painfully silent.

For a long time, she refused to go out with anyone.

His family encouraged him to meet someone new.

His friends would invite him to dinners where, coincidentally, there was always a single woman sitting next to him.

He rejected all the proposals.

Once, I suggested to him that Mom wouldn’t have wanted him to spend the rest of his life alone.

He looked at me with an expression I will never forget.

“I’m not alone, Lola,” he told me. “I have you.”

That answer broke my heart more than I let on.

Then, almost overnight, everything changed.

She signed up for some dating apps.

I first realized it when I went to visit him one Saturday afternoon.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with his mobile phone in both hands.

She wore her reading glasses pulled down to the tip of her nose and smiled as she looked at the screen.

My father hadn’t smiled like that in years.

“What are you looking at?” I asked him.

He quickly locked his phone.

“Nothing”.

I raised an eyebrow.

It didn’t take him ten seconds to confess.

“I’ve created a profile.”

“A dating profile?”

He nodded, and suddenly it was noticeable that he felt embarrassed.

I hugged him before he could explain.

At first he remained rigid, but then he wrapped his arms around me.

“I think Mom would be fine with that,” I told her.

“I hope so,” he murmured.

Soon after, he started dating wonderful women.

She would talk to me about them before each date.

One of them worked in a library.

Another one had a small bakery.

A third one volunteered at an animal shelter on weekends.

Each time, he seemed to have hope.

But none of them ever stayed.

At first, I thought they just didn’t fit together.

Dating was complicated.

People could have a good time together one night and still decide there was no future.

He would say that to me every time one of the girls stopped answering him.

Then I realized something strange.

All relationships ended in exactly the same way.

The date was going perfectly.

My father would call me afterwards and tell me how it had gone at the restaurant, the conversation, and any little detail that had made the girl laugh.

He never sounded arrogant.

He sounded relieved.

They agreed to meet again.

But the next morning, the woman had already disappeared.

No calls.

No messages.

Without any explanation.

The first time, my father thought he had accumulated things.

The second time, he thought he had misinterpreted her interest.

On the third time, he began to blame himself.

“Perhaps I talk about your mother too much,” he said.

“You barely mention her in your quotes.”

“Perhaps I’m too old-fashioned.”

“You held the door open for him. That’s not a crime.”

She gave me a tired smile, but my words of comfort never seemed to reach her.

My father’s heart broke every time it passed by.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Everyone seemed so happy.”

I hated seeing him lose confidence.

Each rejection made him regress even further to the man he had become after his mother’s death.

She stopped singing again.

He checked his phone every few minutes.

I kept rereading old messages as if the answer might be hidden between the lines.

The fourth girl disappeared after telling him that she wanted him to meet her sister.

The fifth woman disappeared after making weekend plans with him.

When the sixth woman disappeared, I could no longer ignore it.

Something wasn’t right.

Six women could lose interest.

That was possible. But it wasn’t normal for all six of them to disappear in the same way after having arranged another date.

I asked my father if anything strange had happened those nights.

He seemed bewildered.

“No. Why?”

“Have you had a fight with them?”

“Of course not”.

“Did you say anything that might have scared them?”

His face tensed.

“What kind of man do you think I am?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She turned around and began rinsing a clean cup in the sink. She knew she had hurt him.

“I just want to understand it,” I told him.

“Me too”.

That night I called my best friend, Rachel, and asked her for a favor.

Rachel and I had known each other since college.

She was so sincere that it was sometimes painful.

He was able to captivate an entire room, but he could also detect a lie before most people had finished telling it.

If my father were doing something wrong, Rachel would notice.

“Go out with him one more time.”

He burst out laughing.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I mean it.”

She stopped laughing.

“Lola, it’s about your father.”

“I know”.

“And he knows me.”

“He’s only seen you a few times.”

“That doesn’t make this any less strange.”

I explained everything to him.

I told him about the six women, the dates that went well, and the sudden disappearances.

Rachel remained silent for a long time.

“So you want me to investigate it?”

“I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to say when he recognizes me?”

“Tell him we met through the app. He might remember your face, but he won’t remember your name.”

Rachel grunted.

“It’s a horrible idea.”

“Probably”.

“It could ruin my friendship with you.”

“He won’t.”

“It could ruin your relationship with your father.”

That possibility frightened me, but I kept my voice steady.

“I need to know.”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

The date went even better than I expected.

Rachel called me later.

“Your father is wonderful,” he told me.

“I can’t believe nobody gave him a chance.”

I felt relief wash over me.

“So nothing strange happened?”

“Nothing. He was kind, funny, and respectful. We talked for almost three hours.”

“Did he say anything about another date?”

“He asked me if I wanted to come back for dinner next Friday.”

“And what did you say to him?”

“I told him yes.”

For the first time in weeks, I slept without imagining the worst.

The next morning, she too had disappeared.

I called her before going to work.

He didn’t answer.

I called her again at lunchtime.

It would jump straight to voicemail.

I sent him messages asking if he was okay. He didn’t reply.

In the afternoon, he finally sent me a message.

“Don’t call me. Please.”

That wasn’t Rachel.

Rachel would never send me a message like that without an explanation. Even during our worst arguments, she had called me and we had argued until we both ran out of things to say.

I went straight to his apartment.

His car was still there.

The lights were on.

But nobody opened the door.

I knocked on the door until my knuckles ached. I called her name through the door. I called her cell phone again, but I didn’t hear anything from inside.

A neighbor came out into the hallway and asked me if everything was alright.

“I don’t know,” I told him.

I sat in the car, in front of her building, for almost an hour. I stared at her windows, waiting for a curtain to move.

Nothing happened.

The following afternoon, he called me.

Her voice sounded shaky.

“I can’t explain it to you over the phone.”

“When can we meet?” I asked him.

“Tomorrow morning”.

I barely slept that night.

The next morning, I caught her just as she was leaving her office, before she went in.

She looked exhausted. Her face was pale, and she kept looking toward the building’s entrance, as if searching for an excuse to escape.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“What has my father done?”

Then he showed me his mobile phone.

His fingers were trembling so much that I had to take them off.

A message from an unknown number was displayed on the screen.

“Stay away from him. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

Below was a picture of Rachel leaving the restaurant with my father.

The photo had been taken from the other side of the street.

My stomach tightened.

“When did you get this?” I asked him.

“About 20 minutes after arriving home.”

I swiped my finger upwards.

There were more messages.

The sender knew Rachel’s address.

He knew where she worked. He even knew her little brother’s name, Graham.

The last message was the worst.

“If you get in touch with him or Lola again, Graham will find out what happened in Philadelphia.”

I looked at Rachel.

“What happened in Philadelphia?”

Her eyes filled with shame.

“Nothing criminal. Three years ago, Graham was going through an addiction. He was missing for two days. I found him in a motel and brought him home. Nobody knows this except my family.”

“How can this person know that?”

“Don’t know”.

“Why did you tell me not to contact you?”

Rachel crossed her arms tightly.

“Because the message arrived seconds after you called. Whoever sent it knew you were trying to reach me.”

A wave of cold ran through my body.

That meant someone was watching both of us.

I asked Rachel to forward all the messages and photos to me. She hesitated for a moment before agreeing.

“Please be careful, Lola,” he told me. “It’s not a scorned woman or a jealous stranger.”

“Do you think my father has anything to do with it?”

“I think it’s someone close to him.”

I wanted to defend him. But then I remembered how quickly he’d gotten angry when I asked him about his dates.

I left Rachel outside her office and drove to my father’s house.

She opened the door wearing an old sweatshirt and sneakers. Her hair was messy and she had dark circles under her eyes.

“Rachel hasn’t answered me,” he said. “Did I do something wrong?”

The pain in her voice sounded authentic.

I went in without saying anything.

He followed me into the living room.

“Lola, what happened?”

“Someone has threatened her.”

He froze.

“That?”.

I showed him the messages.

She read them slowly. Her expression shifted from confusion to fear.

“Did this happen after our date?”

“Yeah”.

He gave me back my phone.

“We should call the police.”

“I’ve already told Rachel that we should do it.”

“So why are you here?”

I looked him in the face.

“Because whoever sent it knew personal details about her. They also knew when I called.”

My father stared at me.

“Do you think it was me?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

He slumped down on the sofa.

For a moment, he seemed much older than the day before.

“I would never hurt him.”

“Well, help me understand it.”

He rubbed his palms against his knees.

“Can’t”.

I walked around the house while he watched me. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The kitchen was clean. His laptop was on the dining room table. His cell phone lay next to him.

“Can I take a look at your phone?” I asked him.

His hesitation lasted only a second.

“Clear”.

There were no hidden applications.

No suspicious calls. No unknown contacts.

Then I noticed a notification from the security system.

“Have you installed cameras?”

“After someone broke into the garage last year.”

“Where are they?”

“On the front porch, at the entrance, and at the back door.”

I opened the application.

The footage from the previous night showed my father returning home alone. He came in at 10:17 pm.

A few minutes later, someone crossed the edge of the driveway.

The person was wearing a hood and keeping their face turned to the side.

My pulse quickened.

“Who is that?”

My father leaned towards me.

“Don’t know”.

The person stopped near their car and then disappeared from our sight.

I rewound the recording.

This time, I noticed the sneakers.

White sneakers with a dark stripe on the side.

I had seen them before.

Not recently, but long enough to remember them.

My father looked at me.

“Lola?”

I closed the application.

“I need to check something.”

I drove home and took an old box out of my closet. Inside were photos, birthday cards, and papers that had belonged to Mom.

Deep down, I found a photo from his last summer.

My aunt Sabrina was by his side, smiling at the camera.

She was wearing the same white sneakers.

Sabrina was my mother’s younger sister.

When my mother died, she helped my father with everything. She cooked, took care of the paperwork, and stayed with him when I went back to university.

Then he walked away from us.

She said it hurt too much to go home.

I had believed him.

I called Rachel.

“Do you remember meeting my aunt Sabrina?”

“Once, at your graduation party.”

“Did you tell him about Graham?”

Rachel remained silent.

“Yes. He found me crying in the bathroom. I told him everything.”

The last piece fell into place.

Sabrina knew Rachel’s secret. She knew my father’s schedule. She knew my habits. Besides, she’d had access to the house for years.

I drove to her apartment before I lost my nerve.

She opened the door for me in sportswear.

Her white sneakers were by the entrance.

When I showed her the camera footage, she turned pale.

“You’ve followed Rachel,” I told him.

Sabrina took a step back.

“Lola, you don’t understand.”

“Well, explain it to me.”

His gaze hardened.

“Your father was supposed to love your mother forever.”

“And he did.”

“No. He wants to replace her.”

“He spent twelve years alone.”

“And that makes dating others acceptable?”

He raised his voice.

“Your mother gave him everything. And then he smiled at strangers as if she had never existed.”

I felt the rage mingling with my pain.

“You threatened six women.”

“I warned them.”

“You terrorized them.”

“I protected the place your mother held in her life.”

“You didn’t protect anything.”

Sabrina started to cry.

He admitted to finding those women through his dating profile.

He researched them on the internet, followed them after their dates, and sent them messages using temporary numbers.

Most of the women got scared and blocked my father.

Rachel had been different because Sabrina knew her.

“Why did you bring Graham into this?” I asked him.

“Otherwise, he wouldn’t have listened to me.”

I stared at the woman who had hugged me at my mother’s funeral.

“You didn’t honor Mom. You took advantage of her.”

Sabrina covered her face.

I left without comforting her.

Rachel reported the threats.

My father handed the camera footage over to the police.

Later, Sabrina took responsibility and began going to therapy as part of the legal process.

At first, my father blamed himself.

“I should never have started dating anyone,” she said.

I sat down next to him at the kitchen table.

“No. You should have started living sooner.”

Months passed before he tried again.

This time, she told her date the truth about Mom.

He also told her that he was afraid of missing another chance to be happy.

Her name was Jocelyn.

It did not disappear the next morning.

When my father called me after his third date, there was music playing in the background.

He laughed at something she said.

For the first time in twelve years, the house no longer sounded like a place waiting for someone to return.