Daddy’s Girl

Daddy’s Girl

They say ghosts don’t exist. But I see mine every night, sitting in the old rocking chair, humming a lullaby he used to sing when I was five.

That’s how it starts—every night at 2:14 a.m. sharp. My father’s ghost appears in the corner of my room, the same place his chair used to sit when he was alive. Same chair. Same clothes. Same gentle eyes. But what he whispers now is no lullaby. It’s a warning.

I wasn’t always haunted. I was the happiest girl in the world once. Daddy's girl. My father, Arman Malik, was a quiet man with strong hands and a laugh that could melt glaciers. He built our house from scratch, carved my name into the wooden banister of the stairs, and taught me how to ride a bike, cook an omelet, and stand up for myself. My mother left when I was three, but I never missed her. I had Daddy, and he was enough.

Everything changed on a rainy October night. I was seventeen. I had just been accepted into a university overseas, and Daddy was planning a surprise celebration. I walked into the house that evening to the smell of vanilla cake and the soft jazz he always played on special occasions. But something felt off. The music was too loud. The lights too dim.

And then I found him—slumped over in his favorite chair, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

The doctors said it was a heart attack. Sudden. Peaceful. Quick. But I saw the look on his face. It wasn’t peace. It was fear. A cold, sharp kind of fear that doesn't belong in death.

After the funeral, I started hearing things. A creaking floorboard here, a soft humming there. Everyone said it was grief playing tricks. But I knew my father too well. That hum, that tune—it was his. And it always came at the same time: 2:14 a.m.

Then, on the fortieth day after his death, he appeared. Not as a terrifying specter, but as my Daddy—just older, sadder, and whispering words I couldn't quite understand.

I thought I was going insane until I listened closely.

"He didn’t just stop my heart… he stopped my truth."

That was the first clear sentence he spoke.

I dove headfirst into everything he ever owned. Old files. Notebooks. A rusted safe buried under the floorboards of his workshop. That’s when I discovered the truth: my father had been a whistleblower. He had been collecting evidence against a major pharmaceutical company that had released a drug causing severe side effects—and deaths. He was going to expose them. But before he could, he died.

Except he didn’t just die. He was murdered. The autopsy had been rushed. No toxicology screen. No second opinions. But the proof was there, hidden in those files—coded, encrypted, and buried deep. I was Daddy’s girl. I was smart enough to crack it.

And I wasn’t going to let him down.

The rest of the story reads like a conspiracy thriller. Shadowy men started following me. My laptop got hacked. There were threatening notes slipped under my door. But my father had trained me better than anyone. I moved like smoke, vanished into shadows, passed the files to a trusted journalist, and let the truth rise like wildfire.

The company was dismantled. Arrests were made. And my father’s name was cleared.

Now, every night at 2:14 a.m., he still comes. But not in warning. He sits in the chair with a soft smile, nods once, and vanishes with the dawn. He’s no longer a ghost trapped in fear. He’s a guardian, proud.

They call me crazy sometimes. The girl who sees her dead dad. The girl who talks to shadows.

But they don’t know what it means to be Daddy’s girl.

They don’t know what it takes to keep a promise to a ghost.