At 2:22

At 2:20 am, the alarm always went off.

It didn’t matter if she was asleep or still awake. She sat up and reached for her phone, and at exactly 2:22 am, she pressed play.

The voicemail had been there for three years.

It arrived the night Henry died. The love of her life for 10 years. He was hit by a delivery truck on his way home from a late shift, phone shattered in his pocket, the coroner said. Time of death: 2:19 am. The voicemail timestamp: 2:22 am.

Alicia had woken to the notification with a gasp, certain that it meant he was fine. Something had happened to delay him; he was calling to tell her he'd be late. But it wasn't. She had a visit from the police a few hours later.

All that was left was his voice on her phone.

“Hey,” Henry said, breathless. “It’s me. I know you’re asleep. I just wanted to-”

The message cut off there.

No background noise. No crash. No tyres screeching or expletives from his mouth. No explanation. Just the soft click of an unfinished thought. The police couldn’t explain it. The phone company couldn’t explain it. His phone, they insisted, never made the call. But... there it was. The voicemail, as clear as day.

At first, Alicia listened constantly. Her headphones in and her heart pounding, she kept pressing play. She played it on the bus, in grocery store aisles, in the quiet hours before dawn when grief made her whole body feel empty. She memorised the shape of his pause, the way his voice dipped on me, as if the word mattered more than the sentence that never arrived.

But something strange happened when she listened too often.

The message changed.

Not the words. The words were always the same. But the silence after I just wanted to seemed to grow heavier and denser, as though it contained something she wasn’t yet ready to hear. Once, and only once, she swore she heard breathing continue after the cut. Slow. Patient.

She stopped playing it randomly after that.

Instead, she made a rule. Only at 2:22 am. Only once a day. She would only listen to it at the time she'd received it.

It was a boundary to stop her spiralling. Boundaries are good, Henry used to say, though she couldn’t remember when. He'd always liked routines. He liked the idea that devotion could be measured in repetition.

So Alicia shaped her entire day around the voicemail. She showered and brushed her teeth early. Went to bed at 8 pm, enough sleep to get her through if she couldn't return to the world of slumber after listening. She set alarms that chimed softly at 2:20. Friends learned not to call her late. Even in an emergency, her family knew to call after 2:22 am.

At 2:22, she sat very still, pressed play and listened.

Over time, the message seemed to grow warmer. That was the only way she could describe it. His voice seemed closer, as if he were leaning in. As if he were right beside her. The unfinished sentence felt deliberate now, like an invitation she was supposed to accept by listening.

Sometimes, after the message ended, her phone stayed warm in her hand long after the screen went dark.

Sometimes, she couldn't sleep after the message. She'd stay awake, thinking of him and wondering how she'd received the voicemail. Other times, she drifted back to sleep and dreamt of Henry. He was always standing just out of sight, on the other side of a door she couldn't open. He never spoke in the dream; he didn't need to. She always woke feeling as if he'd been with her. Caring for her.

Loving her.

On this day, the third anniversary of his death, Alicia did something she hadn't done before. She spoke back.

“Hi,” she whispered into the quiet after the voicemail ended. “I’m here.”

Her phone vibrated. No notification or sound. Just a single, sharp pulse. Like a heartbeat.

She didn’t sleep again that night.

Then, her ritual deepened. It was as if she felt a stronger pull. A connection to him through the phone.

She spoke to him again the next night. "I love you," she whispered. "I miss you."

She began to tell him things each night. Small things at first. What she cooked for dinner or a joke she heard at work. Later, she started to tell him harder truths: that she still wore his shirt to bed, that she hadn’t deleted his number, that she hadn't been able to date anyone since him... that sometimes she thought loving him now felt easier than loving anyone that still lived.

At 2:22, every night, she listened and spoke. She felt less alone.

The voicemail never changed its length. Never added words or changed. But once she started to notice something new.

At the very end of the message, beneath the silence, there was a sound. A faint exhale. Not cut short. Not accidental. A small, intentional breath right before the call ended.

She stopped seeing people after that. Stopped answering calls that came at other hours and stopped going to work. The world outside the ritual began to feel unreal, too loud and too unfinished. Love, she realised, was not the grand gestures people talked about. It was precision. Timing. Showing up at the exact moment you were expected.

She wondered, sometimes, what would happen if she missed it. The thought made her chest ache.

Weeks later, during a winter storm, the power flickered and turned off. Hours had passed, and there was still no power. She stared at her phone, battery at 4%. No charger, no way to keep her phone alive. The clock crept toward 2:22 as she sat on her bed in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the silence, a tear trickling down her cheek. “I’m trying.”

At 2:21, her phone died. She was left staring at an empty, black screen.

The silence that followed was not empty.

Alicia felt it immediately. A pressure against her ears, like being underwater. She waited, breath held and heart racing.

At 2:22 am, something spoke.

Not from the phone, but from behind her.

“Hey,” Henry said softly. “It’s me.”