My Brother Passed Away in 1999. Last Night, He Sent Me a Text.

My Brother Passed Away in 1999. Last Night, He Sent Me a Text.

I sat there for a minute, staring at the screen, my coffee growing cold in my cup. The message was brief: "Meet me where we buried the watch." No number. No contact name. But I knew that phrase like a scar—I was eleven when my brother whispered it to me the day before the accident. The day his car went off that cliff in 1999. We never found his body. We never found the watch. And now, twenty-six years later, my dead brother was texting me from a number that didn’t exist.

I opened the message with trembling fingers, my heart pounding. I had to be dreaming, of course. It was a trick. Someone was playing a joke on me. But the number was not familiar, not even a typical phone number. It was a series of random numbers, and there was no confusing the handwriting—his strange, hasty script that always made his messages seem so frantic, as if he had to get them down before time expired.

I stood there, frozen. My mind flashed back to that summer we had spent excavating underneath the ancient oak tree, being detectives, certain that there had to be treasure buried beneath our lawn. I had discovered a rusty pocket watch there a few days prior to his passing. Never mentioned it to anyone—never gave it much thought. But he'd known. He had known about the watch, even after he was dead.

I shoved the phone away, my hands trembling. Perhaps it was a joke. A cruel joke. But then the phone vibrated again. Another message.

"It's not a joke, Ellie. I'm still here. You have to find the watch."

I leapt to my feet, heart thudding so hard it obliterated all thought. A lump grew in my throat. This couldn't be happening. Could it?

Years since I laid him out, or at least I convinced myself I did. His funeral, the open casket. The bitter taste of the edge of the cliff. They never discovered him. Never discovered the wreckage. Just fragments of shredded metal and wisps of burning in the atmosphere.

A third message came through.

"See me tonight. It's time."

The words landed like a slap. I was in the kitchen, but my brain wasn't there anymore. My brain was racing back to that tree. That dumb watch. And what if this wasn't a joke? What if, by some ridiculous chance, my brother was still alive? What if this was his doing—his message from the dead?

I felt a knot in my stomach. The guilt, the unresolved questions. The tragedy. It all rose up inside me. The what-ifs—what if I had pushed him that day to cut across on the shortcut? What if I had driven him home, rather than returned to the party?

"Meet me where we buried the watch."

It wasn't a message. It was a demand. I had no other option but to obey it. To meet the truth, whichever it could be.

I threw on my coat, ran out the door, and drove to the old house. It was dark when I got there, the moon hardly visible behind dense clouds. The yard was just as it had been twenty-six years before, but the air was different—heavy, charged.

I went to the oak tree, shaking in my hands. My brother's words kept running through my head. "Where we buried the watch."

I knelt in the wet earth and started digging with my hands, digging through dirt until something cold and metallic hit my fingers. My heart stopped.

I yanked it out. The pocket watch—rusted, aged, but unmistakable.

As I looked at it, the wind blew stronger, causing the branches above me to rustle. I had no idea how to respond. I was clutching the tangible link to the day my brother passed away. It was a tangible connection to something I believed had been lost forever.

And then, I felt it.

A presence. Not behind me, but inside me. Something sharp, familiar.

A voice, low and clear, whispered in the air beside me.

"It's time."

I turned around, but I was alone. My phone vibrated again. I was hesitant, afraid of what I would see. But I had to know. I had to find out the truth.

I opened the message.

"Sorry. It's the only way I could connect. The watch… it's a key. But you must release me now. You've borne the burden long enough."

My heart skipped a beat. The words were unmistakable—too unmistakable. And then, just like that, my phone went dead.

I froze there in the cold, grasping the watch, unable to comprehend it. The quiet about me seemed to go on and on forever. It was if my brother reached across the span of time to leave me with one last message, one last moment of peace.

But as I stood there staring at the watch in my hand, I knew that perhaps some secrets weren't intended to be discovered. Perhaps things were supposed to stay hidden, just like the truth of what actually happened to my brother.

And perhaps it was time for me to let go, at last.