The Last Missed Call

1 Missed Call Voicemail Received: 3:12 a.m. Caller: Mom

Elise blinked.

Impossible. Her mother had been dead for six years.

She sat up, heart thudding in her throat. Trembling fingers tapped the voicemail icon, her breath caught between disbelief and some sick curiosity.

“Hi, sweetie,” came the voice—low, warm, unmistakably her mother’s. “Just wanted to hear your voice. I... I miss you. I’ll call again soon. Okay? Bye for now.”

It was like hearing a ghost remember your name.

The next morning, Elise skipped work and visited her cell provider in person. The man at the counter, after cycling through a few scripted apologies and confused shrugs, finally offered: “Could’ve been a glitch. Old data sometimes pings the network under weird conditions. Solar flares, outages, you name it.”

But there had been no outages. And the voicemail was timestamped with today’s date.

Back home, Elise found herself digging through old boxes in the hall closet. Somewhere beneath old scarves and expired coupons was her mother’s phone—the one she couldn't bear to throw away after the funeral. The battery was dead, but once it was plugged in, the screen flickered to life. Four missed calls, all years old. One voicemail.

Not the same one.

This one was different—shorter. It was her mother singing, softly and off-key, the old lullaby Elise used to hate as a child and ache for as an adult.

She hadn’t heard that song since she held her mom’s hand in the hospital, whispering a goodbye she was never ready to say.

Later that week, Elise tracked down the number from the mysterious call: a storage unit rental in her hometown. Apparently, someone had kept the account current—even recently updated the payment method. No name. Just a recurring charge from a card that didn’t exist anymore.

The woman at the counter was kind, with that cautious empathy reserved for people on the edge of unravelling. “You can go in,” she said gently. “It’s your name on the emergency contact. Unit 103.”

Inside, the air was stale with dust and memory. Boxes lined the small unit, each labeled in her mother’s neat handwriting: Winter Coats, Books, Kitchen Stuff.

But one box in the corner stood out—marked only with a star.

Inside were cassette tapes. Dozens. Each labeled with a date and a short message. Elise’s 14th Birthday, College Orientation, When She Moves Out. And at the bottom: If She Ever Needs Me.

Next to them was a small, portable cassette player with new batteries. New. As if someone had been here not long ago.

Elise sat on the concrete floor and pressed play.

“Hi, baby,” her mother’s voice came through, soft and crackling. “If you’re hearing this, it means something strange happened. Maybe I’m gone, but maybe... maybe the universe has its ways. So I want to tell you everything I couldn’t when I was scared, or proud, or simply too in love with the moment to ruin it with tears.”

Tape after tape, hour after hour, Elise listened. Her mother telling old stories, giving advice, reading recipes, even laughing—just laughing for a solid minute as if she knew that someday, Elise would miss even that.

Weeks passed before she returned to the original voicemail.

This time, she didn’t flinch. She let it play.

“Hi, sweetie. Just wanted to hear your voice…”

Elise smiled, tears running freely.

She hadn’t imagined it. Somewhere in the strange machinery of the world, a message had found her—a reminder that love doesn’t vanish, even when the people who hold it do.

And maybe, just maybe, the things left unsaid still have a way of finding their voice.