The cool air from the open balcony door cut through the warmth of the penthouse dining room, making the crystal chandelier above shimmer. Madison Brooks, forty-eight, stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, a half-empty wine glass in his hand, watching the rain slick the Yakima skyline. He was thinking of nothing, just the quiet hum of his own success, when a sudden movement behind him shattered the peace.
He turned, the glass tilting precariously. His breath hitched in his throat.
"Emily?" he uttered, the name a whisper against the low jazz music.
His only child, Madison Brooks the younger, stood there, framed by the dark, rainy night, her blonde hair plastered to her cheeks, tears carving paths through the streaky makeup. She was here, after eleven months of silence. He felt a sharp, impossible hope, quickly followed by a crushing wave of confusion.
He had not seen her in so long.
He had tried to call, to text, to reach out, but the messages always went unanswered. He had told himself she had left him, his only child, walked away from her widowed father for no reason at all. The thought had been a constant, dull ache beneath his ribs for nearly a year.
Now, she was here.
Her voice, trembling and soft, answered across the polished mahogany table. "Hi, Dad."
His gaze dropped, snagging on the slight curve beneath her beige coat. A sudden, undeniable roundness. His mind reeled, trying to reconcile the image. It couldn't be.
"You're having a baby?" he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
She nodded, a single tear escaping and tracing a slow path down her jaw. Her hand instinctively went to her stomach, a protective gesture.
"Almost six months," she said, her voice barely audible over the rain now drumming against the glass.
Six months. He did the quick math. Six months of a child growing inside her, a life forming, and he, her father, had known nothing. The ache intensified, twisting into something colder, sharper.
"Why didn't you tell me?" The question was a demand, raw and laced with the pain of a year's worth of abandonment.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Her eyes, red and swollen, met his. He saw the tremor in her hands, the visible effort it took for her to speak.
"I tried!" The words burst from her, a sudden, desperate cry that silenced the room. "Vanessa kept answering your phone."
The name hung in the air, a poisonous vapor. Madison’s head snapped toward his fiancée, Grace Pickett, who stood frozen at the far end of the table, her red silk gown a stark contrast to her ashen face.
Grace, elegant, poised, the woman he was set to marry.
A sudden, chilling realization hit him, turning his blood to ice. He remembered the clipped, dismissive tone on several occasions. He remembered the excuses. He remembered the quiet, careful deletions of his call logs.
His hand, which had been resting on the table, tightened into a fist, then lifted slowly. His eyes bored into Grace, cold and hard. The words were a death knell in the sudden, absolute silence of the room.
"You answered her calls?"
The image of his face, contorted in dawning fury, froze there, suspended in time.
* * *
Madison Brooks pushed away from the window, the half-empty glass thudding onto the polished table. He didn't speak. He just turned and walked, his movements precise and stiff, toward the elevator. The silence of the room, broken only by the distant rain, felt like a physical weight.
Grace Pickett hurried after him, her red gown swishing.
Her face, still pale, crumpled as she caught up. She reached for his arm, but he shrugged her off without a glance.
"Madison, wait," she pleaded, her voice cracking. "Please, let me explain."
He stepped into the waiting elevator, the doors beginning to slide shut. Grace slipped in just before they closed, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The polished steel walls reflected their distorted images.
"What is there to explain, Grace?" he asked, his voice low, dangerous. "My daughter just stood there, six months pregnant, telling me you answered my phone."
Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over her long lashes. "She's lying, Madison. She's always lied." Her voice rose, laced with a practiced indignation. "You know how manipulative she can be."
He stared at her, unblinking. "Manipulative? She's my daughter."
"And I'm your fiancée!" Grace protested, her voice catching on a sob.
"She hated us together from the start. This is just another one of her stunts to drive us apart." She dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief pulled from her sleeve.
"She called me," Emily had said. "You answered."
"I never answered her calls," Grace insisted, her voice trembling. "Why would I do that? I wanted you two to reconcile. I tried to help." Her eyes, glistening, pleaded for him to believe her. "She's a troubled girl, Madison. She always has been. She's twisting things."
The elevator chimed, stopping at the penthouse floor. The doors opened, revealing the quiet, empty hallway. Madison stepped out, leaving her standing alone, her performance still unfolding.
"She always lied," Grace whispered, her voice barely audible, as the doors slowly closed, severing them.
Eleven months earlier, Madison Brooks sat alone at a corner table in the Yakima Athletic Club, his phone lying beside his half-eaten lunch.
He kept glancing at it, willing it to ring. Emily had promised to call, a quiet Sunday afternoon chat, just like old times.
The call never came.
He waited, then called her number, then waited again. Nothing. He sent a text. No reply. A cold, familiar dread began to settle in his stomach. He pictured her, busy with her life in Spokane, forgetting him.
Two hundred miles away, in her small Spokane apartment, Emily stared at her own phone. It had rung twice. She had seen the caller ID: "Dad." Her heart had leaped.
She answered, her voice bright with relief. "Dad? I thought you weren't going to call."
A woman's voice, cool and crisp, had replied. "He can't come to the phone right now." The tone was dismissive, almost annoyed.
Emily frowned. "Who is this?"
"Please don't call again," the woman continued, ignoring her question.
"It upsets him." The line clicked, dead.
Emily stared at the screen, bewildered. She called back, immediately. It rang, once, then went straight to voicemail. She tried again. The same.
"What was that?" she murmured to herself, a knot forming in her stomach. "Who was that woman?"
She thought of her father, alone in Yakima. She thought of the careful way the woman had said "it upsets him." Had he told this stranger to say that? Did he truly not want to hear from her? The idea was nauseating.
She tried to text him, to ask if he was okay, to ask who had answered his phone. The message sent, but she received no reply. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Every call she made, every text, went unanswered or was met with the same cold silence. She told herself he was angry, that he needed space.
She didn't call again for months, the woman's words echoing in her mind.
The deception had not merely been silence. It had been a carefully constructed wall, built with spoken words, designed to keep them apart.
"You cannot go in there alone, Emily." Elaine Cartwright's voice was firm, cutting through the rhythmic hum of the windshield wipers. The old woman's hands, gnarled with age, gripped the steering wheel as she navigated the winding pass.
Emily sat beside her, huddled in her coat, watching the rain-streaked darkness outside. "I have to, Elaine. He's my father."
"And he’s hurt," Elaine countered, her gaze flicking to Emily for a moment. "He's been hurt for nearly a year, thinking you abandoned him. You walk in there alone, he'll just shut you down."
The car climbed higher, the air growing colder. Emily shivered.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"You walk in there," Elaine said, her voice steady. "And you say it. While the whole room listens." She knew Madison Brooks. She knew how he operated. He respected public displays of truth, however painful.
"The whole room?" Emily whispered, her stomach churning. The thought of facing her father, her estranged fiancé, and all their guests, made her want to curl up and disappear.
"Yes, the whole room," Elaine confirmed, her eyes fixed on the road. "You need witnesses, girl. You need people to hear what you have to say, so it can't be twisted later."
"But...what if he doesn't believe me?" Emily's voice was small, fearful.
"He will," Elaine said with certainty. "He loves you. He just needs to hear the truth, plainly, in front of others who will also hear it. He won't be able to ignore it then."
She paused, then added, "You tell him about the calls. You tell him what you heard."
The lights of Yakima began to appear in the distance, a sprawling glow against the dark hills. Emily took a deep, shaky breath. Elaine was right. This wasn't just about her and her father anymore. It was about everything.
"You're not doing this for yourself," Elaine reminded her, her tone softening slightly. "You're doing this for that baby, too."
Emily nodded, a fresh wave of tears stinging her eyes. She wasn't just walking into an engagement dinner. She was walking into a battle, and she had to be ready for whatever waited inside that glittering penthouse.
* * *
Madison Brooks sat alone in the vast, silent penthouse at four in the morning, the city lights below a blurry mosaic through the rain-streaked windows. He hadn't slept.
He hadn't moved much, either, since Grace had left, her pleas echoing uselessly in his mind. The cold fury that had settled in him was a heavy, suffocating blanket.
He picked up his phone, the familiar weight in his hand feeling alien. He scrolled, past work emails, past recent calls, until he found Emily's contact. He opened their message history, a collection of supposed exchanges spanning the last eleven months.
"Dad," the first one read, dated nearly a year ago. "I'm just so busy with work. I'll call when I can."
He remembered the relief he had felt, the sting of neglect, the quiet acceptance.
Now, he reread them, line by agonizing line. "Dad," always with a comma. A small detail, but it pricked at him. Emily never used a comma after "Dad" in her texts. She was more casual, more direct.
"Hey Dad" or just "Dad."
He scrolled further. "I just need some space, Dad. Please respect that."
"I know you're worried, Dad, but I'm fine. Just focus on your wedding."
Each message, a quiet plea for distance. Each one, a confirmation of his fears.
But the voice. It wasn't Emily's voice he read. The words felt… constructed. Too polite. Too formal, despite the casual subject. His daughter’s texts were short, sometimes blunt, often peppered with emojis or slang he pretended to understand. These were different.
Then he noticed the timestamps. Every single message. All arrived between eleven o'clock at night and one o'clock in the morning. Not a single text during the day, not a single one in the late afternoon, when she often reached out.
"This is wrong," he whispered into the empty room.
His blood ran cold, then simmered with a terrifying heat.
He pulled up Grace's number, then scrolled back to the night Emily had first called, the night the woman had answered. He remembered Grace being out late that night, supposedly at a client dinner that stretched into the early hours.
A sickening realization washed over him. She hadn’t just answered his calls. She had posed as his daughter. She had manufactured this entire narrative of abandonment.
"You wrote these, didn't you?" he muttered, his voice raw. "You told me my daughter wanted nothing to do with me."
The cold fury intensified, turning his stomach. He had believed it. He had let these words, these silent, insidious lies, build a wall between him and his only child. The depth of the betrayal was staggering.
He looked at the phone, then at the empty chair where Grace had sat only hours earlier.
His fiancée. The woman he was about to marry had deliberately severed his connection to Emily, painstakingly, for nearly a year. He clenched his jaw, the muscle ticking. This was more than just a misunderstanding. This was a calculated, cruel act of sabotage. And he needed to know why.
The phone in Madison Brooks's hand felt heavy, a gateway to a truth he now desperately needed to uncover. He punched in a number he had saved discreetly three weeks prior. It was a number he hadn't thought he'd need, not truly.
"Brooks," he stated, his voice tight, when a gruff, sleepy voice answered. "It's Madison Brooks."
"Mr. Brooks," came the reply, instantly alert. "Four in the morning. Is everything alright?"
"No, Michael.
Nothing is alright," Madison said, walking to the window, staring out at the first hint of pre-dawn light. "I need you to accelerate. Everything."
Michael Thorne, the private investigator, had been a quiet recommendation from his bank manager. Madison had mentioned a strange conversation with Grace about an unexpected asset transfer. The bank manager, a friend, had seen something in Grace's financial behavior that troubled him. Madison, ever the realist, had dismissed it as caution, but planted the seed.
"What exactly are we looking for, sir?" Thorne asked, his voice now fully awake.
"Everything," Madison repeated, his gaze fixed on the waking city. "Her phone records. Her financial accounts. Every single connection she has." He paused, then added, "Especially anything to do with my daughter. Or anyone who might want to hurt my daughter."
Thorne was silent for a moment. "I had a feeling this might happen, Mr. Brooks.
Her behavior has been… peculiar."
"Peculiar how?" Madison demanded.
"She's been moving money. Small amounts, but consistently, to an offshore account," Thorne revealed. "And her calls to a specific number, consistently, late at night."
Madison felt a jolt. Late at night. Just like the fake texts. "What number?"
"It's a burner phone, untraceable at the moment," Thorne admitted. "But we're working on it. The file is growing, Mr. Brooks. It's coming, but it's complex."
"I need it faster, Michael," Madison pressed, his voice rising slightly. "I need it yesterday."
"I understand," Thorne said, his tone grim. "I'll put my best people on it. We'll have something for you soon. There are some interesting connections, financially speaking, that are just starting to surface."
"Connections to whom?" Madison asked, his heart hammering.
"I can't say for certain yet, sir," Thorne replied, a subtle hesitation in his voice.
"But it's not looking good. Not good at all. I'll call you as soon as I have something concrete enough to share."
Madison hung up, the silence of the penthouse suddenly deafening. The file was coming. What else would it reveal about the woman he was about to marry? He had a terrible feeling it was far worse than just answering phones and forging texts.
Three days later, the Hillcrest Estate shimmered under a pale Yakima sun. Grace Pickett, resplendent in a cream silk gown, moved among her guests, a dazzling smile fixed on her face. This bridal brunch, she had declared, was to show the world the wedding was still on, a defiant middle finger to the ugly scene at the penthouse.
Emily arrived, dressed simply in a flowing maternity dress, her face pale but determined.
She held a text message in her hand, sent by Grace herself: "Darling Emily, so glad you're joining us to celebrate! Wouldn't be the same without my future stepdaughter." A trap, Elaine had warned.
Grace spotted her near the entrance, her smile tightening imperceptibly. She walked over, her movements fluid and elegant.
"Emily, sweetheart!" Grace cooed, her voice dripping with artificial warmth. She offered her cheek for a kiss, which Emily stiffly avoided. "I'm so glad you decided to come. I know things have been… tense."
"You invited me," Emily stated, her voice flat. She looked around the room, forty pairs of eyes, mostly women, observing them with a mixture of curiosity and judgment.
"Of course, I did," Grace purred, linking her arm through Emily's, a possessive gesture. "You're family now, aren't you? Soon to be, anyway."
She steered Emily toward a table at the center, already laid with delicate pastries and mimosas. "Come, sit with me. Tell me all about… everything."
Emily pulled her arm away gently. "I'm fine, Grace. You can tell me what you want."
Grace ignored the barb. "Ladies," she announced, raising a crystal flute of champagne. The chatter died down. "A toast!" Her eyes, cold and sharp, met Emily's. "To family. To new beginnings. And to my future stepdaughter, Emily Brooks, who has graced us with her presence today!"
A ripple of polite applause. Emily felt a hot flush creep up her neck. She was the spectacle, the elephant in the room.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Grace whispered to her, leaning in close. "To have everyone here, supporting us." Her smile was predatory. "I've heard you have some exciting news of your own, darling.
Something about a little bundle of joy?"
The words were a deliberate jab, designed to humiliate. Emily felt the eyes of the guests on her stomach, then on her face.
"Yes," Emily said, her voice clear despite the tremor in her hands. "I'm pregnant." She met Grace's gaze directly. "Six months, actually."
Grace's smile wavered for a fraction of a second, a tiny crack in her polished facade. "How simply delightful!" she exclaimed, her voice a little too loud. "And the father, darling? Is he here today to celebrate with us?"
Emily felt the heat of collective curiosity. This was it. This was the trap. She knew Grace wanted her to squirm, to crumble, to reveal her private shame in front of this perfectly curated audience.
But Elaine's words echoed in her mind: *You say it while the whole room listens.* She took a deep breath, preparing to speak, when a hand touched her arm from behind.
* * *
Before Emily could answer Grace, a hand gripped her arm firmly. Ashley Crane, Grace’s assistant, a woman Emily vaguely recognized, pulled her away from the table, her grip surprisingly strong. She led Emily quickly towards the kitchen entrance, away from the glittering assembly.
“Excuse us,” Ashley mumbled to a confused guest, her gaze fixed on Emily’s face. “Emergency in the kitchen.”
The hum of polite conversation immediately resumed, but Emily felt a hundred eyes following her. Once inside the large, stainless-steel kitchen, Ashley pulled a small, thick envelope from her apron pocket.
“Take this,” Ashley whispered, her eyes darting nervously towards the swinging doors.
She pushed the envelope into Emily’s hand, then just as quickly, closed her fingers around it, preventing her from opening it.
“What is this?” Emily asked, her voice hushed.
“Phone logs,” Ashley said, her voice strained. “From Grace’s burner phone. And yours. And your dad’s. Everything.”
Emily stared at her, bewildered. “Why are you doing this?”
Ashley’s eyes, wide and earnest, met hers. “Because what she’s doing is wrong. And you deserve to know. Your father deserves to know.”
“Know what?” Emily pressed.
“She scheduled the wedding for sixteen days from now,” Ashley blurted, her words rushing out. “Not months from now. Sixteen days. That’s why she invited you. To make sure you were here, trapped.”
Emily’s breath hitched. “Trapped for what?”
Ashley glanced at the door again, her face pale. “She needs to get married before something else comes out. Something big.
And she knew you’d be here, vulnerable. She wanted to make sure you couldn’t stop it.”
“Stop what?” Emily asked again, her heart pounding.
“She’s trying to consolidate power,” Ashley whispered, leaning in close. “And she wants your dad’s assets. Everything about this wedding, it’s all… a means to an end.” She pushed the envelope back into Emily’s hand, this time releasing her grip. “You need to look at those. And you need to do it fast.”
Emily clutched the envelope, the paper warm against her palm. What could possibly be revealed in sixteen days that Grace was so desperate to preempt?
Madison Brooks found Emily by the kitchen window, staring out at the manicured gardens, the envelope clutched in her hand. The humiliation of the brunch had been evident on her face, but now, a new kind of fear had replaced it.
He had slipped away from the main party, his anger at Grace’s public taunts burning cold and steady.
He needed to talk to Emily, privately, away from Grace’s calculated performance.
“Emily,” he said softly, his voice gentle. “Are you alright?”
She turned, her eyes red-rimmed. “Dad. I…” She trailed off, glancing at the envelope.
He stepped closer. “Never mind that right now. We can look at it later. I need to ask you something.”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“The baby,” he began, his voice hesitant. He hated himself for having to ask, but the question had gnawed at him since she arrived. “The father. Who is he, Emily?”
She looked down at her hands, twisting the envelope. “It was… a mistake, Dad. A one-night thing. Nine months ago. In Seattle.”
He waited, his heart aching. He could see the shame on her face, the weariness. He just wanted the truth.
“His name is Marcus Thorne,” she whispered, barely audible.
“And his father is Robert Thorne.”
Madison froze. Robert Thorne. His largest business rival, the man who had tried to undercut him on every major deal for the past two decades. The name hit him like a physical blow.
“Robert Thorne?” he repeated, his voice flat. “Marcus Thorne is Robert Thorne’s son?”
Emily nodded, a tear escaping. “I didn’t know who he was, Dad. Not until later. He was just… a nice guy at a bar.”
“And Grace?” Madison asked, his mind reeling. “Did Grace know?”
Emily looked up, her eyes wide with a fresh wave of despair. “She texted me. A month ago. Before I even told anyone. She said she knew. She said she knew who the father was, and that she would help me keep it quiet, if I just kept away from you.”
His blood ran cold. Grace. She had known.
She had used this, his daughter’s vulnerability, her one-night mistake, to further sever their connection. The depth of her manipulation was unfathomable. He felt a sudden, sickening realization that this was far more than just a personal vendetta.
“She knew before you even told anyone?” he echoed, his jaw tight. This was not just a twist of fate. This was a carefully orchestrated scheme. What else had Grace been hiding?
Two days later, Madison Brooks walked into Grace Pickett’s meticulously organized office, the private investigator’s folder held loosely in his hand. The silence in the room was brittle, charged with unspoken truths.
Grace looked up from her computer, her smile evaporating as she saw the folder. Her eyes flickered to his face, then back to the manila folder, as if sensing the danger it contained.
He didn't speak.
He simply slid the folder across the polished mahogany desk, letting it come to rest directly in front of her. The weight of it, both literal and metaphorical, seemed to press down on the room.
Grace hesitated for a long moment, her perfectly manicured fingers trembling slightly. Then, slowly, she reached out and opened it.
Her eyes scanned the first page. Text-message forensics, Madison knew, detailing how his phone had been used to send him fake messages from Emily. Then came the phone records, a detailed log of calls from a burner phone, consistently connecting with Grace’s number, and with Robert Thorne’s private line. And finally, the damning evidence: a wire transfer, a significant sum of money, from Robert Thorne’s company, ‘Thorne Industries,’ to a shell LLC registered under ‘Grace Mancini,’ her maiden name.
Her face, usually so composed, went utterly slack.
The color drained from it, leaving her complexion ashen. Her gaze lifted slowly to Madison’s, her eyes wide with a sudden, dawning terror.
“What is this?” she whispered, her voice barely a breath. The question was hollow, a pretense.
“It’s everything, Grace,” Madison said, his voice cold, devoid of any warmth he had ever felt for her. “It’s how you planned to isolate my daughter. How you planned to steal my company. How you planned to walk away with a share of my portfolio, handed to you by my rival.”
He watched her, unblinking, as the full weight of her betrayal settled upon her. The meticulous deception, the carefully crafted lies, the calculated cruelty. It was all there, laid bare in the folder.
“I hired an investigator, Grace,” he added, his voice flat. “Three weeks ago. After a very strange conversation at the bank.
This folder has been waiting for you.”
Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She looked from the folder, to him, then back to the folder, as if hoping the evidence would disappear. But it remained, stark and undeniable. Every piece of her elaborate scheme, unraveling before her eyes.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Grace knew she had been caught. But what would she do next?
* * *
The phone rang precisely at nine o’clock the next morning. Madison Brooks answered, his voice still hoarse from a sleepless night. It was the general manager of the Hillcrest Estate.
“Mr. Brooks, we’ve received an… unusual request,” the manager began, a note of embarrassment in his tone. “Given recent developments, we are canceling Grace Pickett’s wedding booking.”
Madison felt a surge of cold satisfaction. “Understood. Thank you.”
“We’ve also been contacted by Ms. Ashley Crane,” the manager continued.
“She has provided a sworn affidavit regarding certain… irregularities related to your fiancée’s business practices and the wedding arrangements.”
Ashley Crane, the assistant. Madison hung up, a quiet triumph settling in his chest. The truth was coming out, piece by painful piece.
Later that afternoon, Michael Thorne called. “Mr. Brooks, Robert Thorne just pulled out of the Yakima Medical Center development deal. Entirely.”
“He did?” Madison asked, feigning surprise. He knew the terms of Grace’s deal with Thorne involved the success of that very project.
“Yes, sir. Citing unforeseen complications. It appears his ‘investment’ in Ms. Pickett’s services has become a liability.” Thorne paused. “Ashley Crane’s testimony connected some dots. The wire transfers, the shell company… it’s all unraveling.”
“Thank you, Michael,” Madison said, leaning back in his office chair. “Keep me updated.”
He ordered takeout. Thai food, Emily’s favorite.
He walked into the penthouse, which now felt cavernous and empty without Grace’s presence. Emily sat on the plush sofa, watching the city lights come alive.
“Dad,” she said, her voice soft. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, setting the containers on the coffee table. “For being blind for a year?”
“For believing me,” she corrected, a small smile touching her lips. “Finally.”
They ate in comfortable silence for a while, the city humming around them. Then, Emily spoke again.
“I kept calling, Dad,” she confessed, her gaze fixed on her plate. “Every Sunday. Nine PM. Just like we used to.”
Madison froze, his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “Every Sunday?”
She nodded. “For eleven months. Always the same woman. Or just voicemail. I thought… I thought you really didn’t want to talk to me.”
The full weight of Grace’s cruelty, of his own unwitting complicity, settled over him.
He had convinced himself his daughter had abandoned him. All the while, she had been reaching out, a silent plea he had never heard.
“Emily,” he said, his voice thick with a regret so profound it stole his breath. “I am so, so sorry.”
She looked at him, her eyes tired but clear. “I know, Dad. I know you are.”
Six months later, the scent of antiseptic mingled with the sweet, faint smell of new life in a small hospital room in Yakima. A tiny baby girl, swaddled in a pink blanket, slept peacefully in Emily’s arms. Elaine Cartwright sat quietly in a corner chair, knitting.
Madison Brooks, a grandfather, watched his daughter, a mother. A profound, quiet warmth filled the sterile room. Emily, pale but radiant, looked up at him.
“Do you want to hold her, Dad?” she asked, her voice soft.
He nodded, his throat tight.
Gently, he took the bundle. The baby was impossibly small, her little fingers curled into tiny fists. He felt a fierce, protective love surge through him, unlike anything he had ever known.
He looked at Emily, then down at the baby’s perfect, sleeping face. “She’s beautiful, Em.”
“She is,” Emily agreed, a tear escaping and tracing a path down her cheek.
Madison held the baby close, pressing a soft kiss to her downy head. He thought of all the calls he had missed, all the time he had lost. That would never happen again.
“Emily,” he said quietly, his voice thick with emotion, his gaze fixed on his granddaughter. “I’ll answer every single call from now on.”