The Voicemail

Flo sat in her car, engine off, parked in the clinic lot. The building was dark behind her. Everyone else had left an hour ago.

Her phone buzzed.

Voicemail storage migration scheduled Feb 15. Messages older than 36 months will be deleted.

She read it twice. Today was February 7. Eight days.

One thousand and eighty-nine days since Deidre died. The voicemail wouldn’t survive the migration.

Flo opened the voicemail app. The interface was old, unchanged since she’d stopped updating her phone. She scrolled to saved messages. There was only one.

Deidre’s name. One saved message.

She pressed play.

“Hey Mom, taking a detour on the way home. Gonna grab coffee with Liz. Be home late, don’t wait up. Love you. Happy Valentine’s!”

Twenty-one seconds. Flo had memorized every pause, every breath.

She’d heard it 1,089 times. Once every day.

But she couldn’t save it again. The new phone wouldn’t import from this system. The migration would delete it. This might be the last time she could play it.

Flo started the car.

Left out of the lot meant home. Fifteen minutes, same route she’d driven for three years.

She turned right.

As if nothing matters.

The cemetery was twenty minutes in the other direction. She’d driven past the entrance hundreds of times on her way to other places. She’d never turned in.

But tonight she did.

The roads were quiet. Winter dark came early. She parked near the main gate and walked.

She knew where Deidre’s grave was. She’d looked up the plot number online two years ago. Section C, row 14. She’d never come.

The grave was easy to find.

White roses lay on the ground in front of the headstone. Fresh ones. Not wilted.

Flo stopped. She hadn’t brought flowers.

“Th-they come every month.”

She turned. A man stood a few feet away in work clothes. He wasn’t looking at her.

“Regular,” he added.

Flo stared at him. “Who?”

The man shuffled, eyes on the ground. “Don’t… don’t know their name. Young. Always white roses.” He gestured at the grave without looking. “Been coming since–”

He didn’t finish.

A long pause. The man wanted to leave.

“Thought it was you,” he said. “At first. Then I seen… different person. They sit. Don’t say nothing.” He shifted his weight. “Just sit.”

He nodded once and walked away fast.

Flo looked back at the flowers.

White roses. Every month. Someone had been coming for 1,089 days.

The driver. The one who survived.

Flo sat where the driver must sit. The ground was cold.

The headstone was simple.

Deidre Florence Chisholm
February 14, 1995 - February 14, 2023
Beloved Daughter

Deidre would have turned 31. She’d been 28.

Flo took out her phone and pressed play.

“Hey Mom, taking a detour on the way home. Gonna grab coffee with Liz. Be home late, don’t wait up. Love you. Happy Valentine’s!”

She heard the word detour differently now.

Flo didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried in 1,089 days.

The driver sat here every month.

He came. Flo stayed away.

Back at her car, she saved the voicemail to the cloud.

Forever now. Somehow that made it matter less.

The white roses were back there in the dark.

The driver came monthly. Probably next week.

Flo started the car.

Left out of the lot would mean home. The route she’d driven 1,089 times.

She turned left.