I See You -2019- Apr 2026

Leo drove through a thunderstorm. He reached the rest stop at 11:09 p.m. The payphone was still there, rusted and silent, its handset dangling. He picked it up. For five minutes, nothing but static. At 11:14 exactly, the static cleared.

The shimmer faded. The room returned to quiet. The red thread dissolved into ordinary air.

Leo started carrying the cards everywhere. He’d sit in Mia’s empty room, turning them over and over. I see you. Not “I have her.” Not “If you want to see her again.” Just… I see you. It felt less like a threat and more like a confirmation. A reassurance. As if someone on the other side of reality was holding up a mirror and saying, She’s still here. She’s just… elsewhere. i see you -2019-

“The years, Daddy. They’re not like walls. They’re like… water. Sometimes you can see through to the other side. The lady found me after I followed the red balloon. It went into a hole in the air. I didn’t mean to go so far.”

“You’re not supposed to see me,” she said. Her voice was the static from the payphone, shaped into words. “But you kept looking. Most people stop.” Leo drove through a thunderstorm

But Leo never stopped looking. And in the quiet places—the crosswalks, the chapels, the doorways—he sometimes caught a flicker of red, or a laugh that didn’t belong to anyone present. And he would smile, and keep walking, because he knew: somewhere in the long now, someone was watching. Someone was always watching.

A week later, the second card came. A photo of an empty carousel. On the back: Remember the red balloon? Leo remembered. Mia had lost a red balloon at the county fair last spring. She’d cried for an hour. He’d bought her two more. The date was the same: He picked it up

She reached out and touched his chest—right over his heart. He felt a warmth, like a small hand pressing from the other side. And in his mind, clear as a bell, Mia’s voice: I see you, Daddy. Always.

The line crackled. “I have to go now,” Mia whispered. “The crack is closing. But Daddy—the lady says you can find your own crack. If you look where the years are thin. Where something terrible almost happened but didn’t. Or where something wonderful almost happened but couldn’t. That’s where the doors are.”