Chapter 2 - The Date I Never Should Have Arranged
My father lost my mother twelve years ago.
People often use the word lost because it sounds gentler than died. It makes death seem temporary, like the person took a wrong turn in a department store and might reappear beside the customer-service desk if you wait long enough.
But my mother, Anna Bennett, did not get lost.
She died in a car accident on a rainy October evening, three miles from our home in Cedar Falls, Ohio. A delivery truck slid across the center line, and the police officer who came to our door said she had died instantly.
I was nineteen at the time.
My father, Daniel, was forty-four.
Before that night, he had been the kind of man who sang badly while making pancakes and danced with my mother in the kitchen whenever an old rock song came on the radio. He kept fresh flowers beside her coffee cup every Sunday. He wrote stupid little notes and hid them in her purse.
After she died, he stopped singing.
He stopped dancing.
For nearly a year, he slept on the couch because he could not stand being alone in their bedroom. He still set out two coffee mugs every morning, then stared at the second one as though he could not remember why it was there.
I worried he would never recover.
Eventually, he returned to work at the high school, where he taught American history. He repaired the back porch, started jogging again, and learned how to make something besides pancakes without burning it.
He smiled sometimes.
But he never dated.
Whenever friends offered to introduce him to someone, he politely declined.
“I already had the love of my life,” he would say. “Some people only get one.”
For years, I accepted that answer.
Then, almost overnight, everything changed.
It began shortly after his fifty-sixth birthday. I had taken him to dinner, and while we were waiting for our food, he kept glancing at a couple sitting near the window. They looked about his age. The woman laughed at something the man whispered, and he reached across the table to squeeze her hand.
Dad watched them for several seconds before looking down at his menu.
“I miss that,” he said quietly.
I pretended not to understand.
“Miss what?”
“Having someone who knows what you mean before you finish the sentence.”
His confession surprised me. Dad rarely admitted he was lonely.
“You could have that again,” I said.
He gave me a sad smile. “At my age?”
“You’re fifty-six, not ninety-six.”
That made him laugh.
Two weeks later, he called me while I was driving home from work.
“I did something ridiculous,” he announced.
“What?”
“I joined a dating app.”
I nearly drove through a red light.
Dad had always treated social media like an unexplained medical condition. The idea of him creating a dating profile felt almost impossible.
“You did?”
“My colleague Mark helped me.”
“What did you put in your profile?”
“That I teach history, enjoy hiking, and can cook five meals without setting off a smoke detector.”
“Only five?”
“I believe in honesty.”
His first match was a woman named Caroline.
She was a pediatric nurse with two grown sons. They met for dinner at a small Italian restaurant downtown.
Dad called me the next morning sounding younger than he had in years.
“She was wonderful, Emily. Smart, funny, kind. We talked for almost three hours.”
“Are you seeing her again?”
“We made plans for Saturday.”
But Saturday never happened.
Caroline stopped answering his messages.
At first, Dad assumed she was busy. By Sunday evening, he had accepted the truth.
“She changed her mind,” he said. “That happens.”
He acted disappointed but reasonable.
I felt disappointed for him, yet I saw nothing unusual. People disappeared after dates all the time. Dating had changed dramatically since my parents met in college. Ghosting was practically a modern tradition.
A month later, he met Diane, an accountant who volunteered at an animal shelter.
Their date went so well that Diane sent him a message before he even reached home.
Thank you for such a lovely evening. I would really like to see you again.
Dad showed it to me with a grin.
By sunrise, Diane had blocked his number.
That hurt him more than Caroline had.
“I must have said something wrong,” he told me.
“What could you have said between midnight and morning? You were asleep.”
“Maybe she reconsidered.”
He spent the next several days replaying every moment of the date, searching for a mistake that did not exist.
The third woman was named Melissa.
She was widowed too. Her husband had died of cancer six years earlier, and Dad believed she understood the strange guilt of finding happiness after loss.
They went to a concert in the park. Melissa kissed him on the cheek afterward and told him she had not enjoyed an evening that much in years.
The next day, she vanished.
No explanation.
No response.
The fourth woman, Evelyn, disappeared before breakfast.
The fifth, Nora, sent Dad a message saying she wanted to meet again, then deleted her dating profile during the night.
By then, I had started noticing the pattern.
Every date went wonderfully.
Every woman clearly expressed interest in seeing him again.
And every woman disappeared before the next day ended.
The sixth woman was named Claire Sullivan.
Claire owned a small bookstore across town. Dad had been buying books from her for years without knowing she was single. They matched online, laughed about the coincidence, and agreed to have coffee.
Coffee became dinner.
Dinner became a long walk along the river.
When Dad returned home, he looked genuinely happy.
“Claire understands me,” he said.
I did not tease him. The hope in his eyes was too fragile.
“What did you talk about?”
“Books. Teaching. Her daughters. Your mother.”
I stiffened slightly.
“You talked about Mom on the first date?”
“She asked about the wedding ring.”
Dad no longer wore it on his finger, but he kept it on a silver chain around his neck.
“And Claire wasn’t uncomfortable?”
“Not at all. She said loving someone who died doesn’t mean you can never love anyone else.”
That sounded promising.
They had arranged to attend a museum exhibition the following weekend.
The next morning, Claire sent a brief message.
Please do not contact me again.
Dad read it three times.
Then he placed his phone on the kitchen table and stared out the window.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered. “They all seemed so happy.”
Something inside me changed at that moment.
It was not simply the sadness in his voice. It was the certainty that this was no longer coincidence.
Six women did not all behave exactly the same way without a reason.
“Dad,” I said, sitting across from him, “did anything unusual happen after your dates?”
He frowned.
“Unusual?”
“Did anyone call you? Follow you? Say something strange?”
“No.”
“Did every woman know where you lived?”
“Most of them. I drove several home, but they had my address from the app’s neighborhood feature or from conversation.”
“Did you invite any of them inside?”
He looked embarrassed. “Emily.”
“I’m investigating, not judging.”
“No. I wasn’t ready for that.”
I asked whether he had mentioned his finances, his job, my mother’s life insurance, or anything else that might attract the wrong people.
He had not.
Dad was not wealthy. He owned his house, had retirement savings, and lived comfortably, but there was no fortune waiting for anyone.
“Maybe someone is contacting them,” I said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head. “You’re turning ordinary rejection into a conspiracy because you don’t want to see me hurt.”
“Six identical rejections aren’t ordinary.”
“They are not identical.”
“They all disappear overnight after saying they want another date.”
Dad’s expression hardened.
“Please stop.”
I had pushed too far.
He stood and carried his coffee mug to the sink.
“I appreciate that you care,” he said, keeping his back to me. “But these women have a right to change their minds. I don’t want you bothering them.”
“I wasn’t planning to bother anyone.”
“You have your detective face.”
“I don’t have a detective face.”
“You had the same expression when you were fourteen and trying to discover who ate your Halloween candy.”
“It was you.”
“That is not the point.”
He turned toward me.
The pain in his eyes was mixed with something else—embarrassment.
Dad was ashamed that six women had rejected him.
I hated that.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said more gently.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”
He looked away.
“That may be the problem,” he replied. “You see me as your father. They see me as a man they barely know.”
The conversation ended there.
But my suspicion did not.
Over the next week, I searched through every detail Dad had shared. The restaurants were different. The women lived in different neighborhoods. Their jobs and backgrounds had nothing in common.
The only connection was Dad.
And perhaps me.
That thought frightened me.
Was someone watching our family?
Had something from my mother’s past returned?
I tried contacting Claire through her bookstore’s public email address. I wrote a polite message explaining that I was not asking her to reconsider the relationship. I only wanted to know whether something had happened after their date.
She did not respond.
Two days later, I went to the bookstore.
A young employee stood behind the counter.
“Is Claire here?” I asked.
The employee’s face changed.
“She’s unavailable.”
“When will she be back?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Could you tell her Emily Bennett stopped by?”
The employee hesitated.
Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice.
“You should leave.”
The warning made my skin prickle.
“Did Claire tell you to say that?”
“I can’t discuss it.”
“Is she in danger?”
The employee glanced toward the rear office.
Before she could answer, a door opened.
Claire stepped out.
When she saw me, she froze.
Her face went pale.
I raised both hands to show I meant no harm.
“Claire, I’m not here to pressure you. I only want to understand what happened.”
She hurried toward me, but not with the warmth she had shown Dad.
“You cannot come here,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Please.”
“Did my father hurt you?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“Then why did you disappear?”
Claire’s eyes filled with fear.
She looked past me through the front windows, scanning the sidewalk.
“Someone contacted you,” I said.
Her silence confirmed it.
“Who?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did they threaten you?”
She stepped backward.
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Claire, my father thinks he did something wrong.”
Her expression softened for half a second.
Then she whispered, “Tell him he deserves better than this.”
“Better than what?”
She turned and disappeared into the back office.
The employee moved toward the entrance.
“You need to go.”
I left, but I no longer had doubts.
Someone was contacting every woman Dad dated.
Someone was frightening them badly enough to vanish.
That evening, I sat across from my best friend Rachel Carter at a neighborhood bar and told her everything.
Rachel had known me since college. She knew Dad well enough to have spent holidays at our house, though she had not seen him often in recent years.
When I finished, she stared at me over the rim of her glass.
“You think someone is sabotaging your father’s relationships?”
“I know someone is.”
“And you want to catch them?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I had been afraid to say the plan aloud because I knew how insane it sounded.
“I need someone Dad doesn’t know very well,” I said. “Someone I trust completely. Someone who can go on one date with him and tell me what happens afterward.”
Rachel slowly lowered her glass.
“No.”
“I haven’t asked yet.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Rachel—”
“You want me to date your father.”
“One dinner.”
“He changed your diapers.”
“He absolutely did not change yours.”
“You understand my point.”
“It wouldn’t be a real date. It would be an experiment.”
Rachel laughed in disbelief.
“You want to use your lonely, grieving father as bait?”
The accusation struck harder than I expected.
“I want to protect him.”
“By lying to him?”
I had no good answer.
Rachel studied my face.
“You really think he’s in danger.”
“I think someone is watching him. And I think the next woman may not simply receive a warning.”
She looked away, tapping one finger against her glass.
After a long silence, she sighed.
“One dinner,” she said.
Relief rushed through me.
“Thank you.”
“I haven’t finished. If your father seems genuinely interested, we tell him the truth immediately. I will not humiliate him.”
“Agreed.”
“And you owe me for the rest of your natural life.”
“Agreed.”
Rachel shook her head.
“I cannot believe I’m doing this.”
Neither could I.
But at that moment, I believed the danger would come after the date.
May you like
I never considered that sending Rachel into my father’s life might uncover a secret none of us were prepared to face.
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