The rule in our house was simple: never pick up on the first ring. Ma said only debt collectors and death were that eager. So when the landline rang at 2 a.m., I lay still and counted.
One. Silence. Then it rang again — a single ring, and stopped. That was Papa's signal from the night shift. One ring meant reached safely, don't wait up. I had heard it a thousand times and gone back to sleep a thousand times. I went back to sleep.
At 6 a.m. two policemen stood at our door with their caps in their hands and told us Papa's scooter had gone off the flyover at half past one. He had died, they were certain, before two.
I have spent eleven years failing to explain the second ring to anyone. The phone company had no record; the line, they said, was already dead by midnight.
Last night it rang again. 2 a.m. One ring. I am forty now, in my own house, with a son who counts the rings the way I taught him without knowing why. I did not lie still this time. I picked up on the first ring — I have been eager for eleven years.
There was breathing on the line. Slow, tired, familiar. Papa? I said.
The second ring answered from the empty hallway behind me.