Off guard

wednesday ; 15:39pm

"Dad?"
My voice was shaking, I hadn't talked to him in weeks. The phone was silent for a while, occasional rustling what made it seem like my father was blandly ignoring my cries for an answer.

"Jo."

I sprung up and dived onto the other side of my bed as soon as I heard his lovely voice through the several holes in the telephone.

"Daddy? Are you okay? When am I going to see you?"
So many questions tried escaping my mouth simultaneously that in the end it simply became verbal diarrhoea.

"Jo, sweetheart. I'm okay."

This have me hope, well, some sort of comfort. I still had questions to ask.

"I hope the boys aren't being too mean, I hope you've been fed."

My father sounded, sad. As if he was about to burst into tears. I knew I'd be ruining a beautiful family moment but-

"Daddy! I need you to talk to me! What was the baby's name?!"

My fathers voice drifted into confusion, his speech became made up of mostly sighs and rustles. He even chuckled.

"What baby? What are you even talking about?"

I took a deep sigh and attempted to remember the several diction lessons I was forced to take at school. Finally they've come into good use.

"Daddy, Mother stayed here to have her first born baby, what did you want to call it?"
"Why are you ask-"
"Daddy just tell me!"
" ..."
"Daddy?"

After a few minutes of dead silence I decided to take a different approach.

"Daddy, I know that you and Mother were going to have a baby, and unfortunately that baby died in an accident. Please-"

"Why do you even want to know? What sort of sick reminder is this?"

"Daddy I-"

"That god awful night, it was raining in the area, I was away. I couldn't save it! I should've saved it Jo!"

"Da-"

"He would've been a miracle, your mother always wanted a baby boy, she was always stricter on you anyway."

Baby boy?

"Mother really loved the name-"

The phone line disconnected. It was a very windy night.