Chapter SIX
BLOCKED NUMBERS
The first call came at 10:54 p.m. The second came at 10:56.
By midnight, Daniel had called eleven times.
Mei did not answer any of them. Detective Ruiz had photographed the messages before they left the station and told Grandma to preserve everything.
"Don't delete, don't edit, don't engage if you don't feel safe. Screenshot what you can."
At Grandma's house, Alex put Mei's phone on the kitchen counter and turned the volume off.
The screen kept lighting up anyway. DAD. DAD. DAD. It looked less like a contact name and more like an alarm.
"Can we block him?" Alex asked.
Grandma was reading the protection-order paperwork for the third time.
"Ruiz said we can, but she also said keep the messages."
"We have them."
Mei sat at the table wearing one of her mother's old college sweatshirts. Grandma had kept it in a cedar chest. It hung almost to Mei's knees.
"If I block him, he'll use another number," she said.
Alex looked at her. "How do you know?"
She didn't.
She just knew Daniel. At 12:07, the phone stopped ringing. Nobody celebrated. Grandma made up the room that used to belong to Grace. The walls had been repainted years ago, but the closet door still had a faded sticker near the bottom: a tiny yellow star with a smiling face.
"Your mother put that there when she was eight," Grandma said. "I told her I'd remove it. Never did."
Mei touched the sticker.
"She was eight?"
"And stubborn at eight. Stubborn at eighteen. Stubborn at thirty."
Grandma smiled faintly.
"You have that from her."
"Dad says I'm difficult."
Grandma's smile disappeared.
"People who want obedience often call questions difficult."
Mei climbed into bed.
Grandma pulled the blanket up like Mei was six instead of twelve.
"You want the door open?"
"A little."
"Hall light?"
"Please."
Grandma kissed her forehead.
"I'm right across the hall. Alex is on the couch. Doors are locked. Alarm is on."
"You have an alarm?"
"I have had an alarm since somebody stole my lawn mower in 2018. Best thing that thief ever did for me."
Mei laughed softly.
"Try to sleep."
After Grandma left, Mei stared at the stripe of hallway light across the carpet.
She should have felt safer.
She was away from Daniel. Police knew. Grandma knew.
Alex knew. Tiana knew. The secret no longer depended on Mei alone.
But safety was not a switch. Her body did not understand paperwork or locked doors.
Every sound became a possibility. A car slowing outside.
A branch against the window. Alex getting water in the kitchen.
At 1:13, Mei sat up because she thought she heard the porch steps creak.
Nothing happened. At 1:40, she checked the curtains.
Empty street. At 2:05, she finally slept.
Her phone woke her at 6:31. Not ringing.
Vibrating. She had forgotten it was on the dresser.
UNKNOWN CALLER. Mei stared at it until it stopped.
A voicemail appeared. Then another call from a different number.
Her stomach dropped. She did not answer. At breakfast, she showed Alex.
"Told you," she said.
He listened to the voicemail on speaker after asking if she wanted to hear it.
Daniel's voice filled the kitchen.
"Mei, it's Dad. I don't know what your grandmother is telling you, but you're confused. I need you to call me. We can fix this before it gets out of hand. You're my daughter. I love you. Call me."
The message ended.
Grandma stood by the stove holding a spatula.
"Your grandmother is telling you," she repeated, disgusted. "Like I planted a memory in your head overnight."
Mei said nothing.
The second voicemail was different. Daniel sounded angry.
"Stop ignoring me. You don't understand what you're doing. You think the police are your friends? You think they're going to protect you forever? Call me before you ruin this family."
Alex swore under his breath.
Grandma held out her hand.
"Phone."
Mei gave it to her.
Grandma sent both recordings to Detective Ruiz. Five minutes later Ruiz called.
"I'm going to have an officer come take a formal report on the contact," she said. "We also want to move quickly on the emergency order."
"Can you make him stop calling?" Mei asked.
"An order can tell him not to contact you. If he violates it, that gives us more options. But I want to be honest: a piece of paper doesn't physically stop a person. That's why the rest of the safety plan matters too."
Mei appreciated that Ruiz did not pretend. Before they reached the school, Grandma stopped at a pharmacy and bought a cheap prepaid phone.
"What is that for?" Mei asked.
"Backup."
"I have a phone."
"And if your father gets your number shut off because it's on his account?"
Mei had not thought of that.
Grandma had.
They sat in the car while Alex, on speakerphone, walked them through transferring the important contacts. Tiana. Mrs. Brooks. School. Detective Ruiz. Alex. Grandma.
"Don't put Dad in it," Mei said.
Grandma looked at her. "I wasn't going to." The fact that she did not argue or remind Mei that Daniel was still legally her father made something unclench in Mei's chest. They also wrote numbers on an index card and slid it into Mei's backpack.
"Phones die," Grandma said. "Paper doesn't need a charger."
"You sound ninety."
"And yet I am correct."
At a red light, Grandma handed Mei the backup phone.
"This is not about making your life smaller," she said. "I don't want you thinking safety means you stop going to school, stop seeing Tiana, stop being a kid. We make adjustments so you can keep doing those things."
Mei stared at the phone.
"What if he never stops?"
Grandma's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
"Then we outlast him."
It was not a promise that Daniel would change.
It was better.
It was a promise that Mei would not have to wait for him to. Grandma drove her to school that morning because Daniel knew the bus route. Before they went in, Grandma parked and turned toward her.
"The principal knows there is a family safety issue. She does not know every detail."
Mei groaned. "Great."
"I told her your father is not allowed to pick you up."
"Everybody's going to know something's wrong."
"Something is wrong."
"I know, but I don't want to be the girl with the police dad thing."
Grandma's face softened.
"You are Mei. The police thing is something happening around you. It is not who you are."
That sounded like something printed on a counselor's wall.
* * *
The rumor spread faster than anything true had managed to spread. A local community page posted that police were
"reinvestigating a years-old accidental death after a custody fight."
The post did not name Mei, but it named Daniel and Grace.
Within an hour, people in the comments were performing entire
trials from profile pictures.
He always seemed like a nice guy. You never know what happens
behind closed doors. Kids get manipulated during custody battles. That poor girl. Why now after three years? Mei read exactly six
comments before Tiana took the phone out of her hand. "Nope."
"Give it back."
"No. The internet has lost privileges."
They were in the library after school. Principal Monroe had
allowed Mei to wait there until Grandma picked her up because the
bus route was temporarily removed from her safety plan. "I want to know what people are saying."
"Why?"
"Because they're talking about me."
"That does not mean you have to attend the meeting." Mei reached for the phone. Tiana held it over her head. "You are five-foot-nothing. Stop."
"I'm five-three."
"In shoes."
Mei finally laughed and gave up. A boy at the next table looked
over too long. Tiana stared until he looked away.
"You're going to get us banned from society," Mei said. "Worth it."
Grandma arrived ten minutes later with Lena, the victim
advocate. Lena had come to explain a court filing and ended up
staying for fries because Grandma insisted nobody should discuss
law on an empty stomach. At the diner, Lena slid a page across the
table.
"Daniel's attorney has requested that the family court limit
public statements by both sides. That is separate from the criminal
investigation. Your grandmother's lawyer is handling it." Mei frowned. "He posts about me and then wants us not to
talk?"
"Legal strategy is sometimes deeply annoying."
"That's your official term?"
"Very technical."
Lena also explained that the police could not arrest Daniel
simply because Mei feared him. They needed probable cause for
specific crimes. The threatening messages,
intimidation, protection-order violations,
investigation all had different legal paths. "It feels like one thing," Mei said.
possible witness and homicide
"To you, it is one life," Lena replied. "The system sorts it into boxes. Sometimes those boxes help. Sometimes they make people feel like nobody sees the whole picture."
That night, a new account followed Mei's private social-media profile. The username was a random combination of letters and numbers. No posts. No profile image.
She declined the request.
Five minutes later another account followed her. Then another. Mei blocked all three. A message request appeared from a fourth account. Your father loves you. She did not open the full thread. She screenshot the preview and sent it to Ruiz. Ruiz called Grandma ten minutes later.
"Do not reply. We are preserving the account information."
"Can you tell if it's him?" Mei asked from speakerphone.
"Not yet."
"What if it's just some random person from the post?"
"That is possible."
"Which is worse?"
Ruiz paused. "Neither is good. But uncertainty does not require you to solve it tonight." Mei wished adults would stop saying useful things she did not want to hear. The following morning, Principal Monroe called her into the office. For once, Daniel was not outside.
"We have a problem," Monroe said.
On her desk lay three photocopies of a flyer.
MISSING FROM HER FATHER.
A school photo of Mei appeared beneath the headline. The text claimed relatives were keeping a minor child away from her legal parent while "coaching her to make devastating false allegations." It listed an email address for "information about her whereabouts." Mei stared.
"Where did these come from?"