Too, wasn’t sure whether it should keep burning. I sat in front of the cake and watched the wax slowly slide down into the white icing, pooling beside the strawberries on top. The room was quiet except for the dull rumble of buses passing outside and the soft click of the kettle cooling down.

I sent the message:

“Happy birthday.”

The screen of my old flip phone lit up for a few seconds and then went dark. It felt like a tiny stage where someone steps forward, bows… and is met with silence.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a short reply. A simple, “Thank you, Dad.” Or at least, “How have you been?”

Nothing came.

Time becomes loud when you’re waiting. Each tick of the clock sounded like a hammer striking something hollow inside my chest. Ninety-seven years. Nearly a century. I’ve seen wars, shortages, cities crumble and rise again. I worked with my hands my entire life—fixing wiring, sealing leaks, repairing whatever was broken. There was always something that could be mended.

Just not everything.

Eliot was ten the first time I took him to the sea. He sat on my shoulders and shouted that he was taller than the lighthouse. I believed moments like that would stretch on forever—him laughing, me steady beneath him. I never imagined that one day I’d be holding only a phone, waiting for a voice that would not answer.

The candle burned down and died on its own. I didn’t blow it out. I just watched the thin ribbon of smoke curl upward and disappear.

Then the phone vibrated.

At first, I thought I’d imagined it. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen.

“Hello… Mr. L.?” a young man’s voice said cautiously.

“Yes.”

“You sent a message to this number today. This phone belongs to me now. Eliot… was my father.”

My heart stumbled.

“Was?”

There was a pause on the other end.

“He passed away two years ago. A car accident. I kept his number active. I received your message this morning. I couldn’t ignore it.”

The room seemed to shrink around me.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

“He didn’t talk much about the past,” the young man continued. “But your name was still saved in his contacts. And your old messages were still there.”

Those words struck deeper than any accusation could have.

We talked for a while. His name was Daniel. He told me he had a three-year-old son who loved to draw and often asked about his great-grandfather.

Great-grandfather.

The word felt strange and fragile, like something I hadn’t earned but had been handed anyway.

“Would you like to meet him someday?” Daniel asked carefully. “I could bring him by. So he knows where he comes from.”

I looked out the window. A bus rolled past, people inside staring at their phones, lost in their own worlds. I had lived 97 years, and yet in that moment, it felt as though something new was quietly beginning.

“Yes,” I said, my voice unsteady but certain. “I would.”

When the call ended, the cake was still in front of me. The icing had softened, the strawberries glistening. I cut another slice.

This time, it didn’t feel like I was celebrating alone.

There were no cards in the mailbox that day. No early morning phone calls. No gathering of friends or family.

But there was one voice.

And sometimes, a single response is enough to break years of silence.