But I still needed answers.
So I called my best friend, Rachel.
I Asked My Best Friend to Go on a Date With Him
Rachel and I had been friends for years.
She knew my father well enough to recognize his personality, but she wasn’t close enough to him to be emotionally involved.
I made an unusual request.
“I need you to go on a date with my father.”
There was a long silence.
“Excuse me?”
“I know how strange this sounds.”
“You want me to date your dad?”
“Not really. I want you to help me figure out why this keeps happening.”
Rachel laughed nervously.
“This is officially the strangest favor you’ve ever asked me.”
I explained everything.
The six women.
The successful dates.
The sudden disappearances.
Eventually, Rachel agreed.
We created a plan.
She would meet my father for dinner, behave normally, and tell me everything afterward.
The date lasted almost three hours.
When Rachel called me afterward, she sounded genuinely surprised.
“Your father is wonderful.”
I laughed.
“I told you.”
“No, seriously. He’s funny. He’s polite. He’s a gentleman.”
“Did anything seem strange?”
“Nothing.”
“Did he ask you out again?”
“Yes.”
My heart sank.
Because that meant the experiment had worked.
If Rachel disappeared too, then something outside my father’s behavior was causing this.
The following morning, Rachel stopped answering her phone.
The Message That Changed Everything
At first, I assumed she was sleeping.
Then I called again.
Nothing.
I sent several messages.
Still nothing.
Finally, almost a full day later, my phone buzzed.
It was Rachel.
The message contained only one sentence:
“Please don’t contact me anymore.”
I stared at the screen.
It didn’t sound like her.
Rachel didn’t disappear.
She confronted people.
She argued.
She called.
Something was wrong.
I drove to her apartment.
Her car was outside.
The lights were on.
But she wouldn’t answer the door.
I called her again.
Straight to voicemail.
I waited outside for almost an hour.
Then, finally, my phone rang.
Rachel.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“I can’t talk here.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Rachel, you’re scaring me.”
“I know.”
She hung up.
I didn’t sleep that night.
The next morning, she met me outside her workplace.
She looked exhausted.
Then she handed me her phone.
There were several messages from an unknown number.
The first said:
“Stay away from him.”
The next was worse.
“You have no idea what he is capable of.”
Then came a photograph.
It showed Rachel leaving the restaurant with my father.
Someone had been watching them.
Whoever had taken the photograph had followed her afterward.
They knew where she lived.
They knew where she worked.
And they knew personal details about her family.
This wasn’t a dating problem.
Someone was deliberately frightening the women away.
My Father Had Been Watched Too
I immediately went to my father’s house.
He was confused when I showed him the messages.
“I would never hurt Rachel.”
“I know.”
“Then who is doing this?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I asked him about security cameras.
He had installed several after someone broke into his garage months earlier.
We opened the security footage together.
At first, everything looked normal.
Then I noticed something.
At approximately 10:20 p.m., shortly a
Again.
And again.
The person’s face was hidden.
But something caught my attention.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I called Rachel.
“Do you remember talking to my aunt?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever tell her about the women Dad was dating?”
Rachel hesitated.
“I might have.”
My stomach dropped.
“Did you tell her about the date with your father?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“I mentioned that I was helping you investigate.”
That was enough.
I drove to Sabrina’s apartment.
The Door Opened
Sabrina answered after several knocks.
She looked surprised to see me.
“What are you doing here?”
I looked down.
Beside the door were a pair of white sneakers.
Dark stripe.
Exactly like the ones from the security footage.
My heart began pounding.
“Aunt Sabrina,” I said quietly, “we need to talk.”
Her expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
She stepped backward.
“About what?”
“My father.”
She didn’t answer.
“About the women he’s been dating.”
Her face became pale.
Then she whispered something I never expected to hear.
“You should leave.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t understand what you’re getting involved in.”
I stepped inside.
“Then explain it.”
She looked at me for several seconds.
Finally, she sat down.
And that’s when she told me the truth.
The Secret Behind the Disappearances
Sabrina had never accepted my father’s decision to move on.
She believed my mother had been the only woman who truly belonged in his life.
But that wasn’t the entire story.
After Mom died, Sabrina developed an unhealthy attachment to my father.
She convinced herself that protecting his memory meant preventing anyone else from replacing my mother.
When he finally started dating again, she became convinced that these women were taking advantage of him.
So she began investigating them.
She found their social-media accounts.
She learned where they worked.
She discovered where they lived.
Then she began contacting them anonymously.
She told them my father was unstable.
She claimed he had anger problems.
She warned them that other women had supposedly been harmed by him.
None of it was true.
The women believed her.
Some stopped contacting Dad.
Others were too frightened to explain why.
And when Rachel agreed to the date, Sabrina panicked.
She had followed her.
She photographed her.
Then she threatened her.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“You destroyed my father’s life,” I said.
Sabrina began crying.
“I was protecting him.”
“No. You were controlling him.”
She lowered her head.
“I couldn’t let anyone replace your mother.”
“They weren’t replacing her.”
“They would have.”
“No,” I said. “They would have helped him live.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Sabrina admitted something even more disturbing.
She had been watching my father for months.
She knew when he left home.
She knew where he went.
She knew which women he met.
She had even entered his property without permission.
Suddenly, the garage break-in made sense.
The Truth Finally Came Out
We contacted the authorities.
Rachel gave them the messages.
My father provided the security footage.
Sabrina eventually admitted what she had done.
The situation was investigated, and the women who had disappeared were contacted.
Some were furious.
Others were embarrassed that they had believed the anonymous warnings.
But my father was the most devastated.
He wasn’t angry only because someone had interfered with his relationships.
He was heartbroken because the person doing it was someone he trusted.
Someone who had stood beside him after my mother’s death.
Someone who had claimed to be helping him.
For the first time, my father understood that his loneliness hadn’t been entirely caused by grief.
Someone had been keeping him trapped inside it.
A New Beginning
Months later, my father went on another date.
