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<\/p>\nBefore I cut my birthday cake, my father kissed me and whispered, \u201cCome to sleep next to me tonight\u201d\u2026 There was something in her voice that made the knife in my hand tremble <\/p>\n
This photo was taken on the night of my thirteenth birthday. If you just look at her, you\u2019ll see my father, Daniel, hugging me tightly and kissing me on the cheek while I was getting ready to cut my chocolate cake. But no one knew what whispered in my ear at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmily, come to sleep next to me tonight. Please don\u2019t leave me alone.<\/p>\n
I was paralyzed. My father had never asked me for anything like that. After my mother died, we both lived alone, but he had always been very careful with personal boundaries. Even when I had nightmares as a child, he would sleep in an armchair or take me to my grandmother\u2019s room. That\u2019s why his request scared me right away.<\/p>\n
What terrified me even more was the expression on his face. He tried to smile at the guests, but his fingers were shaking. When I turned to him, I noticed that he had red eyes, as if he had been crying all day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
He looked at the people gathered in the room and said only one thing:<\/p>\n
I will explain later. For now, pretend that everything is fine.<\/p>\n
After that, I couldn\u2019t hear the birthday song anymore. Everyone clapped while I stared at the kitchen door. Strange things had been going on in our house for the past week. Dad woke up at night with the slightest noise, kept the curtains closed and repeatedly checked the front door. Two days earlier he had returned from work unusually early and spent a lot of time talking to someone on the phone. When I walked into the kitchen, the call quickly ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho was it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cA wrong number,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n
But I had heard his last sentence:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t come near my daughter.<\/p>\n
Guests left around ten o\u2019clock at night. Grandma offered to stay with us, but Dad stubbornly refused. He didn\u2019t even let me open the door when the last guests left. He himself stood by the entrance, waited until his cars walked away and then locked the door and also placed the upper latch. By then, I was convinced that someone was watching us.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow tell me what\u2019s going on,\u201d I demanded.<\/p>\n
Dad remained silent for several seconds. Then he picked up his phone, sent a message to someone and told me to go up to his bedroom. Next to his bed he had already placed an armchair with a pillow and a blanket.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will sleep here in the chair, and I will sleep in bed,\u201d he said. We\u2019ll close the door from the inside.<\/p>\n
I asked him if we were in danger. He sat on the edge of the bed and covered his face with his hands.<\/p>\n
I made a bad decision, Emily. I thought I could take care of everything by myself. But I\u2019m afraid something will happen tonight.<\/p>\n
A chill went through my whole body. I remembered the phone call, the curtains closed and the fact that Dad hadn\u2019t allowed me to come back from school alone for several days. At half past eleven, we heard a noise down. Someone slowly opened the kitchen door.<\/p>\n
I jumped off the chair. Dad immediately grabbed my hand and took a finger to his lips. Then the lights of a vehicle went through the window. Someone knocked on the front door three times. Dad paled.<\/p>\n
\u201cStay here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t want to let him go, but he left the room and closed the bedroom door behind him. At first I heard whispers below, followed by heavy steps. Someone was going up the stairs. The doorknob began to move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I cut my birthday cake, my father kissed me and whispered, \u201cCome to sleep next to me tonight\u201d\u2026 There…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kitchenmagic.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}