Before I cut my birthday cake, my father kissed me and whispered, “Come to sleep next to me tonight”… There was something in her voice that made the knife in my kara hand tremble 
This photo was taken on the night of my thirteenth birthdays. If you just look at her, you’ll see my father, Daniel, hugging me tightly and kissing me on the cheek as I prepared to cut my cake chocolate. But no one knew what whispered in my ear at the time.
“Emily, come to sleep next to me tonight. Please don’t leave me alone.
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’s room. That’s why his request scared me right away.
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.
“What happened?” I whispered.
He looked at the people gathered in the room and said only one thing:
I will explain later. For now, pretend that everything is fine.
After that, I couldn’t hear the birthday song anymore. Everyone was clapping while I stared at the door from the kitchen. 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.
