The boy kept ringing the wrong number every evening at 7:15, and only on the fifth day did Anna realize no one else was going to pick up for him.
The first time, she was annoyed. She had just sat down with a cup of tea, her swollen ankle resting on a pillow, the TV murmuring some show she wasn’t really watching. The phone rang — that old landline, the one her daughter kept telling her to get rid of. Anna limped to the hallway.
“Hello?”
A small, uncertain voice: “Mom?”
Anna’s heart gave a strange little jump. “You have the wrong number, dear,” she said quickly.
Silence, then a rushed “Sorry,” and the line clicked.
She stood there a moment, the way people do when a memory brushes their shoulder, then went back to her tea. By morning, she had almost forgotten about it.
The next day, at 7:15 sharp, the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Mom, I did it like you said. I put the picture next to the bed. Maybe… maybe you can see it now?” The same boy, his words tumbling over each other, carefully brave.
Anna swallowed. “Dear, this is not your mom’s number. You must have dialed wrong again.”
Another pause. He sounded younger this time. “Oh. Sorry.” Click.
She stood longer in the hallway now. The ticking clock on the wall, the faint smell of dust and old books, the framed photos of people who used to live here and call her “Mom” or “Grandma” but now only sent messages on holidays. She ran a finger over the landline’s plastic casing. Wrong number, she told herself. It happens.
On the third evening, she was already in the hallway at 7:14, pretending she just happened to be passing by when the phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Mom? The nurse said you were sleeping a lot today,” the boy whispered. “I read the story to you anyway. I put the phone near your ear but… maybe you didn’t hear.”
Anna’s throat closed. “Sweetheart, it’s the wrong number. Your mom isn’t here.”
He drew in a breath that sounded almost like a sob but then turned into a little cough. “Okay. Sorry to bother you.”
“Wait,” Anna said suddenly, surprising herself. “What’s your name?”
Silence. Then a cautious, “Liam.”
“Liam, I’m Anna. You’re not bothering me. You just… called the wrong person, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said again, but softer, like the word hurt. Then he hung up.
That night Anna lay awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Her own daughter, Emily, hadn’t called in two weeks. Work, children, a life far away — there were always reasons. Reasons that sounded logical until you sat in a quiet apartment and counted the tiles on the kitchen floor.
On the fourth day, Anna moved an old chair into the hallway and sat by the phone well before seven. She told herself it was nonsense, that the boy would stop calling, that his mother would wake up, or he would dial correctly, or someone, somewhere, would fix whatever was broken.
At 7:15, the ring cut through the apartment like a knife.
“Hello, Liam,” she said before he could speak.
He gasped. “Is this… my mom?”
Her hand tightened on the receiver. “No, dear. It’s Anna again.”
“Oh.” The disappointment was so heavy it almost had a sound. “The nurse said… maybe today you’d open your eyes.”
Anna shut her eyes instead. She could almost see him — a thin boy in a chair by some hospital bed, clutching a phone too big for his hand.
“Where is your mom, Liam?” she asked gently.
“In the hospital,” he said. “They said she was very tired after the accident. But they keep letting me call. I call every day at this time. She always answered at this time, before.”
“Before the accident?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Sometimes she didn’t pick up because she was cooking. But she always called back. Moms always call back, right?”
Anna couldn’t answer for a moment. Her own phone, silent on the kitchen table. The last call from Emily: a rushed hello between meetings, a promise to visit when tickets were cheaper.
“Most moms try their best,” she said carefully. “I’m sure yours does too.”
“I think I dial one number wrong,” Liam whispered. “But I can’t tell which one. I just… I just press where it feels like Mom.”
Something inside her cracked.
“Liam,” Anna said, her voice suddenly firm, “if you call tomorrow… and it’s me again… I can stay on the line with you for a bit. Until your mom is ready to answer. Would you like that?”
There was no pause this time. “Yes,” he breathed, as if someone had opened a window in a stuffy room.
They ended the call a minute later, but Anna kept the phone in her hand long after the beeping stopped.
On the fifth day, she woke early, cleaned the apartment with a focus she hadn’t felt in months, and changed her blouse. There was no one to see her, but it felt wrong to greet that small, trembling voice in the old worn cardigan she usually wore.
At 7:15, the phone rang. She lifted the receiver with hands that shook.
“Hi, Liam,” she said.
“Hi, Anna,” he replied. The way he said her name — careful, respectful — made her chest ache. “The nurse said Mom is very quiet today. Can I… can I talk to you instead, just for a little?”
Just for a little. As if he were asking for an extra cookie.
“Of course you can,” Anna said. “Tell me about the picture you put by her bed.”
He launched into a description of a messy drawing: a stick-figure family, a house, a sun with too many rays. His voice grew lighter as he spoke. He told her about his dog, Max, who wasn’t allowed in the hospital. About the way the corridors smelled like cleaning stuff and something else he couldn’t name. About the nurse who braided his shoelaces when his fingers were too cold.
Anna listened, murmuring questions, letting him steer the conversation wherever he needed it to go. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty.
“Anna?” he said suddenly.
“Yes, dear?”
“If my mom can’t pick up tomorrow… will you still answer?”
Anna looked around her quiet hallway, at the photos on the wall, at the empty house that had been waiting, for months, for someone to need something from it.
“I’ll be right here at 7:15,” she said. “Every day, until your mom can talk to you herself.”
There was another little breath that sounded like hope. “Okay.”
They hung up.
That night, Anna did something she had been putting off for years: she took her mobile phone and scrolled to Emily’s number. Her thumb hovered. Then she pressed call.
It rang only once.
“Mom? Is everything alright?” Emily’s voice, startled and worried.
Anna almost said, “Wrong number.” Instead, she heard herself say, “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
There was a pause, then a softness Anna hadn’t heard in a long time. “I’m glad you called. I was going to, but work is crazy… I miss you.”
“Do you remember,” Anna asked quietly, “how you used to call me every evening after your late classes?”
Emily laughed, the sound shaky. “Of course I do. You always waited by the phone like a guard.”
“I’m… waiting by the phone again,” Anna said. “For a little boy who keeps dialing the wrong number.”
She told her daughter everything. The 7:15 calls, the hospital, the picture by the bed. When she finished, there was no sound on the line except for Emily’s breathing.
“Mom,” Emily said finally, her voice thick, “I’ll bring the kids this weekend. We’ll come. And… keep answering that boy, please. Until his mom can.”
“What if she never can?” Anna whispered.
There was no answer for that. They both knew it.
The next evening, the phone rang at 7:15. Anna was already in her hallway chair. On the table beside her lay a plate of cookies she had baked for the first time in years, as if the smell of them could travel through the line.
“Hi, Liam,” she said.
“Hi, Anna,” he replied. His voice was tired, but steadier now, as if the world had given him one small, solid thing to hold on to.
“Did you read your mom a story today?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “And I told her that… that I have a phone friend now. In case she’s sleeping.”
Anna blinked back tears. “Then we’ll both keep talking to her,” she said. “You there, and me here. No matter what number you press, I’ll keep picking up, okay?”
On the other end of the line, a boy who had pressed where it felt like Mom let out a tiny, relieved laugh.
“Okay,” he said. “Then I won’t be scared when it rings anymore.”
Neither, for the first time in a long time, was she.
