Everyone thought my dad died of a heart attack until I played his final voice recording
The Recording on Dad’s iPad
Everyone believed my dad died of a heart attack until I played the voice recording he made on the night he died. When my mom’s new boyfriend moved in, I was 13.
Dad had passed away eight days ago. He died from a heart attack that made no sense.
One day, he was teaching me how to eat healthier and bragging about how he’d never smoked a day in his life. And the next, I was standing over his hospital bed while the monitor went flat.
The first thing mom’s boyfriend Cyrus did was drink from dad’s world’s best father coffee mug. Mom poured it like it was already routine.
But it wasn’t just dad’s things he was claiming. Cyrus had this way of looking at me that made my skin crawl.
His eyes would follow me across the room, lingering too long when I reached for something on a high shelf.
He’d accidentally walk in while I was changing, apologizing with this smile that never reached his eyes.
When I told mom he made me uncomfortable, she sighed like I was being difficult.
“Cyrus is just being friendly, Jasmine.”
“Stop making this harder than it needs to be.”
But the more mom pushed me to accept Cyrus, the more questions started eating at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how healthy dad had been.
He ran every morning, had his cholesterol checked monthly because he was paranoid about his family history.
The doctor even joked he’d lived to be a hundred. So at dinner one night, I mentioned it.
“Dad never had heart problems before.”
Cyrus set down his fork slowly, stared right at me, and said, “Harts are unpredictable. Sometimes they just stop.”
He said it like he was enjoying some private joke. Mom just snapped at me to stop dwelling on the past.
I thought if I could just get proof, she would have to listen. So, I started recording Cyrus on my phone when he’d make his creepy comments about me becoming a woman or how mature I looked in my school uniform, but he found it.
Grabbed my phone right out of my hands one day and deleted everything while maintaining eye contact.
Then, he showed mom the empty recordings folder and said I’d been trying to frame him. Mom took my phone away as punishment.
Said I was poisoning our fresh start. That’s when things got worse.
I started pushing my dresser against my door at night, but mom noticed.
“Why is your furniture moved?” she demanded.
When I told her I didn’t feel safe, she actually removed my bedroom door.
“We don’t keep secrets in this family.”
Cyrus started coming in whenever he wanted.
“Just checking on you, sweetheart,” he’d whisper, sitting on my bed while I pretended to sleep.
I started sleeping in my closet with the door closed. And when mom found me there, she yanked me out.
“What is wrong with you? Are you having some kind of breakdown?”
She grabbed my shoulders. “Maybe you need therapy, Jasmine.”
“This isn’t normal.” Dad had been dead for 6 weeks by then, and I felt like I was drowning.
Every day, Cyrus got bolder. Mom got blinder and I got more desperate.
I missed dad so much it physically hurt.
Not just because I needed protection, but because none of this made sense. How fast mom moved on.
How Cyrus seemed to already know our house layout the first day he arrived. I went to dad’s old home office one night while they were watching TV.
Cyrus had taken it over, of course. But I just needed to find something.
Anything that still smelled like Dad or had his handwriting on it. That’s when I spotted it shoved behind the bookshelf like someone had tried to hide it.
Dad’s old iPad. 3% battery. The screen lit up and the last app open was Voice Recorder.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. The recording was dated right before we left for the hospital.
11:35 p.m. He’d labeled it grocery list, which was weird because Dad always just texted himself reminders.
I looked at the bedroom door, heard Cyrus laugh at something on the TV downstairs, and pressed play. Dad’s voice filled the room, and I almost sobbed.
It started off with him listing groceries he needed from Aldi. And then Cyrus walked into the room while he was recording.
Then confusion in his tone. “Melissa, what’s he doing here? It’s midnight.”
I heard muffled voices, movement. Then mom’s voice, sweet and calm.
“Just drink your juice, Tony.” “It’ll help you sleep.”
“It tastes Melissa. What did you” Dad sounded drowsy, confused.
Then Cyrus’s voice, matter of fact, “should take about 3 minutes.” “Potassium untraceable.”
The iPad slipped in my hands. Dad’s voice was getting distant, like he dropped the phone.
“Jasmine, our daughter. She’ll be fine,” Cyrus [clears throat] said.
“I’ll take good care of her.”
