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    Cover of The Last One at the Wedding
    Thriller

    The Last One at the Wedding

    by

    Chap­ter 1 opens with the pro­tag­o­nist, Frank, receiv­ing an unex­pect­ed call from an UNKNOWN CALLER, a type of call that usu­al­ly sig­nals a scam or a mar­ket­ing pitch. Frank’s first reac­tion is to ignore it, as these types of calls are fre­quent and always seem to waste his time. How­ev­er, for rea­sons he can­not ful­ly explain, he decides to answer this one. To his sur­prise, it’s his daugh­ter, Mag­gie, the voice he has missed and yearned to hear for years. The shock of hear­ing from her caus­es a surge of excite­ment and emo­tion in him, so much so that he knocks over his cof­fee, spilling it onto his break­fast. But even as he tries to com­pose him­self, he can bare­ly make out her words due to the poor con­nec­tion. Mag­gie’s voice is faint, dis­tant, and jum­bled, which makes com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­leng­ing and frus­trates Frank. Despite the dif­fi­cul­ty, he’s deter­mined to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going, hop­ing for more clar­i­ty.

    Real­iz­ing the kitchen isn’t offer­ing the best recep­tion, Frank decides to move to anoth­er part of the house. He heads to the liv­ing room, hop­ing to improve the sig­nal, but as he walks, he trips over a pile of lum­ber from an old, unfin­ished car­pen­try project. He bare­ly catch­es him­self, the mess in his house serv­ing as a phys­i­cal reminder of the many unfin­ished tasks that have piled up over the years. Frank quick­ly brush­es off the minor injury, focus­ing sole­ly on recon­nect­ing with Mag­gie. His feet take him toward Maggie’s child­hood bed­room, a place he knows offers the best recep­tion in the house, espe­cial­ly near the win­dow over­look­ing their back­yard and the Lack­awan­na rail lines. As Frank stands there, watch­ing the famil­iar view, he checks his phone again. Three bars final­ly appear, and with renewed hope, he tries to call Mag­gie back. The sound of the ring­ing tone fills the room, and Frank holds his breath, pray­ing the con­nec­tion will hold this time.

    When Mag­gie picks up the phone again, her voice is still unclear and bro­ken. Frank strug­gles to hear her, and the dis­tor­tion only fuels his anx­i­ety. Despite the sta­t­ic, Frank remains res­olute in his desire to hear her words, des­per­ate for any infor­ma­tion about her well-being. He asks if she is okay, his voice thick with con­cern, but the con­nec­tion seems to dete­ri­o­rate fur­ther, leav­ing him feel­ing help­less. Each time he hears her speak, her words are gar­bled and frag­ment­ed, inten­si­fy­ing the emo­tion­al dis­tance that has grown between them. Just as he believes they might have final­ly estab­lished some con­nec­tion, the phone call cuts off with­out warn­ing, and the mes­sage on the screen reads CALL FAILED. Frank is left in stunned silence, hold­ing the phone in his hand, won­der­ing why the call end­ed so abrupt­ly. The dis­ap­point­ment set­tles deep inside him as he waits for the phone to ring again, but it does­n’t. His mind races with ques­tions: What did Mag­gie want to say? Why was the call so short? Why had she called in the first place, after all these years?

    This brief, inter­rupt­ed con­ver­sa­tion serves as a pow­er­ful metaphor for Frank and Maggie’s rela­tion­ship: close yet out of reach, filled with unspo­ken emo­tions but hin­dered by dis­tance and time. The drop in the call feels like a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the emo­tion­al rift between father and daugh­ter. Frank stands in Mag­gie’s old bed­room, sur­round­ed by the rem­nants of her child­hood, yet no clos­er to under­stand­ing the rea­sons behind her sud­den out­reach. The room, filled with mem­o­ries of a time when their bond was unbro­ken, now feels like a sym­bol of the unre­solved ten­sion and silence that have marked their rela­tion­ship. His mind races with con­cerns about Mag­gie’s cur­rent life, her well-being, and the years of silence between them. Frank longs for answers, but the cal­l’s abrupt end­ing leaves him with noth­ing but unan­swered ques­tions. The chap­ter ends on a note of unre­solved ten­sion, with Frank’s desire to recon­nect with Mag­gie grow­ing stronger. As he reflects on this missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­nect, he is filled with a sense of urgency, know­ing that the time to repair their rela­tion­ship is slip­ping away.

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