Every Tuesday at 3 PM
Every Tuesday at exactly 3 PM, my mother dialed the same wrong number.
She did this for six years.
“Hello, this is Susan. Is Robert there?”
The answer never changed. “No Robert here. Wrong number.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to bother you.”
Click.
Then she’d hang up, smile to herself, and set a reminder for the next Tuesday.
At first, I thought something was wrong. My mom was 71. I worried it was memory loss, maybe the early signs of dementia.
“Mom,” I finally said, “that’s not Robert’s number. You’ve called it hundreds of times. Why do you keep calling?”
She looked at me like I was missing something obvious.
“I know it’s not Robert’s number.”
“Then why do you call?”
“Because someone answers.”
That’s when she told me about Dorothy.
Dorothy was 83 years old. She lived alone. She rarely left her apartment. Severe social anxiety had slowly shrunk her world until the phone was the only voice she heard all week.
Six years earlier, my mom had accidentally dialed her brother’s old number. Dorothy answered. They talked for two minutes. When my mom apologized for calling the wrong number, Dorothy quietly said, “Please call again anyway. Nobody ever calls me.”
So my mother did.
Every Tuesday.
Exactly twelve minutes.
They talked about nothing important — the weather, television shows, Dorothy’s cat. Then my mom would say she had to go, and Dorothy would say okay.
They never changed the script.
They pretended it was an accident.
Not kindness. Not choice. Just coincidence.
“Why pretend?” I asked.
“Because accepting help is hard,” my mom said. “Accepting a wrong number is easy.”
Last year, my mother died suddenly from a heart attack.
That Tuesday, I found Dorothy’s number and called.
“Hello?”
“Hi… my name is Sarah. I’m Susan’s daughter. I think you were expecting her call today.”
There was silence. Then crying.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
After a long pause, Dorothy said something I will never forget.
“Your mother’s voice every Tuesday kept me alive. Four times, I was ready to end everything. And every time, at 3 PM, she called. I couldn’t do it after hearing her.”
I call Dorothy now.
Every Tuesday.
Same time.
Same wrong number.
Because my mother taught me something simple and powerful:
Sometimes the most important call you make is to the wrong person — on purpose.
And you keep calling…
For as long as someone answers.
