I’m not sure what the text message said, but it was enough to end my son’s life.

I’ll never forget the morning my son passed away. It was a beautiful autumn morning, and the leaves were rustling in the brisk wind as I made my way into my son Gary’s room. His eyes were wide open, and a small amount of drool was on the side of his face, but he wasn’t breathing. He’d been trying to get off the drugs for a long time, which is why I was surprised to see a syringe in his hand and a needle mark on his body. It had been a year since the last time he’d been sober. I texted his rehab center, telling them that I would be driving my son over on the way to the hospital. When I looked back down at my son, I could see that he had received a text message. It was a text message from an unknown number, which read, “I love you.” The text message on his phone was dated 5 hours ago, which made it the time of his death. When I read the words, “I love you,” I felt a cold chill go down my spine, and I looked around Gary’s room to make sure no one was there. He had been alone before his death. I thought maybe he’d accidentally hit send to some random number, but that cold feeling in my spine was telling me otherwise.<br><br>The funeral was sad, and a lot of people cried. I’d never realized how many people Gary had touched when he was alive. I sat in my car crying after the funeral, and when I felt like I had finished crying, I got out of the car and into the backseat. I picked up Gary’s phone, which I’d been carrying since his death. The phone was dead, so I plugged it into the charging port. It took a few minutes, but it turned on. I tried to unlock it, but it was asking for his pin. Gary knew that I knew his pin, which was the day of his birth. I put in the pin, and the phone unlocked. I then opened up his text messages to look at the text he had received from the random number. The text message was no longer there. I looked all over his phone, and couldn’t find any sign of it. The only text message he had received was from me, which was about changing his sheets. I was confused, but the cremation was calling my name, so I ignored it and put the phone in my pocket.<br><br>The rest of the day was a blur. I didn’t know what to do now that Gary was gone. I sat at home, staring at the clock, hoping it would go faster. I pulled out his phone and decided to give one last look before getting rid of it for good. The text message was back. It was the same text message, with the same unknown number, and the same time stamp. There was text above it, though. It was a text from my son, to me, saying, “Help.” It was dated 5 hours ago. The same time of death as my son, and the same time the text message saying, “I love you” was sent. I didn’t write that text message. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee at that time. I then looked at the number that Gary had texted, and it was my phone number. I then looked at the time of death, and saw that it was the same time as the text message sent to me. Which was the same time as the text message I received saying, “I love you.” It then hit me. The meaning behind it all. At 3am, Gary had sent me a text message saying, “Help.” 5 hours later, at 8am, Gary had died. Later that morning, at roughly 10 or 11am, I’d received a text message saying, “I love you” from Gary’s phone. If I had received the text message, then that meant I was the one who looked at Gary’s phone. Which meant that I was the one who had killed Gary.