What if tomorrow simply stopped arriving? “Waiting for Tomorrow” is a Modern Myths short story about David, a retired father who has spent years moving one phone call — the one to his estranged daughter — onto the next page of his notebook. Then the date stops changing, and he has to decide whether “tomorrow” was ever really the reason he was waiting.
If you enjoy quiet, emotionally driven stories where impossible ideas reveal deeply human truths, you may also like The House at the End of Everything, another Modern Myth exploring love, memory and what remains after we’re gone.
A Modern Myths story
The kettle clicked off before David realised he had been standing in the kitchen doing nothing.
He had been looking through the window at the row of houses opposite, though there was nothing unusual to see. A delivery van blocked half the pavement. Someone’s wheelie bin had fallen over near the corner. Mrs Pritchard from number fourteen was pulling washing from the line before the rain arrived, moving with the urgency of a woman who had spent most of her life refusing to be beaten by weather.
David reached for the mug beside the sink.
It was white, with a faded blue stripe around the rim. Sarah had bought it for him years ago from a garden centre café because she said all his other mugs looked as though they had been stolen from motorway service stations. He had told her it was a mug and did not need a personality.
She had bought it anyway.
The house had grown quieter since retirement, but it was never completely silent. The fridge hummed. Pipes ticked behind the wall. The clock above the cooker made more noise than any clock had a right to make. Once, those sounds had disappeared beneath conversation, television, doors opening and closing, someone calling from another room.
Now they had the place to themselves.
He poured the water, stirred in a little milk and carried the mug to the table.
His notebook lay where he had left it that morning, beside an unopened envelope from the electricity company and a supermarket receipt he had meant to check. It was a cheap black notebook with an elastic strap and a crease down the spine. He had been using them for years. When one was full, he bought another exactly the same.
Every evening, David wrote down what needed doing the next day.
It gave the days shape.
Without the lists, one Monday could easily become another Thursday. He had discovered that after leaving work. At first, retirement had felt like a bank holiday that refused to end. Then the hours had begun spreading out, empty and indistinguishable, and he had started writing things down.
Nothing important.
Things that needed remembering.
He opened the notebook to a clean page and wrote the date at the top.
Underneath, he began the list.
Milk.
Return library book.
Phone plumber.
He paused, tapping the end of the pen against the paper.
Then he wrote:
Ring Sarah.
The letters looked too deliberate.
He placed the pen down and took a drink, though the tea was still too hot. A small sting touched the roof of his mouth. He waited for it to pass.
Sarah had not called either.
That was worth remembering.
Not that he blamed her. She worked long hours. Something to do with insurance now, though he could not have said exactly what. Her husband travelled. The children had school, football, swimming, parties. Every time they did speak, she sounded as if she were standing in the middle of three different rooms at once.
They had once spoken every Sunday.
Then one Sunday had been missed because Sarah was away.
The next, David had gone to the shops and forgotten the time.
After that, it became every other week. Then once a month. Then birthdays and Christmas. There had been no argument. No harsh words. Nothing had happened that could be pointed to and blamed.
Life had simply filled the space between them.
At first, the silence had been easy to break. He could have picked up the phone and said hello.
Then weeks became months, and hello no longer seemed enough.
He would need to explain why he had waited.
He would need to ask about the children and reveal how little he knew. He would need to hear the surprise in her voice when she answered, and perhaps the caution that followed it.
So he had begun waiting for the right time.
A quiet Sunday.
A morning when he felt more certain.
A day when he knew what to say.
He looked down at the notebook.
Ring Sarah.
He imagined her name appearing on the phone screen. He imagined the pause before she answered.
His hand moved towards the mobile lying near the edge of the table.
He stopped before touching it.
The clock above the cooker ticked once.
Then again.
David picked up the pen and drew a neat line through the words.
He wrote them again beneath the rest of the list.
Ring Sarah — tomorrow.
That looked better.
Not cancelled.
Not forgotten.
Moved.
He closed the notebook and fastened the elastic strap around it.
Outside, the first drops of rain struck the kitchen window. Mrs Pritchard had already gone indoors, the washing rescued. The delivery van had moved on. Evening settled over the street without ceremony.
David carried his mug to the sink and turned off the kitchen light.
Tomorrow would do.
It always had.
David woke at half past seven without needing the alarm.
For thirty-eight years he had risen before dawn for work. Retirement had taken away the job but not the habit. He lay still for a moment, listening to the house settle around him, then swung his feet onto the carpet and reached for the dressing gown hanging behind the bedroom door.
Downstairs, the notebook was exactly where he had left it.
He glanced at the list while the kettle boiled.
Milk. Return library book. Phone plumber. Ring Sarah — tomorrow.
He smiled faintly.
“Tomorrow,” he muttered, as though confirming an appointment.
After breakfast he walked to the village shops. It was only ten minutes away, a route he had walked so often he barely noticed it anymore. Past the postbox with peeling red paint. Across the pedestrian crossing outside the primary school. Left at the bakery that always smelled better than it tasted.
People nodded. Morning. Morning. Morning.
He knew most of them by face and almost none by name.
Inside the supermarket, he collected the milk, a loaf of bread he hadn’t written down, and a packet of biscuits he didn’t need.
The cashier looked no older than his youngest grandson.
“Doing anything nice today?” she asked as she scanned the shopping.
David shrugged. “Oh, you know.”
She smiled politely. “So… not much then.”
He laughed. “Not much sounds about right.”
Outside, he folded the receipt into his wallet and slipped his phone back into his pocket.
It buzzed almost immediately. Not a call. A reminder.
Sophie’s birthday — 6 days.
He frowned for a second before remembering.
Sarah’s eldest. Seventeen already.
He could still picture her at seven, insisting he wear a paper crown at her birthday party because everyone else had one.
Seventeen.
He wondered how tall she was now. Whether she still played the piano. Whether she had passed her driving test.
He realised he didn’t know the answer to any of those questions.
His thumb hovered over Sarah’s name in his contacts.
Just ring. Just say hello. Ask how everyone is.
It wasn’t difficult. It shouldn’t have been.
A couple walked past pushing a pram. David looked up. When he looked back down, the phone screen had gone dark.
He slipped it into his pocket.
“I’ll do it tomorrow.”
The words came so naturally he barely heard himself say them.
That afternoon he returned the library book. The librarian stamped the return date with a satisfying thump.
“Finished it already?”
“It was good.”
“What are you after next?”
David wandered along the shelves without really looking. He picked a novel because the cover looked familiar. As the librarian scanned it, she smiled.
“See you tomorrow.”
The words hung between them for a heartbeat.
David smiled back. “Yes…” He paused. “…see you then.”
Walking home, he couldn’t remember why that reply had felt strange. He told himself he was just getting old. The thought passed as quickly as it had arrived.
David didn’t think about Sarah again until that evening.
The shopping had been put away. The plumber had promised to come on Thursday, though experience suggested that meant sometime before Christmas. The library book sat unopened on the arm of the chair while a quiz show muttered away in the background, asking questions to contestants who seemed far too pleased with themselves.
He turned the television off halfway through.
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was familiar.
He wandered into the spare bedroom. It had never really become a spare room. It was still full of life that had simply stopped happening there. A single bed pushed against the wall. An old pine wardrobe. A shelf of children’s books that nobody had read in years.
He smiled when he noticed a faded height chart pencilled onto the back of the door frame.
Sarah – 8. Sarah – 10. Sarah – 13.
Each line had a date beside it. The last mark was almost twenty years old.
He ran his finger over the pencil lines, careful not to smudge them, though they had survived two decades without his help.
Funny the things people never painted over.
He closed the door.
Back downstairs, he opened the kitchen drawer looking for a takeaway menu and found something else instead.
A birthday card. It had never been posted.
He frowned, trying to remember. Then it came back.
Sophie’s sixteenth birthday. He had bought the card weeks early. He had even written inside it.
Hope you have a wonderful birthday. Love, Grandad.
He had planned to drop it round. Then work around the house had got in the way. A few days later it had felt awkward arriving late. A week later it had seemed pointless.
After that…
He had put it in the drawer.
“I’ll take it next time.”
There had never been a next time.
David sat down heavily at the kitchen table. The card lay open in front of him. The handwriting looked older somehow, although it was his own.
He wasn’t a bad father. He had never shouted. Never walked away. Never chosen work over family because he wanted to.
Life had simply become crowded. There was always another bill. Another job. Another weekend.
Then retirement arrived, and with it something he had expected to be given more of.
Time.
Instead, it seemed to disappear faster than ever.
He looked across the kitchen at the black notebook. It was still where he had left it the night before.
Without thinking, he opened it. Tomorrow’s list stared back at him.
Milk. Return library book. Phone plumber. Ring Sarah — tomorrow.
His hand reached for the pen. For a moment he considered crossing out the last line.
Not because he had done it.
Because he was going to do it now.
The pen hovered above the paper. He imagined the phone ringing. He imagined Sarah answering. He imagined the tiny pause while she worked out who was calling.
He placed the pen back on the table.
“Not this late,” he whispered. “It’ll keep until tomorrow.”
He closed the notebook.
Outside, the streetlights blinked on one by one, washing the road in soft amber light. Inside the house, the clock above the cooker ticked steadily on, marking another ordinary evening that felt exactly like the one before it.
The rain had stopped during the night, leaving the garden washed clean.
David spent most of the day doing the sort of jobs that never really appeared on lists. He tightened the loose hinge on the back gate. Pulled a few weeds from the flowerbed. Stood in the shed for ten minutes trying to remember why he had gone in there.
By late afternoon, he had achieved very little and was oddly satisfied with it. Retirement had taught him that not every day needed to justify itself.
As evening settled over the street, he made another cup of tea and carried it into the lounge. The news was on. Flooding in the north. A minister resigning. A celebrity wedding. The weather promised sunshine by the weekend.
David watched without really listening.
His phone buzzed. For a brief second his heart lifted. Then he saw the screen.
Electricity bill due tomorrow.
He smiled to himself. “Nothing lets you forget, does it?”
The phone went back onto the arm of the chair.
Just before bed, he wandered into the kitchen. The notebook was waiting. He slipped the elastic band free and turned to a fresh page.
Pay electricity. Buy bird seed. Pick up prescription.
His pen paused. He didn’t need to look. He already knew what belonged next.
Ring Sarah.
He stared at her name for a long time. Long enough for the tea beside him to cool. Long enough for the kitchen clock to tick through another minute.
He reached for his phone. Found her contact. His thumb rested over the call button.
He could do it now. There was nothing stopping him.
He pictured her answering.
Or worse… not answering. Perhaps she was putting the children to bed. Perhaps she was out. Perhaps she would look at the screen, see his name and wonder why he was calling after so long.
The doubts arrived one after another, each sounding perfectly reasonable.
Not this late. She’ll be busy. Tomorrow’s better.
He locked the phone and laid it face down. Then, with slow, careful handwriting, he added one final word to the end of the line.
Ring Sarah tomorrow.
He closed the notebook. Turned off the kitchen light. Checked the back door. Checked it again. Then climbed the stairs.
Outside, the moon drifted behind a bank of cloud. Inside, David fell asleep believing tomorrow would be waiting for him, just as it always had.
It was the last ordinary night the world would ever know.
David woke to the sound of birdsong and a lawnmower somewhere down the road.
For a moment he lay still, trying to remember what day it was. Then he remembered.
Pay the electricity bill. Pick up the prescription. Ring Sarah.
He smiled. Today.
He showered, dressed and wandered downstairs, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The kettle went on. Two slices of toast disappeared into the toaster. The radio came alive with its usual mixture of traffic reports, cheerful music and voices that sounded far more awake than he felt.
“…we’ll have more on that story after the weather.”
David paid little attention. He buttered the toast. Poured the tea. Opened the notebook.
He had just reached for his pen to cross off Pay the electricity bill when the radio presenter spoke again.
“We’re receiving an unusually high number of reports this morning from listeners who say the date on their phones hasn’t updated overnight.”
David frowned. He glanced at the microwave. The display showed 17. His watch showed the same. Nothing unusual there.
He reached for his mobile. The screen lit up. For a second he thought he’d forgotten to charge it. Then he realised what had caught his eye.
The date. It was exactly the same as yesterday.
He smiled to himself. “Software update.”
It happened often enough. He unlocked the phone and opened the calendar. The same date. He closed it. Opened it again. Still the same.
The radio continued. “Several mobile providers have confirmed they’re investigating what appears to be a widespread synchronisation issue. Computer systems across parts of Europe are reportedly showing the same date as yesterday. Officials have advised there’s no cause for concern.”
David chuckled. “Someone’s had a bad night.”
He carried his tea into the lounge and switched on the television. Every channel was covering the same story. Newsreaders were smiling politely, trying not to overreact. Experts talked about satellites. Software. Time servers. Cyber attacks. Nobody seemed particularly worried.
One presenter laughed. “I suppose if it’s still yesterday, none of us have aged.”
The studio joined in. David smiled too.
It would be sorted by lunchtime. Things like this always were.
He finished his tea, collected his wallet and keys, and headed for the front door. As he opened it, Mrs Pritchard from across the road looked up from clipping her roses.
“Morning, David.”
“Morning.”
She hesitated. “Funny old day, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “They’ll fix it.”
She nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. “I expect they will.”
David locked the door behind him and walked towards the shops. The street looked exactly as it always had. Cars passed. Children walked to school. Someone argued with a parking warden. Everything was perfectly ordinary.
Yet as he reached the end of the road, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. He just couldn’t have said what.
By lunchtime, nobody was laughing anymore.
The supermarket had stopped accepting card payments for a while that morning. Not because the tills had failed, but because every receipt carried yesterday’s date. The manager had written today’s offers on a whiteboard. Halfway through the morning someone rubbed out the word today. Nobody could agree what to replace it with.
David queued for his prescription behind an elderly couple quietly arguing.
“It can’t still be yesterday.”
“I’m not saying it is.”
“Well, what are you saying then?”
The man looked genuinely lost. “I don’t know.”
Neither did anyone else.
Walking home, David passed the newsagent. Every newspaper carried different headlines but the same date. A delivery driver stood beside his van staring at a clipboard.
“I’ve delivered this twice already,” he muttered.
His colleague looked over. “No…” He swallowed. “You delivered it… today.”
The sentence sounded awkward. Not wrong. Just incomplete.
David kept walking. The words stayed with him.
Back home, the television remained on while he unpacked the shopping. Every channel had abandoned its normal schedule. There were interviews with software engineers, astronomers, physicists, religious leaders. Each had a different explanation. None of them matched what people were experiencing.
A university professor summed it up best. “We can measure the passing of time.” He paused. “But measurement and experience are not always the same thing.”
David frowned. He wasn’t sure what that meant.
The afternoon drifted by. The sun crossed the sky exactly as it always had. Children came home from school. The post arrived. A dog barked somewhere down the street. Everything behaved exactly as it always had.
Except nothing felt as though it were moving forward.
It wasn’t something David could see. It was something he felt. Like walking into a room and knowing someone had just left, even though you hadn’t seen them go.
That evening, he carried his notebook to the kitchen table. The ritual began as it always did. He uncapped his pen. He opened to a fresh page.
Then he stopped.
The page remained blank. Not because he had forgotten what needed doing. Because he couldn’t think what to write at the top.
He looked at yesterday’s page. Then the blank one.
Yesterday. Blank. Yesterday. Blank.
He frowned. The date refused to come. Not just the number. The word.
Tomorrow.
It sat somewhere just beyond reach, like the name of an actor he knew he should remember.
He whispered it to himself. “To…”
The rest wouldn’t come.
His chest tightened. For the first time that day, fear slipped quietly into the room. Not loud. Not sudden. Just the unmistakable feeling that something ancient, dependable and completely ordinary…
…had failed to arrive.
David slept badly. Not because he was frightened. Because something refused to settle in his mind. He woke several times during the night, each time convinced he had forgotten something important. By morning, the feeling remained, though he still couldn’t have said what it was.
The television was already on before the kettle had boiled. The newsreader looked as though she hadn’t slept either.
“…for a second consecutive day, the date remains unchanged. Government officials continue to urge calm while experts investigate what has now become a worldwide phenomenon.”
David looked out of the window. Across the road, Mrs Pritchard was hanging washing on the line. Exactly as she had yesterday. Only this time she wasn’t humming. She stopped halfway through pegging up a sheet and stared at the sky for a long moment before carrying on.
The village felt different. Not louder. Quieter. The jokes had gone. People still opened shops. Children still walked to school. Buses still ran. Life continued. Yet everyone seemed to speak more carefully, as though ordinary sentences had become unexpectedly fragile.
“I’ll see you…” A pause. “…later.”
“Maybe next…” Another pause. “…when this is over.”
The missing word left tiny silences in every conversation. David hadn’t realised how often people relied on it until it wasn’t there.
At the bakery, the young assistant handed him his loaf. “Anything else?”
He almost said it. “No, that’ll do until…” His voice trailed away.
She gave him a knowing smile. “I keep doing that too.”
Neither of them finished the sentence. Neither needed to.
On the walk home, David passed the park. A father sat on a swing beside his little daughter. He wasn’t pushing her. He was simply watching her laugh. His phone rang. David noticed the man glance at the screen. Then press the red button.
Whoever it was could wait.
The man stood up, walked over to his daughter and pushed the swing higher instead. The little girl squealed with delight.
David found himself smiling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone ignore a ringing phone without apologising.
Back at home, he opened the notebook. The blank page was still waiting. He tried writing the date. His pen hovered. Nothing came.
Instead, almost without thinking, he wrote a single line in the middle of the page.
Ring Sarah.
There was no promise beneath it. No “later.” No “when things settle down.” No word to move it into another day. Just three simple words.
He stared at them for a long time.
For years, the notebook had been a place to move things forward. Now, for the first time, it had become a place where there was nowhere left to hide.
The phone sat only a few feet away. David looked at it. Then at the notebook. Then back again.
Slowly, he reached for it.
David picked up the phone before he had time to change his mind. Sarah’s name was still exactly where it had always been. He pressed it.
The ringing began almost immediately. Once. Twice. Three times. His stomach tightened. Every ring made hanging up feel harder.
What if she answered? What if she didn’t?
Four rings. His thumb drifted towards the red button. Five.
The call connected.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t Sarah. A young voice. Bright. Careless.
“Hello?”
David froze. He recognised it instantly. Sophie. Not the little girl in the paper crown. A young woman. Older. Confident. He hadn’t heard her voice in years.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
His mouth had gone dry. He opened it. Nothing came. A lifetime of ordinary tomorrows crowded into a single impossible silence.
“Dad?” The voice was further away now. “Mum… I think someone’s pocket-dialled me.”
David ended the call.
The screen went black. He sat perfectly still, the phone resting in his hand. Not because he had been rejected. Because he had rejected himself. Again.
He placed the phone carefully on the table. The notebook lay open beside it.
Ring Sarah.
The words looked different now. Smaller somehow. Not a task. A question.
Outside, somewhere along the street, a front door closed. A child laughed. Someone called to a neighbour across a garden fence. Life carried on.
Only David remained exactly where he had been yesterday.
For the first time since Tomorrow failed to arrive, he wondered whether Tomorrow had ever really been the reason he hadn’t made the call.
Perhaps Tomorrow had simply been the excuse.
The next morning, the world felt gentler. Not happier. Just quieter.
David walked into the village with no real purpose beyond leaving the house. The air carried the smell of fresh-cut grass. A church bell sounded somewhere in the distance. Outside the florist, a handwritten sign simply read:
Open.
Nothing else. No offers. No promises about tomorrow’s delivery. Just… open.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. People had stopped asking questions they knew nobody could answer. Instead, they had started asking different ones.
“How are you?”
“Have you got time?”
“Fancy a cup of tea?”
Small questions. Present tense.
At the bakery, the young assistant recognised him. “Good morning, David.”
“Morning.”
She handed over his loaf before he’d even asked for it. “My grandad came round last night.”
“Oh?”
“We hadn’t seen him in nearly a year.” She smiled to herself. “He just turned up.”
“That was nice.”
“It was.” She hesitated. “I think people are remembering what’s important.”
David nodded politely, but her words followed him out into the street.
The park was busier than usual. Parents sat on the grass instead of watching from benches. Teenagers had abandoned their phones for a football. An elderly couple walked hand in hand, laughing over something neither of them could remember well enough to explain.
Outside the care home, every parking space was full. David slowed as he passed. Visitors carried flowers, photographs, homemade cakes. One woman simply held her mother’s hand through an open window. No one looked rushed.
The world hadn’t stopped. It had slowed down. For the first time in years, people seemed to understand that whatever mattered could not be carried into another day.
It had to be carried now.
David found himself standing outside the phone shop without remembering how he’d got there. The display televisions all showed the same news channel. A reporter stood in the middle of London. Behind her, thousands of people filled the streets. Not protesting. Not panicking. Talking. Laughing. Hugging.
The reporter looked into the camera. “We’re seeing extraordinary scenes across the country. Families are reuniting. Old disagreements are being put aside. Hospitals have reported record numbers of visitors. Charities say volunteers have arrived without being asked.”
She paused, listening to something in her earpiece. “One thing keeps coming up in every interview.”
An elderly man standing outside a railway station: “I kept saying I’d visit my brother next month.”
A woman: “I always thought there’d be more time.”
A teenage boy: “I don’t really know why I waited.”
The reporter looked back into the camera. “It seems the disappearance of Tomorrow has reminded people that Today was never meant to be a waiting room.”
David stood motionless. He looked around. A father was teaching his son to ride a bicycle. A young woman sat on a bench beside an older man, both laughing over a bag of chips. Across the road, Mrs Pritchard was talking to a neighbour she had barely acknowledged for years.
Nothing miraculous had happened. The world had not become kinder overnight. People had simply stopped assuming there would always be another chance.
David slipped his hand into his pocket and felt his car keys.
For the first time in years, he knew exactly where he was going.
David hadn’t driven to Sarah’s house in almost four years.
The sat-nav offered the route before he had finished typing her address. He ignored it. He knew the way.
The roads were familiar enough to drive without thinking, though today he noticed things he had long since stopped seeing. The oak tree where Sarah had insisted on collecting acorns every autumn. The village hall where she had danced on a stage far too big for her. The lay-by where they had once stopped to watch a barn owl hunting across the fields because she had refused to leave until it flew.
He smiled. He couldn’t remember what she had worn yesterday. Yet he remembered those moments as clearly as if they had happened that morning.
The journey took less than half an hour. He had spent years convincing himself it was much farther.
He turned into her street and drove slowly past the row of houses. Children’s bicycles lay scattered across front gardens. A dog barked behind a fence. Someone was mowing a lawn. Nothing about the street suggested it had become the most difficult place in the world to visit.
He pulled over opposite her house and switched off the engine.
The silence arrived immediately. His hands remained on the steering wheel. He looked at the front door.
Blue. He had painted it himself one summer when she’d bought the house. She had wanted red. He had talked her into blue because, in his words, “You’ll thank me in ten years.”
She never had.
He found himself laughing quietly. Then the laugh disappeared.
What if she wasn’t home? What if she was?
He rested his forehead against the steering wheel. He could leave. Nobody would know he had been here. He could drive home. Wait. Try again…
The thought stopped halfway through.
Try again… when?
There was no answer. For the first time in his life, there wasn’t another day waiting to carry his courage for him.
Only this one.
David took a slow breath. Picked up his keys. Opened the car door.
The afternoon air was warm against his face. He closed the door gently behind him. The sound echoed through the quiet street.
Every step towards the gate felt strangely deliberate, as though he were walking through years rather than metres.
He reached the path. The little flowerbed beside the drive was overflowing with lavender. Sarah had never managed to keep plants alive as a teenager. Apparently she’d learned.
He smiled again.
At the front gate he stopped. Not because he wanted to turn back. Because he wanted, just for a moment longer, to believe that he still could.
Then he pushed the gate open. It creaked exactly as it always had.
David walked to the front door. He stood there, listening to the muffled sounds of a television somewhere inside. His heart beat so loudly he wondered if she would hear it before the knock.
He lifted his hand. For a second it hovered in the air. Then, before fear could find another excuse, he knocked.
The sound seemed louder than it should have. David stood perfectly still. For a moment, nothing happened. He wondered if she was out. Part of him hoped she was.
Then he heard footsteps. Slow at first. Then closer. The handle turned. The door opened.
Sarah stood there.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. She looked older than the woman he carried in his memory. There were faint lines around her eyes now. Threads of silver had found their way into her hair. She wore an old university sweatshirt and held a tea towel in one hand.
She stared at him, searching his face as though trying to decide whether she was looking at the man she remembered or someone who merely resembled him.
“Dad?”
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t warmth. It was surprise.
David realised he had imagined this moment a thousand times. In every version, he had prepared a speech. An apology. An explanation. A reason for all the birthdays he had missed, all the Sunday afternoons that had quietly slipped away, all the phone calls that had become tomorrow’s problem.
Standing there, none of those words survived.
The silence between them was not empty. It was filled with years.
He looked at his daughter. Really looked at her. Not the little girl whose height he had marked on the back of a bedroom door. Not the young woman waving goodbye as she drove to university. The woman standing in front of him. The one he still had.
His eyes filled before he noticed they had.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked. “I…” He stopped.
Then, with the honesty that had taken him years to find, he said the only words that mattered.
“I was waiting for tomorrow.”
Sarah looked at him for a long time. The afternoon breeze stirred the lavender beside the path. Somewhere down the street, children laughed. Life carried on around them, patient and ordinary.
She stepped back from the doorway. Just enough to leave space.
David looked at the opening. Then at his daughter.
And, for the first time in years…
…he stepped into today.
The End.
If Waiting for Tomorrow resonated with you, you might also enjoy these Modern Myths:
- The House at the End of Everything – A story about love that survives even when memory fades.
Read another Modern Myth
If you enjoyed this story’s blend of the impossible and the deeply human, visit the Modern Myths collection to discover more standalone tales exploring love, hope, grief and the choices that shape our lives.
Explore More Short Stories
Looking for something different? Browse my collection of Short Stories, from psychological fiction and military-inspired tales to speculative fiction and suspense.
Behind the Stories
Visit the Blog for a behind-the-scenes look at my writing process, the inspiration behind my fiction, and the lessons learned while creating books, graphic novels and modern myths.
You may also enjoy exploring Quill Marlowe, my Victorian detective series, or the Monster Accord, where government conspiracies and monsters collide in a very different kind of mythology.