The previous owner of my phone number keeps getting messages from one person who loves him

I have had Daniel’s old phone number for eighteen months.

I know his name because people keep asking for him.

At first the messages were ordinary: a dentist reminder, a photo of somebody’s new deck, a group text about a fantasy league. I replied with the same sentence every time: “This number no longer belongs to Daniel.”

Most people apologized and disappeared.

One person did not.

She never signs her messages, but I think she is Daniel’s mother. Every Sunday evening she sends something small.

“The tomatoes finally turned red.”

“Your aunt says the blue shirt is still at her house.”

“Dad pretended he wasn’t watching for your car.”

The first time, I replied that she had the wrong number. The message showed as delivered. She wrote back, “I know.”

Then the Sunday messages continued.

For months, I did not answer. I read them in the preview and deleted them. They were not dramatic. That made them harder to dismiss. She sent photographs of a repaired porch step, a birthday cake with one slice missing and a dog asleep beneath a kitchen table. Once she wrote, “No news required. Just leaving the porch light on.”

I should have blocked the number.

Instead, on New Year’s Eve, she sent, “I hope you are somewhere warm.”

I replied, “I am.”

It was true about me. I was in my apartment under two blankets. I do not know whether it was true about Daniel.

She responded with a heart.

That one answer changed the messages. She still wrote mostly about home, but sometimes she asked questions. Was I eating? Had I found work? Did I still hate mushrooms?

I answered only twice more. “Yes” to eating. “Still hate them” to mushrooms, although I actually like mushrooms.

I do not know why I did it. The easiest explanation is curiosity, but that is incomplete. My own mother died when I was in college. There was something comforting about receiving the kind of ordinary concern that assumes you can be reached every Sunday.

I never claimed to be Daniel. I also never corrected the person after she told me she knew the number had changed. We created a strange arrangement in which she could write toward her son and I could occasionally answer from the space where he was not.

Last Sunday, she sent an address.

“I’m selling the house in May. There is a box in the hall closet with your name on it. I won’t open it. Please tell me where to send it.”

I searched the address. I found an old community newsletter that names a Daniel with the same last name as the homeowner. I also found what appears to be a current business profile for him in another state.

I could send him a message through that profile. But I would have to explain how I know about the box, which means revealing the Sunday messages and my three replies. Contact from a stranger could also be unwelcome if Daniel changed his number to escape this relationship.

I could tell the sender clearly that I am not Daniel and never was. That may end the arrangement, but it leaves the box and whatever family history sits behind it.

I could provide Daniel’s public work contact without contacting him first. That feels worse.

The most honest message I can imagine is: “I am the stranger who received these. I answered sometimes because I missed my own mother. I am sorry. I cannot speak for Daniel.”

But honesty does not undo the fact that, for more than a year, I accepted messages written into someone else’s absence.

Do I owe Daniel a warning, the sender a confession or both? And is there any respectful way to connect them without deciding that estrangement is a problem I am entitled to solve?