Leon, drink up. Finish every drop in this glass."

As my wife, Alice Carr, holds a glass of warm milk, she keeps staring at my Adam's apple intensely.

Every night, she needs to watch me finish the entire glass of milk.

At first, I think this is Alice's way of showing me her love. That is, until something occurred last month.

Back then, my neighbor's fire alarm blared extremely loudly due to a fire breaking out. Yet, I had slept like a log the whole time. Only then do I realize that something is wrong with the milk.

Last night, I pretended to go on a business trip. When I secretly go home in the middle of the night, I find out that my bedroom door is locked.

When I peek through the gap in the door, I feel my hairs rising on their ends.

It turns out that Alice isn't asleep at all. She's standing on the balcony while holding my pillow and burying her face into it. Then, she inhales the scent deeply, as though she were a drug addict. Her shoulders keep trembling violently the whole time.

It's one thing if Alice is madly addicted to my scent. The thing is, the pillowcase is a part of the bedroom set that my mom has dug up from my childhood home last week.

I never have a chance to use that pillow, so there's no way my scent lingers on the pillowcase.

Suddenly, Alice halts in her actions and raises her head. She looks up at the moon while licking her lips in an euphoric haze.

Then, she mumbles softly, "Your dad's scent… is fading away…"

"Mason, what does it mean when a woman stays up half the night just sniffing a pillow?" I asked.

The sound of a thermos lid unscrewing echoed across the line.

My colleague, Mason Hughes, took a loud sip of his tea and smacked his lips.

"What kind of pillow?"

"Brand new. I haven't even slept on it once."

"Then she's not sniffing you."

No kidding.

I was crouching in the hallway of my apartment building by the fire hydrant, my back pressed against the freezing tiles.

What my wife, Alice Carr, had said under the moonlight still stuck in my throat like a fishbone. "Your dad's scent is fading."

Dad was cremated 11 months ago.

"The thing is," I said, keeping my voice down, "she says it smells like my dad."

For once, Mason went dead silent for three whole seconds.

This was a man who had been cleaned out by three divorces and could usually never keep his mouth shut for more than two seconds.

"Your old man's been gone for almost a year."

"Yeah."

"Then who the hell is she actually smelling?"

I didn't have an answer.

"Look, man, take my advice. Rip that pillow open," Mason said, switching into full preacher mode. "My second marriage failed because of a pillow.

"My ex had hidden a gold chain her guy gave her right inside the stuffing. By day, she told me she loved me; by night, she slept with another man's present."

"This is different—"

"Every clueless man thinks his situation is different."

I hung up.

Just past 3:00 am, the bedroom door clicked open.

Alice headed into the bathroom. Under the cover of the running faucet, I slipped back inside the bedroom like a ghost.

The pillow was still sitting on the wicker chair on the balcony, glaringly white in the moonlight.

I pinched the four corners.

In the bottom right, my fingers hit something hard. It wasn't big and was tucked deep into the inner lining.

The stitches were tight and clean—Mom's handiwork.

Ever since I was a kid, every pair of pants she patched for me looked exactly like this.

The water in the bathroom stopped.

I tossed the pillow back, retreated to the living room couch, and closed my eyes to fake sleep.

Alice's footsteps came down the hall, drawing closer and closer.

She didn't go back to bed. Instead, she walked straight over to the couch and stopped.

I forced my breathing to stay steady.

Through my eyelashes, I could see her cotton slippers right in front of my face.

"Leon, you back?" she whispered.

I didn't move.

She bent down and pulled a light blanket over me. Her fingers brushed against my neck, sending a chill through me.

Then she went back to the bedroom.

The door closed, and the click of the latch echoed sharply in the dark.

At 7:00 am, a cup of warm milk sat waiting on the dining table. Everything was the same as every other day.

Alice pushed the cup over. "Drink it."

Her eyes were locked on me.

I picked up the cup.

The moment the steam hit my face, I caught a faint, bitter tang beneath the milk.

It wasn't spoiled. It smelled like crushed herbs.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No."

I took a huge gulp. The moment she turned around to grab a tissue, I spat it all out into the trash can by my feet.

Before heading out, I looked back one last time.

Alice was standing on the balcony, leaning on the railing, and gazing into the distance.

The morning sun cut a perfect silhouette of her face. She looked like the picture-perfect wife.

But a perfect wife wouldn't hold a brand-new pillow at 3:00 am, staring at the moon and whispering a dead man's name.

I sat in the car for ten minutes before I finally turned the key.

My phone buzzed. One word flashed on the screen—Mom.

"Leon, how do you like the pillow?" she asked.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly.

"Mom, you sewed something into the bottom right corner, didn't you?"

There was a sharp pause on the other end.

Her breathing suddenly turned heavy, like something was choking her.

"You opened it?"

"No. I just felt it."

A silence followed, so long that I thought the call had dropped.

Then Mom spoke in a very soft voice, as if she were forcing each word out through clenched teeth. "Leon, listen to me. Don't touch what's inside that pillow."

"Why won't she let you open your own pillow?" Mason asked.

He pushed his lunchbox aside, sending crumbs scattering across the desk.

I said, "My mom told me not to touch it either. The tone of her voice on the phone would've given you nightmares."

"A mother and wife teaming up to keep the husband in the dark," Mason said, slamming a hand on the table. The young lady at the next cubicle jumped and looked up.

Mason continued, "I've been through this three times. It's always calm before the storm."

"Can you stop relating everything to your three failed marriages?"

"Believe what you want, but think about it."

He unscrewed his thermos lid and took a heavy gulp. The tea leaves swirled against the glass. "What did the object feel like when you touched it?"

"About the size of a thumb. Soft, like fabric."

"Old or new?"

"How am I supposed to tell through the pillow lining?" I retorted.

"Alice said she smelled your dad."

Mason set his thermos down, the gossipy smirk vanishing from his face. "What did your dad smell like?"

I replied, "Diesel. He spent his whole life fixing diesel engines."

"A piece of old fabric that smells like your dead dad's diesel, sewn into a pillow by your mom, and your wife stays up in the middle of the night just to sniff it."

He lowered his voice and leaned in close. "Leon, you don't think something's seriously wrong here?"

Of course it was.

But his next words made my stomach completely turn over.

"When your dad was on his deathbed, who was watching over him?"

"Alice," I replied.

"Not you?"

"We had a massive fight back then. I hadn't gone home for three months."

"You fell out with your old man, and Alice went to nurse him in your place. How long was she by his side again?"

"Two months."

Mason didn't say another word.

He picked up his thermos and took a slow sip, but the look in his eyes was worse than any insult he could have thrown at me.

That afternoon, I grabbed an empty sterile vial from the company medicine cabinet.

When I got home that evening, Alice was cooking in the kitchen. The roar of the range hood drowned out everything else.

I took the chance to slip into the bedroom and buried my face in the pillow, inhaling deeply.

I couldn't smell anything.

She claimed the scent was fading, but I couldn't catch even a hint of diesel.

"Dinner's ready."

Alice appeared in the doorway, her apron speckled with oil and her spatula still dripping with broth.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Just checking out the pillow."

"Don't touch that pillow."

Her tone was identical to Mom's.

I asked, "Why not?"

"Mom spent a long time sewing it. You're too clumsy. You'll ruin her handiwork."

Her smile was as warm and perfectly pleasant as ever.

I stared at that smile for a few seconds, looking for a single crack, but found nothing.

After dinner, the cup of milk appeared right on schedule.

I lifted the cup, took a couple of sips, and kept the liquid in my mouth. Faking a trip to pour some water, I silently spat it out into the kitchen sink.

The faint, bitter aftertaste clung stubbornly to the back of my tongue.

I poured the remaining half-glass of milk into the sterile vial.

At 1:00 am, thinking I was fast asleep, Alice slipped quietly out of bed.

My eyes were cracked open just enough to see her grab her phone and walk out into the living room.

The glow of the screen illuminated half her face.

She dialed a number.

"Mom."

Calling "Mom" at 1:00 am? That should be my mother.

"He asked about the pillow today. Yeah… I brushed it off. He didn't open it."

Then came a pause.

I couldn't make out what the other person was saying.

"It looks like he didn't drink the medicine. He's got dark circles under his eyes."

Medicine?

My fingernails dug into my palms, sending a sharp jolt of pain through them.

"Don't worry. I won't stop… Right, I know. We can't let him find out."

Then she hung up.

The screen went dark, and the living room plunged back into pitch black darkness.

The sound of her bare feet padding back toward the bedroom felt like footsteps trampling right over my chest.

What couldn't they let me know?

The next day at noon, I slid the sterile vial across the table to Mason. He held it up, inspecting it against the window light.

A layer of fine brown powder had settled at the bottom of the yellowish liquid.

Mason shook it, shoved it into his briefcase, and zipped it shut.

"The lab results will take three days. For these three days, don't touch her milk," he said, looking up.

For once, those eyes—weathered by three divorces—looked dead serious. "Stay sharp, and keep your eyes open. Find out exactly what she's been hiding from you."

"Chamomile, lavender, valerian root, and passionflower."

Mason read the lab report word by word, like a judge delivering a criminal verdict.

"They're all herbs used for calming the nerves. Leon, Alice has been slipping this stuff into your milk every single night to knock you out."

The report didn't explicitly say "sleeping pills", but looking at the components made my fingers go completely cold.

"It's just for relaxation. Maybe she just wanted me to rest well—"

"Rest well?" Mason's voice shot up, drawing looks from across the room. He quickly dropped back to a harsh whisper.

"She doesn't want you to rest well. She wants you dead to the world. If you're not completely knocked out, how is she supposed to get up in the middle of the night to sniff that pillow? How is she supposed to make those calls? How is she supposed to do all the things she doesn't want you to see?"

I gripped the report, the paper crumpling into a tight ball inside my fist.

I took the afternoon off.

Sitting in my car, I scrolled through Alice's bank statements.

A recurring expense jumped out at me—50 bucks every single month, paid to Harmony Herbal Apothecary for 11 consecutive months.

Which meant that she had started buying the herbs regularly right after Dad passed away.

I drove over to the clinic.

It was a small, unassuming storefront squeezed between a neighborhood supermarket and a lottery shop.

"Hi, a customer named Alice Carr has a long-term prescription filled here."

"Are you a relative?"

"I'm her husband."

The clerk behind the counter tapped on the computer, scrolling through rows of prescription history.

"Ah, yes. Ms. Carr is prescribed a formula to calm the nerves and aid sleep."

"Did she say who it was for?"

The clerk looked up at me, a flicker of hesitation crossing her face. "She said it was for her husband. She mentioned that he suffers from chronic insomnia, frequent nightmares, and talks in his sleep."

"Talk about what?"

"She didn't give details. She only said you repeat one word over and over every night."

"What word?" I asked.

"Dad."

After leaving the apothecary, I sat on the curb for a long time.

I had no memory of having nightmares, let alone yelling out for anyone in my sleep.

But I did remember one morning when Alice had looked at me with bloodshot eyes and said, "You were shouting again last night."

I had asked her what I was shouting.

But she hadn't said a single word. She just poured me a cup of milk, and it had been a cup every night since.

When I got home at 8:30 pm, Alice wasn't there.

A cup of milk covered with a thermal lid sat on the coffee table, with a note tucked beneath it. "I have a late meeting tonight. Drink the milk while it's warm."

I poured the milk down the sink.

Just then, the front door clicked open.

It wasn't Alice.

It was Jessica Burns, Alice's best friend and the head of the local community union. She was the kind of woman who commanded every room she walked into, with a voice loud enough to shake the walls.

She threw her bag onto the couch and immediately started drilling into me the second she stepped past the entryway.

"Leon, are you looking into Alice?"

"Me?"

"You went to the apothecary? The clerk told Alice."

I froze.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" She ripped her coat off and flung it over the armrest. "Do you have any clue how much Alice has done for you?"

"She's drugging my milk—"

"It's an herbal concoction! Herbs! She got that prescription because she was worried about your sleep! Paid for it out of her own pocket! She was too afraid to even let you know!"

Jessica jabbed her index finger through the air, nearly poking me in the nose. "You call that drugging you?"

"Then why didn't she just tell me?"

"Tell you? Don't you know your own temper? Would you ever admit to having nightmares? Would you ever admit to crying out for your dad in the middle of the night?"

"I didn't—"

"You did." Jessica's voice suddenly dropped, and that abrupt softness hurt far worse than any shouting.

"Alice gets woken up by your night terrors every single night. She's not hiding it because she's afraid to tell you. She's doing it because she's afraid you'll—"

She caught herself.

"Afraid of what?"

"Nothing."

"Afraid of what?"

Jessica simply grabbed her bag and walked toward the door.

She paused at the threshold but didn't turn around. "Leon, there are things that would completely break you if you found out right now. She's trying to protect you."

"Finish what you're saying—"

"She told me to pass you a message." Jessica's hand rested on the doorknob.

"Before your dad passed, he told Alice something. And that conversation is something you aren't ready to hear."