"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."

"The funeral home. Alice was spotted on the street right next to the funeral home last night."

Mason's text came in at 2:00 am, but I didn't see it until daybreak.

"It's the same one where your dad's service was held. She was coming out of the back exit carrying a bag. I just happened to drive past and catch her."

Dad had been gone for a long time. Why was Alice still going back there?

I took the morning off and drove straight over.

The back exit of the funeral home opened up into a small courtyard converted from an old warehouse.

A middle-aged man wearing grey coveralls stopped me. "Sir, this area is closed to the public. Who are you looking for?"

"I wanted to ask if a woman came by last night. Early 30s, hair in a ponytail."

"How are you related to her?"

"I'm her husband," I replied.

The man's posture relaxed, and a look of unnamable sympathy surfaced in his eyes.

"Ms. Carr, right? She comes here every month."

Every month?

"To do what?" I asked.

"To swap out the cloths." The man led me around the warehouse to a row of metal lockers.

The lockers were covered in labels. He pulled open a drawer in the third row, on the far left.

Inside was a small wooden box. Taped to the lid was a slip of white paper with two words written on it—Stanley Allen.

That was Dad's name.

"It's not ashes. You guys took the ashes home back then," the man said, lifting the lid. "This is just something Ms. Carr registered for private storage."

Inside was a small stack of old fabric strips, folded neatly into perfect squares.

The scent of diesel hit me instantly—thick, pungent, and familiar.

"These cloths are…"

"Ms. Carr said they were your father's personal clothes from before he passed. She cuts them into small pieces and comes by to rotate them out.

"She takes the ones where the scent has faded and replaces them with a fresh batch. We keep them in a climate-controlled locker to preserve the smell," the man explained.

I asked, "What does she do with the ones she takes?"

"I'm not entirely sure. She mentioned it in passing last time, saying she needed to place them by someone's side, and that the scent couldn't stop."

The pillow.

That was where the fabric inside the pillow came from.

She wasn't sniffing some imaginary, phantom scent.

She was sniffing the actual, physical remnants of Dad—the blend of diesel oil and tobacco that still clung to those rags.

After leaving the funeral home, I sat in my car, unable to turn the key. All ten of my fingers were shaking violently.

I called Mom six times with no response.

On the seventh try, she finally picked up.

"Leon—"

"Mom, I went to the funeral home. I saw them—the scraps of Dad's clothes. Alice goes there every month to swap them out. That's what's sewn inside the pillow. Tell me what's going on right now."

A sharp sob came from the other end of the line.

After a long silence, Mom finally spoke. "Before your dad passed—"

Suddenly, the neighbor's voice came through in the background.

Mom mumbled a quick reply, then dropped her voice low into the receiver.

"Leon, I can't explain this over the phone. Come back home. There's something you need to see."

"Tell me now," I said.

"Just come home. Some things can't be explained unless we're face-to-face."

With that, she hung up.

…

It was a three-hour drive. The sky was pitch black by the time I pulled into our hometown.

The hallway lights in our dated apartment building were half-broken.

When Mom opened the door, she looked so terribly thin that it took me a second to recognize her. Her hair had turned a shade whiter.

She ushered me inside and set a glass of water on the table. Then, she hauled a cardboard box out from the bedroom.

"During your dad's final week, he wasn't lucid very often."

She opened the box. Inside were Dad's old belongings—his reading glasses, his denture case, and a 20-year-old faux-leather wallet.

"One afternoon, he suddenly had a burst of energy. He asked Alice to help him sit up. He wanted a pen and paper."

"To write what?" I asked.

She pulled a folded piece of paper from a hidden compartment in the wallet. The edges were completely frayed from use.

"His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely hold the pen. He spent the whole afternoon writing, but he only managed half a page."

I took it from her.

The paper had already turned yellow.

Dad's handwriting had always been terrible, but the writing on this page was agonizing—crooked and jagged like a child's. The strokes clearly showed his hand trembling as he forced the pen across the paper.

The first word at the top was written in the largest font—"Leon".

The ink beneath it varied in depth, and a few spots in the middle had been blurred by water stains.

I made out the very first sentence. "I never said a kind word to you in my entire life."

The page cut off right there.

It wasn't the end of the letter. It had been violently torn in half. The bottom section was gone.

"Where's the rest?"

Mom lowered her head. "Alice has it."

"Why?"

"She said that… the time isn't right."

"What does that even mean? Dad wrote me this letter. What right does she have to keep it?"

Mom didn't answer. She simply raised her head and looked at me. There was a look in her eyes I had never seen before.

It wasn't pity. It was much heavier than pity.

It was guilt.

"Mom, what exactly did Dad say to Alice before he died?"

She picked up the glass of water, shielding half her face. Her voice was muffled against the glass as she said, "Go ask her yourself. Some things… you'll have to hear straight from her."