The phone trembled in my hand, the screen casting a pale blue glow over my face as I watched my mother-in-law adjust the blanket on Lily’s bed. Eleanor lay there perfectly still, her eyes open, staring blankly at the ceiling while my eight-year-old daughter crowded the very edge of the mattress.
My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t malice on Eleanor’s face; it was something far more unnerving. It was complete, vacant detachment.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and crept down the hallway, my heart hammering against my ribs. I gently pushed Lily’s door open. The soft glow of the yellow nightlight confirmed what the camera had shown. Eleanor didn’t even turn her head when the door creaked. She just lay there, breathing in slow, shallow rhythm.
“Eleanor?” I whispered, keeping my voice as calm as possible so I wouldn’t startle Lily.
No response.
I walked over to the side of the bed and gently touched her shoulder. Her skin felt icy cold despite the heavy duvet. Eleanor’s eyes slowly blinked, and like a machine waking up, she rolled over, slid her feet out of the bed, and stood up. She didn’t look at me. She simply walked past me, out of the room, and down the hall toward the guest suite on the first floor where she had been staying for the past month.
I stood there for a long moment, watching Lily finally stretch out into the empty space of her bed, letting out a soft, relieved sigh in her sleep.
The next morning, I confronted Nathan before he left for his early shift at the hospital. I bypassed his usual dismissive wave and held the recorded phone footage right in front of his face.
Nathan stopped mid-motion, his coffee mug hovering inches from his mouth as he watched his mother slip into our daughter’s bed. The skepticism vanished from his eyes, replaced by a sudden, heavy exhaustion.
“She’s doing it again,” Nathan muttered, rubbing his temples.
“What do you mean ‘again’?” I asked, a cold knot forming in my stomach. “Nathan, what aren’t you telling me?”
He sighed, sitting down heavily at the kitchen island. “Before we moved her out here, the doctors warned me her cognitive decline was accelerating. She’s in the middle stages of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Chloe. But I didn’t think it was this bad. When she wanders at night, she’s not trying to scare Lily. In her mind, she’s looking for me when I was a little boy. She thinks she’s back in her old house, putting her own child to bed.”
I sank into the chair next to him, the anger melting away into a profound, aching sadness. “Why didn’t you tell me, Nathan? Lily has been terrified for a week thinking her room was haunted.”
“I was in denial,” he admitted quietly, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’m a doctor, Chloe. I’m supposed to fix people. But I can’t fix my own mother, and I didn’t want to admit she was losing her grip on reality.”
