When I gasped, he stepped back instantly, as though caught doing something forbidden.
“I did not mean to wake you,” he said quietly.
I sat up, clutching the sheets.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, my voice barely steady.
He looked down at the floor.
“Sleep,” he replied. “That is all.”
The following day, I confronted him in the study. He stood by the window, staring out at the tall oaks lining the driveway.
“Are you afraid of me?” I asked.
His silence was heavier than any answer.
That night, I pretended to sleep. I kept my eyes closed and my thoughts alert. He placed the chair beside the bed, closer than before, and sat on the floor with his back against it, as if guarding something fragile.
After a long while, he spoke.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes what?” I asked softly.
“I am afraid,” he admitted. “But not of you. Of what might happen when you are asleep.”
The truth came in fragments after that. His first wife had died years earlier. Officially, her death was labeled as sudden cardiac failure. He never believed it. He told me she had wandered at night, eyes open yet unseeing, moving as if guided by something else.
“One night I slept,” he said. “Only once.”
His voice broke.