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THE BED THAT BECAME TOO NARROW AT 3 A.M.

My name is Emily Parker. I am thirty-five years old and work as an accountant for a pharmaceutical distribution company in Illinois. My husband, David Parker, is three years older than me and works as an internal medicine doctor at a large hospital in Chicago. We have been married for eleven years and have only one child—a daughter named Lucy, who is eight years old this year.

From the very beginning of our marriage, David and I made a clear decision: we would have only one child. Not because we didn’t love children, but because we both grew up in poor families, lacking almost everything. We knew too well what it felt like to share food, to wear hand-me-down clothes, to use old and worn textbooks year after year. Because of that, we wanted to give our child the very best—both materially and emotionally.

Lucy is the embodiment of all those hopes.

She is a bright, gentle child with clear blue eyes and a smile so warm that just seeing it can wash away all my exhaustion. From the time she was little, I taught her to be independent. At three, she learned to put away her toys. At four, she fed herself. When she started kindergarten, I let her sleep in her own room, even though many people disagreed.

“She’s too young to sleep alone. What if she gets scared?” my mother once said.

But I believed that if I was always afraid for her, she would never learn to be strong.

Lucy’s bedroom is at the end of the hallway on the second floor. I decorated it myself—cream-colored walls, Disney character posters, and a solid oak bed nearly two meters long, even bigger than an adult bed. I wanted her to have as much space and comfort as possible.

And for three years, everything was perfectly fine.

Until one morning.

That morning was a Monday. I was preparing breakfast when Lucy slowly walked downstairs. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, her blonde hair messy as if she hadn’t slept well at all.

I bent down to fix her hair and asked gently:

“Did you sleep well last night?”

Lucy looked up at me and whispered,

“Mom… my bed felt too narrow last night.”

I laughed.

“Too narrow? That bed is almost two meters long! Or did you forget to clean up your stuffed animals and comic books again, leaving no space for yourself?”

Lucy shook her head, her face unusually serious.

“No, Mom. I cleaned it. But when I sleep, I feel… really uncomfortable.”

I assumed she was just being playful. Children sometimes make excuses so they can sleep with their parents. I patted her head, reassured her, and didn’t think much of it.

I was wrong.

The next day—and the day after that—Lucy said the same thing again.

“Mom, my bed is too narrow.”
“I can’t sleep well.”
“I feel like I’m being pushed to one side.”

At first, I brushed it off as childish imagination. But by the fifth day, when Lucy started crying before bedtime, I could no longer ignore it.

That night, before Lucy went to bed, I carefully checked her room. The bed was neat and empty. I even lay down on it myself—it was spacious enough for me to stretch out comfortably.

“See? Your bed is huge,” I told her.

Lucy nodded, but her eyes were still filled with unease.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

Part of me thought Lucy might be having psychological issues. But another part of me felt that something was deeply wrong. An eight-year-old wouldn’t repeatedly say the same thing night after night with such fear in her eyes for no reason.

The next morning, I decided to install a camera in Lucy’s bedroom.

David wasn’t convinced at first.

“You’re worrying too much, Emily. She’s probably just dreaming,” he said.

But when I told him Lucy had cried quietly for three nights in a row, he finally agreed.

The camera was discreetly installed in the upper corner of the room, facing the bed. I didn’t tell Lucy; I just said I was checking the smoke detector system.

The first night with the camera.

Lucy went to bed at 9 p.m. She read for about fifteen minutes, turned off the night lamp, and pulled the blanket over herself. On my phone screen, I could see clearly—the bed was completely empty, with only Lucy lying there.

Around 10 p.m., she fell asleep.

I sighed in relief, feeling foolish for worrying so much.

But at 2:57 a.m., my phone suddenly vibrated—a motion alert.

I opened the camera app.

And my heart stopped.

Lucy’s bedroom door slowly opened.

A thin figure appeared in the dim hallway light. The person walked slowly, hunched slightly, with messy white hair.

I covered my mouth, tears streaming down my face.

It was Margaret Parker—my mother-in-law.

She entered Lucy’s room with hesitant steps, her movements clumsy, as if she were sleepwalking. She didn’t turn on the light or look around. She walked straight to Lucy’s bed.

Then… she pulled back the blanket.

She lay down right next to Lucy.

Lucy stirred in her sleep, clearly being pushed toward the edge of the bed. She shifted slightly, then curled up and went still, like a small frightened kitten.

Margaret, however, fell into a deep sleep.

I sat frozen on my bed, tears falling silently. At that moment, every unanswered question in my mind suddenly made sense.

That was why Lucy said the bed was narrow.
That was why she couldn’t sleep.
That was why she was afraid of the night.

Margaret didn’t know where she was.

She had gone into the wrong room.

Margaret became a widow very early in life. When David was only seven years old, her husband died in a workplace accident. From then on, she worked countless jobs—washing dishes, sewing garments, taking night shifts at factories—to raise her son alone.

David once told me that there were days she survived on dry bread so he could have proper meals and school fees. When David was accepted into medical school, she sold her only wedding ring to pay for his first semester.

She devoted her entire life to her child.

And perhaps because of all that hardship, when she grew old, her memory began to fail her.

The first signs appeared two years ago. She forgot to turn off the stove, forgot she had just eaten, and once even got lost in her own neighborhood, sitting in a park crying like a child.

Doctors said she had age-related cognitive decline, with a risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

We brought her to live with us, thinking that being surrounded by family would be good for her.

What we didn’t realize was that at night, while everyone else slept, she would wander through the house, guided by fading memories of a mother who once held her young son every night.

Perhaps, in her confused mind, Lucy had become David from forty years ago.

I didn’t wake Lucy that night. I let the camera record until morning, then quietly held my daughter in my arms after Margaret returned to her own room.

The next morning, I told David everything.

He sat in silence for a long time, his head buried in his hands. Then he broke down—crying uncontrollably. It was the first time I had ever seen such a strong man cry.

“She must miss me so much,” he whispered.

We changed everything after that.

From then on, every night, either David or I made sure Margaret’s bedroom door was open, with a night light on and a door alarm installed. We locked Lucy’s room at night and moved her to a bedroom closer to ours. During the day, we spent more time with Margaret—talking to her, walking with her, reminding her of old memories—so she wouldn’t feel alone.

Lucy never complained about the bed being narrow again.

But every time I watch my daughter sleeping peacefully, I can’t forget the image of an elderly woman with white hair lying beside her granddaughter in the darkness.

Some loneliness has no voice.
Some memories refuse to fade quietly.
And some love, even when memory disappears, still finds its way home.