She had slept on it for as long as anyone could remember, longer than I had been in the family, and it was thin and gray and frayed along one seam, the kind of thing you would have thrown out years ago if it had belonged to anyone else.

More than once I had offered to replace it with a good new one, and every time she had refused, with a firmness that seemed out of proportion to the object, and I had let it go, the way you let the old keep their few stubborn attachments.

That afternoon, though, once she was settled, she did something she had never done before.

She reached around and pulled the old pillow into her lap, and she held it, and she ran her worn fingertips slowly along its frayed edge, back and forth, over and over, looking down at it with an expression I could not read — something far away, something almost like a decision being weighed.