For months, my husband had been sleeping on the couch, and it wasn’t until I finally took a look at his pillow that I uncovered the reason.
For months, my husband, Travis, had grown distant—snapping over small things, retreating to the couch with his old Lakers pillow like it was sacred. He spent more time in the basement, came home smelling of antiseptic, and guarded that pillow as if it were a locked safe.
One night, while he was out, I finally tore it open. Inside were bags of human hair—bundled, labeled, with handwritten notes. My skin crawled. I called the police.
When officers confronted him, Travis admitted the hair was for making wigs. At the station, he explained: his mother had died of leukemia in college, wearing a cheap, ill-fitting wig they couldn’t afford to replace. He’d promised himself he’d one day make real, beautiful wigs for people like her.
After our daughter left for college, the silence brought back the guilt—and he quietly began teaching himself wig-making, afraid I’d think he’d lost his mind.
In the weeks that followed, we turned the dusty room behind the garage into his workshop. We donated wigs to hospitals, sold some to fund better tools, and, in the soft hum of the sewing lamp, we began to find our way back to each other.
