For five months, I woke up each morning unable to keep food down. I lost thirty-five pounds. My hair fell out in clumps.
Three different doctors ran every test imaginable and found nothing wrong.
Then one afternoon, a stranger in an antique shop looked at the watch my son gave me, and his face went pale. He opened the back with trembling hands, and when he saw what was inside, he grabbed my wrist.
“Take this off right now.”
I stared at the tiny capsule hidden in the silver casing. My son had given me this watch for my sixtieth birthday, and I’d worn it every day since, just as he’d asked.
The watch repairman’s hands shook as he pointed to the capsule.
“Sir, let me show you what your son has done.”
My name is Lawrence Bennett. I’m sixty-one years old, a widower, and for most of my life I believed that family was sacred, that blood meant loyalty, that a father’s love for his son would always be returned in kind. I was wrong about all of it.
This is the story of how a birthday gift nearly killed me, and how a stranger’s expertise saved my life when my own son had planned my death.
Two years had passed since Margaret died. The grief had settled into something manageable, a dull ache rather than the sharp pain that used to wake me in the middle of the night.
I’d stopped expecting her to walk through the door. I’d stopped setting two places at the table.
But I still hadn’t learned to celebrate anything without her.
My sixtieth birthday arrived on a spring evening, and I hadn’t wanted any fuss. But my daughter Melissa insisted, and she was right—Margaret would have wanted me to mark the occasion. So there I was in my living room with a handful of people who cared: Melissa, a few neighbors, old Jim from my bowling league.
Trevor arrived around seven, and I was genuinely surprised to see him.
My son had been scarce for the past six months, always too busy with real estate deals to visit, always canceling plans at the last minute. But there he was with that charming smile, holding a small wrapped box.
“Happy birthday, Dad.” He hugged me tight, and for a moment he felt like the boy I remembered—the one who’d helped me build a treehouse, who’d asked thoughtful questions, who’d cried at his mother’s funeral. Melissa appeared from the kitchen, and I caught something flash across her face when she saw the gift in Trevor’s hands.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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