My husband is a sailor. The main purpose of my mother-in-law’s life is to catch me with another man while he is on a voyage. She follows me from time to time, makes surprise visits, etc.
And then someone informed her I wasn’t alone at home. She breaks into the flat, runs into the bedroom and sees…
Me, in pajamas, eating pistachios in bed with my childhood best friend, Priya. Not a man.
Not anything remotely romantic. Just two women in our thirties, watching trashy TV and giggling like we were fourteen again. We looked up at her, stunned mid-laughter, as she froze like someone just hit her with a stun gun.
Priya was holding a handful of shells, mid-sentence about her latest disaster date with a Tinder guy named Manu who had shown up in Crocs and ordered milk at a bar. And there stood my mother-in-law, soaked from the rain, her hand still holding the spare key she wasn’t supposed to have. No “hello.” No apology.
Just, “Where is he?”
It took me a second. “Where is WHO?”
She looked around the room like a drug dog at an airport. “I know you’ve got someone here.
Don’t play dumb.”
Priya snorted. “Is this the surprise party?”
Now here’s where it should’ve ended. Me being right.
Her being wrong. The usual awkward silence, then storming out. Except this time, she didn’t leave.
She sat down at the kitchen table and said something that made me drop the pistachio bowl:
“Someone saw a man leaving your building yesterday. Tall. In a cap.”
I laughed.
“Okay? That could be anyone.”
She just shook her head and said, “He went into your building. And someone saw him on your floor.”
Now I was a little rattled.
I hadn’t had any visitors. My doorbell didn’t even ring. And my building has those old floors where every footstep sounds like an earthquake.
No way someone could sneak in and out without me noticing. I shrugged it off. Told her to go home.
Priya offered her a pistachio. But I didn’t sleep well that night. Over the next few days, I started noticing little things.
The soap in the bathroom moved places. A window cracked open I never opened. The toilet seat up, even though it’s just me.
My husband, Kartik, was still weeks away from docking in Mumbai. So unless Priya was secretly a standing-up pee-er and burglar, something was off. I called the building supervisor, Devansh, to ask if anyone had come into the flat for repairs.
He said no. But then he paused. “You weren’t home last Thursday, right?”
“No, I was at the market.
Why?”
“Some guy was loitering near your door. I asked him what he wanted. He said he was waiting for ‘Anandhi.’”
That’s me.
No one calls me by my first name except family. I asked what he looked like. Devansh said, “Tall.
Cap. Didn’t get a clear look. Left quickly when I pushed him.”
Now I was full-on paranoid.
Was I being watched? Was this man someone from Kartik’s past? Or mine?
I told Kartik everything over the phone. He laughed at first, then got quiet. “There’s no one who’d have reason to follow you,” he said.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
