It was dusk by then. I pushed the accelerator and rushed away from that place, but the image of that scar kept haunting me. The more I thought about it, the more the chords connecting me to reality seemed to loosen. And just as one was about to snap, my wife shouted, "Be careful! There's a dog ahead!"
I slammed the brakes, but the car screeched forward a few centimeters before stopping—just inches away from the dog. Strangely, the dog didn't move at all, even after the car halted.
He sat perfectly still in front of the car, staring into my eyes, wagging his tail.
"Poor thing, I think he's too shocked to move," my wife said sympathetically.
"Mumma, let's go and check," Leo urged. My wife turned back to take him in her arms.
In the process, she accidentally pressed a button, and the bonnet sprang open, blocking our view.
"Oh, damn. Don't worry, I'll fix it after we step out," she said.
She opened the door, and both of them stepped out. At that moment, her phone began vibrating—someone was calling. She set Leo down and bent to take her phone out of her bag.
Suddenly, Leo screamed, "Mumma! The dog vanished!"
"Huh? What are you saying? Check on that side—he might be there," my wife suggested.
But then, our ears caught a low growling sound. I felt it was coming from the backseat.
I rolled my eyes up to the rear-view mirror, hoping it was just an illusion. But sweat trickled down my forehead as soon as I saw it. Once again, my gut proved right—ninety times out of a hundred.
It was the dog. Yet my heart screamed with all its strength that it wasn't him.
Saliva dripped from his pointed teeth—thick and shiny. This time, he wasn't wagging his tail. He wasn't barking. He wasn't even growling. He stood frozen, muscles taut, as if he was taking the grip to leap on me.
At the same time, he was shivering. And then I noticed—tears rolling down his eyes. He didn't blink. His gaze was locked on me, as though he knew something I didn't.
I decided not to break our eye contact. I kept thinking of all the different ways I could block that beast from reaching my son or wife. In other words, I was ready to sacrifice myself to protect them.
But in my wife's mind, something else was going on. She pulled out a piece of sausage and threw it at him. He didn't eat it, but as the sausage struck him, he grew furious and began to growl.
"Why did you do that?" I shouted. Our eye contact broke, and the beast lunged toward me. My heart hammered against my ribs, but deep down I felt a strange satisfaction—he had chosen me instead of my wife.
"Buzzzzzzz…" That was the sound I heard before the beast collapsed into my lap.
"Are you alright?" my wife cried. I was too shocked to answer, too busy trying to understand what had just happened. Where had she gotten that thing? Since when had she been carrying it? Why had she brought it here?
And then it struck me—it had been seven years, and yet I still had so much to learn about her.
She reached me and shook me so hard that I saw stars and galaxies.
"Mommy, I didn't find it," Leo said, his face clouded with dissatisfaction.
"Oh! Here it is," he exclaimed with joy a moment later. "But what happened to him?"
His innocence and expressions lifted our stress, and we burst into laughter.
"I think first we should take care of this beast," my wife said.
So, I opened the gate and stepped out of the car. I lifted the dog gently, placed him under a tree on the footpath, and covered him with a piece of cloth lying nearby. After leaving the dog under the tree, the image of that scar returned to me, as if the beast itself had carried me back to him.
Later when I reached back, we settled ourselves in the car and rushed toward home. The road was nearly empty. Only a few cars passed, and their number dwindled as we moved away from the highway.
Everything around us was wrapped in a blanket of silence. I increased the speed of the car, as Leo and both of us were exhausted. The faster I drove, the louder the silence seemed to grow. Even the sound of the tires turning was sharp and clear. But this silence felt ominous, heavy, unnatural.
I was again lost in the thoughts of that scar and that man. Neither the man nor his scar was ordinary. It felt as if these were signs—that the time had come, a time expected by both me and my wife, yet invited by neither of us.
Lost in these thoughts, I finally reached home. I dropped Leo and Bella at the main gate and drove the car to the spot where I usually parked. After locking it, I started back toward the house. But on the way, Richard's face flashed in my mind.
Richard was also a suspicious character. The channel had never notified me about his visit, and sending an employee to someone's home without prior notice seemed highly unprofessional for a renowned channel like theirs. More importantly, he hadn't come to our home—he was standing beside my car, waiting for us, as if he already knew we would be arriving there.
When I reached home, the main gate was wide open. It was quite unusual for Bella to do such mistakes. She was tired perhaps- her exhaustion made her commit this negligence.
While thinking all these things I took off my shoes and locked the door. By that time, my wife and son were already asleep. Exhausted, I decided to take a bath before going to bed. I removed my shirt and sat on the sofa beside the bed to catch my breath.
"Can't you feel the temperature rising? Quit with that showoff," my wife said sarcastically. Her voice shocked me for a second as I thought that she was in deep sleep.
"Umm… I guess I can't do that," I replied.
"And may I know why?" she asked.
"Because I think there's a need for one more Leo to fill the last empty place in our family," I whispered into her ear. Her ears turned red at those words. She pushed me away playfully and went back to bed beside Leo.
Teasing her had become one of my favorite hobbies since the day I met her. Then, I headed to the bathroom and took a shower. Even under the spray of water, the thought of her lingered in my mind.
After bathing, when I was about to go to bed, my eyes caught sight of a dress lying on the floor. Perhaps my wife had meant to hang it on the hanger near the door. It was the same dress she had worn at the fare. As I picked it up, a tuberose—a small white flower—fell from the fabric.
Where had it come from? As far as I remembered, I hadn't seen a single tuberose at the fare. And there was no chance of one being there, since tuberoses are avoided in public gatherings due to their intense scent.
Suddenly, I remembered—the flower shop on that roadside. Tuberose were there. They had been kept outside, right there. This realization sent a chill down my spine. According to Leo, she had been at the fare; he saw her there. Then what was this tuberose doing on her dress?
How could she be in two places at the same time? All these thoughts were roaming around my mind. She was definitely hiding something from me. But why?