I started to think my husband was tracking me. Every time I was minutes from home, he’d call and ask if I was on my way.
My schedule was random, so it felt too perfect. I asked him how he always knew. He laughed and said it was a coincidence, but then he started doing it even when I took different routes or ran unexpected errands.
At first, I brushed it off. We’ve been married nine years—him, Haris, the dependable one, and me, Naima, always the one running late or forgetting the grocery list. Maybe he just had a sixth sense for my patterns.
But it started getting creepy. Like one time I stopped by a new boutique after work, totally unplanned. I didn’t tell anyone. The moment I turned into our street, he called and said, “Did you get anything cute?” I froze.
“From where?” I asked.
“The boutique,” he said, like it was obvious. “I figured you’d stop in. You love that kind of stuff.”
I laughed it off on the phone, but inside I was sweating.
Then it got weirder.
He’d start saying things like, “Did you stop at the pharmacy before heading home?” or “You didn’t eat lunch at work today, huh?”
Stuff I never told him. Stuff I didn’t post or text about.
I went full true crime mode. I checked my phone’s location settings—nothing weird there. I searched my car for AirTags or anything hidden. I even asked my brother, a tech guy, to sweep the car and my handbag for devices.
Clean.
So I did the only thing left—I stopped going where I said I’d go.
One Saturday, I told him I was meeting my friend Hema at the farmer’s market, like usual. But instead, I drove across town to a small used bookstore café and spent three hours sipping tea and flipping through secondhand cookbooks.
When I came home, Haris smiled at me from the couch and said, “Was the market closed today?”
My stomach dropped.
I forced a smile and said, “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “Just saw on their page they were setting up late. Figured you’d be annoyed.”
I wanted to scream.
Two weeks later, I found something.
I was doing laundry, pulling his jeans from the dryer, when something thudded onto the floor. A tiny square tile with a faint “G” logo. I held it up and stared at it.