Simran's parents' house was in Gomti Nagar — a two-storey building with a small garden and a terrace where her father grew tomatoes with the obsessive dedication of a man who'd retired from government service and needed something to manage. Rhea was on the terrace when Aarav arrived, conducting an elaborate tea party with three stuffed animals and a look of fierce concentration.
"Papa!" She flew down the stairs and into his arms. Eight years old, thirty-two kilograms, and carrying enough force to nearly knock him backward. He held her — properly held her, not the distracted half-hug of a man whose mind was on a case file, but the full, desperate grip of a father who'd recently learned how quickly people can be taken.
"I missed you, monkey."
"I'm not a monkey. I'm a professional tree." She grinned. "Mummy said you were busy saving people."
"Something like that."
"Did you save them?"
"Most of them. Yeah."
"Good. Now come have tea. Mr. Bear has been waiting."
He had tea with Mr. Bear, and with a one-eared rabbit named Professor Longtooth, and with a dinosaur that Rhea claimed was a "reformed vegetarian." He poured invisible chai with the careful seriousness of a man performing the most important task of his career.
Simran watched from the kitchen doorway. When Rhea went inside to get more "biscuits" (imaginary), Simran sat down across from Aarav.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Thank you."
"I'm serious. When did you last sleep? Properly sleep?"
"I don't remember."
She didn't smile. "Aarav, we need to talk."
"I know."
"I've been thinking about this for months. Since before the case, since before the school play. You know what I'm going to say."
"You want to leave."
"I want to live. There's a difference." She folded her hands on the table — the gesture she made when she was being precise, choosing her words the way a surgeon chooses instruments. "I married a man. Not a case file. Not a whiteboard. Not a phone that rings at 3 AM. I married you — the person who used to draw cartoons on napkins at restaurants and teach Rhea the names of stars from the terrace. That person has been gone for three years. Maybe longer."
"The case is over."
"This case is over. But there'll be another one. And another. And each one will be the one that matters more than us, the one that can't wait, the one that justifies another missed birthday, another empty chair at the dinner table."
He wanted to argue. He wanted to say: I just saved nine women. I dismantled a thirty-year operation. Doesn't that count for something?
But he looked at Simran — this woman who'd loved him since college, who'd packed his lunches and ironed his uniforms and raised their daughter mostly alone — and he understood that counting didn't work here. You couldn't offset an absent husband with a solved case. The arithmetic of love didn't allow substitutions.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
"I want you to choose. Not once — every day. I want you to choose to come home. Not because the case is over, but because home matters enough to leave the office. Can you do that?"
He thought about it. Not as a platitude. Not as a promise he'd break by next Tuesday. He thought about the farmhouse, the nine cots, the women in white who'd been chosen by someone else. He thought about Kavita, sitting beside a sister who didn't recognize her. He thought about Dr. Saxena, who'd spent thirty years perfecting a ritual and had lost the ability to see the human beings it consumed.
