My daughter's heart had stopped after being electrocuted, and she needed immediate medical attention. But my mother-in-law locked the bedroom door from the outside.

"Your room is such a mess. Do you want people to laugh at you?"

"Mop the floor, send me a photo for inspection, and I'll unlock the door once it passes."

I was so furious I could barely breathe.

I swallowed my rage and tried to explain the situation. I begged my husband to make her open the door.

He put in a few half-hearted words, but she didn't budge.

Not only did she refuse to open the door, she turned on a signal jammer so I couldn't call the police.

Then she blocked the ambulance outside the gate. And my daughter was left to die, minute by agonizing minute.

Only after my daughter was gone did my mother-in-law offer her snide little apology.

"How was I supposed to know it was that serious? I just didn't want anyone making fun of you."

"Besides, you could've just mopped the floor but you refused. When you really think about it, this is your fault."

I wanted to drag her down with me.

But my husband held me back, his eyes darting everywhere but my face.

"She's gone. Nothing's going to bring her back. You love kids so much, we can always have another one."

The world spun. And then it clicked. Every last bit of it had been deliberate.

But I got a second chance.

This time, when my mother-in-law stood on the other side of the door demanding I mop, I wasn't in any rush.

The only difference was this:

The one crying wouldn't be me. It would be her.

I.

I carried Lily Abbott into the smaller bedroom of the master suite and rocked her to sleep, then gently removed her hearing aids.

The moment I set them down, a heavy thud echoed from the main bedroom.

I hurried out, locked the smaller bedroom behind me, and then I saw him. Dick Butler was sprawled on the floor, convulsing. Within seconds, foam gathered at the corners of his mouth and he went still.

This wasn't the first time I'd seen this.

So I grabbed a wooden chair and used it to shove the short-circuiting toy away from his hand, then pressed my palm to his chest.

I wasn't a doctor, but I'd taken emergency first-aid training more than once.

The verdict was immediate.

Dick had been electrocuted. His heart had stopped. He needed a hospital, now.

Before I could do anything else, Kate Cobb's knocking rattled the door. She didn't barge in the way she usually did. Instead, she spoke through the door, a thin note of anticipation threading through her voice.

"Maisie Acevedo, I thought I heard something fall in there."

"What are you two doing?"

I let the panic flood into my voice.

"Mom."

"Something's wrong. That toy you got for Lily had a short circuit!"

"Dick's been electrocuted. He's unconscious. I checked, and I think his heart's stopped. I already called an ambulance."

"I need to start CPR right now. Go to the garage. There's a new AED in my car. Bring it up. We have to keep him alive until help gets here."

"Cardiac arrest only gives you a few minutes. Any longer and it's too late."

Silence.

Then Kate Cobb nearly laughed out loud.

She didn't hesitate for a single second. She turned the new lock she'd had installed and bolted the entire suite from the outside.

"Maisie, it's not that I don't understand what's urgent and what isn't."

"But I heard more than just a person hitting the floor. I also heard the late-night snack I prepared for you two go crashing down. That room must be an absolute disaster right now."

"So clean it up first."

"Otherwise, what will people think?"

I almost laughed.

A man in cardiac arrest, every second ticking down between life and death, and the condition for unlocking the door was a freshly mopped floor. No clean room, no way out. No paramedics in.

But I wasn't surprised. And I wasn't in any rush.

Because this wasn't the first time I'd lived through it.

Dick and I had brought Lily back to his hometown to visit Kate. When we arrived, we discovered she'd renovated the mansion we'd built for her yet again.

She'd knocked three second-floor bedrooms into one sprawling suite, converting it into a two-bedroom apartment with its own living area. Ugly security bars had been bolted over the windows, completely out of place on a house like that.

The suite's door had two new handles that didn't match anything else. In my previous life, I'd noticed them and thought nothing of it. It wasn't until after what happened to Lily that I understood: they were there so the door could be locked from the outside.

So.

All of it was deliberate.

She'd insisted she didn't want to live with us in the city, that she had to go back to her countryside mansion.

Then, not long after she'd settled in, she called to say she wasn't feeling well and wanted to see us and Lily. She'd placed a little cat toy in the suite's sitting room. Lily's favorite.

When I saw that toy, I was genuinely moved.

Moved that Kate had finally accepted Lily, imperfections and all. What I never expected was that the moment Lily touched it, she collapsed. Cardiac arrest. Instant.

I don't want to remember what came after.

I could only watch as my daughter slowly died, powerless to do a single thing.

And their reason for doing it? They thought Lily's hearing impairment made her defective. They wanted me to give her up for adoption and try for another baby.

But this time, the one who got shocked wasn't Lily.

It was Dick.

And I hadn't kept that from Kate.

"Mom, what are you talking about?" I pressed. "Dick is barely hanging on, and you want me to mop the floor? The paramedics aren't going to care whether your tiles are spotless when they get here. They're not going to stop and judge your housekeeping."

The moment those words left my mouth, Kate's voice changed. The smug satisfaction drained out of it, replaced by something cold and sharp.

"Maisie Acevedo, have you lost your mind?"

"Dick is your husband. How dare you curse him like that? How could he possibly get electrocuted? He already knows—"

My eyebrow twitched. I listened carefully.

I wanted her to finish that sentence. To say it out loud: that Dick knew the toy was rigged, that he was complicit, that he'd never touch it himself because he'd helped her plan the whole thing.

But no.

Kate caught herself just in time.

She swerved hard.

"Dick is a grown man. Why on earth would he be playing with a child's toy? If you're going to lie, at least come up with something believable!"

"And it's not like I'm refusing to open the door. Clean up the floor first, then I'll unlock it. The ambulance will be here by then anyway. Everybody wins."

"I'm doing this for your own good. I won't have people saying the Butlers live like slobs. I won't be made a laughingstock!"

Her voice climbed higher with every word, fury and humiliation tangling together.

She didn't even give me time to mention calling the police. The signal jammer clicked on.

"You've already called the ambulance. There's no one else you need to call or text right now."

"You have plenty of time to clean up before they arrive!"

But.

I'd never said Dick touched the toy on purpose.

I exhaled slowly.

When I spoke again, my voice was more urgent.

"Mom, I'm not joking."

"Lily fell asleep after the long car ride. She never even saw the toy."

"You're right that Dick would never play with it. But he slipped and fell. That's how he made contact."

"I'm doing chest compressions right now. I literally cannot take my hands off him to mop."

"Please believe me. I would never joke about something like this."

Every word out of my mouth was dead serious. There wasn't a shred of humor in my voice, and Kate knew it. She knew me well enough to know I never lied, and on something this grave, I had no reason to make things up.

Kate hesitated. Visibly.

But I knew exactly what kind of person she was. Her favorite pastime was contradicting me, so I pressed on before she could dig in.

"How about this: you open the door, come in and see for yourself. While you're at it, you can tidy up the room so nobody has anything to gossip about, and it won't delay getting Dick the help he needs."

That had actually been Kate's plan.

But the moment I was the one to suggest it, she rejected it without a second thought.

"Absolutely not."

"Everyone online says mothers-in-law need to respect boundaries. You're not supposed to barge in on a married couple's private life. That's why I haven't even dared set foot inside!"

I rolled my eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn't get stuck.

Back when Dick and I first got married, I hadn't been planning on having children yet. It was Kate who snuck into our room and tampered with things, which led to my unplanned pregnancy. Because I hadn't been taking prenatal vitamins or preparing my body, I was afraid the baby might be affected and wanted to terminate. Kate threw a fit, threatening to kill herself if I went through with the abortion. Then when Lily was born with hearing problems, Kate turned around and blamed me.

But I didn't argue any of that. Instead, I kept offering solutions.

"Okay, then how about this."

"Turn off the signal jammer. I'll take a photo and send it to you so you can see for yourself that it's Dick who got electrocuted."

Kate scoffed.

"These days they've got AI that can fake photos. You're obviously trying to trick me."

"Besides, what if I turn off the jammer and you start calling everyone under the sun? People will come barging in, see this house looking like a disaster zone, and laugh at us. Then what?"

"Why do you have to be so stubborn?"

"It's not that complicated. Just have Dick do that CPR thing or whatever, and you go clean up the room yourself. Problem solved."

"And don't think you can sweet-talk me into turning off that jammer. I'm staying right here by the door, listening. Once I hear you've gotten everything tidied up in there, I'll open it."

I opened my mouth to try again.

But the ambulance had already arrived. And it wasn't just the paramedics. Neighbors had gathered too, a whole crowd of them craning their necks for a front-row seat to the spectacle.

Kate muttered something about them getting here too fast.

Then she walked out to the yard.

I stopped doing chest compressions and moved to the window, pressing close to the glass, watching.

Just in time to see Kate throw both arms wide, blocking the paramedics' path.

"What do you think you're doing? This is my home. Are you trying to trespass?"

The paramedics looked stunned. Clearly, they'd never had someone physically stop them before.

"Didn't someone from this address call to report an electrocution? Cardiac arrest? Did we get the wrong house?"

Kate nodded firmly.

"Yes, wrong house. Everyone here is perfectly fine. Nobody's sick. Now get out of here before the neighbors have even more to gossip about!"

I'd lived through this exact scene once before.

The first time, my throat had seized up, and Dick had been right there beside me, holding me back.

"Maisie, stop making a scene. If you start screaming now, how is Mom supposed to show her face around here? When we're not home, the neighbors will never let her live it down."

"Mom's just joking around. She'll let them in any minute."

He'd held me back so tightly I couldn't make a sound.

But this time, no one was holding me back.

So I leaned out the window and screamed at the top of my lungs.

"Help! Someone's been electrocuted! I've been doing CPR for ages, but I'm not strong enough. It's barely doing anything. Please, you have to get in here!"

"Mom, stop this! A man's life is at stake! This isn't the time to pick fights with me!"