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!"

The paramedics heard me and immediately moved toward the door.

Kate panicked.

"I'm the homeowner! If I say you can't come in, you can't come in!"

"I'm telling you the truth—nobody was electrocuted. My son is inside. She's just making a scene so the whole neighborhood can laugh at us!"

I had no choice but to make one last desperate attempt.

"If Dick wasn't electrocuted, then why hasn't he said a single word?"

"There are only three people in this house. I'm fine. If Dick wasn't the one who got shocked, then it was Lily—his own daughter. How could he possibly stay silent through that?"

The words landed, and Kate visibly froze for a moment.

But her mind worked fast.

She was certain it couldn't be Dick who'd been electrocuted.

So she fired back immediately.

"Dick not speaking is perfectly normal. He's my son and your husband—he's caught in the middle. Of course he'd choose to stay quiet."

"This villa was just renovated. How could there possibly be a faulty wire? And if my son really was electrocuted, do you honestly think I wouldn't save him?"

"She just doesn't want to live here. She looks down on us because we're from the countryside. She wants to go back to the city, so she's making her daughter fake being sick. This is a false alarm! She's wasting medical resources! I'm actually helping her avoid getting in trouble!"

The paramedics didn't buy it.

But the neighbors had listened to Kate badmouth me for years.

So they immediately rallied to her side.

"It's true! Don't let her fool you. This city wife thinks she's better than everyone just because she has money. She's impossible to deal with."

"Exactly. She's probably the one who told Dick to keep quiet. That boy's a good kid—just too soft for his own good."

"Electrocuted? Give me a break. Every house has circuit breakers now. She didn't even bother making the lie believable!"

"And if Dick really was electrocuted, how come that deaf little girl didn't react either?"

One comment after another, and just like that, they turned me into a lunatic who'd called 911 as a joke.

Kate even started crying and apologizing to me.

She promised she wouldn't pressure me about having a second child anymore and begged me to stop "making a fuss."

But the ambulance still wouldn't leave.

Kate gritted her teeth.

"You're not leaving?"

"I see what this is—you people just want my money. I'm calling the police right now. This is my home. Without my permission, I'd like to see who dares set foot inside!"

She pulled out her phone, making a show of dialing.

The ambulance crew had no choice. They gave up and drove away.

After the ambulance left, the gawking neighbors gradually dispersed.

Kate walked back to the door.

"Don't blame me. Blame yourself."

"If you'd just agreed to have another baby sooner... no, agreed to mop the floor so we wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the neighbors, I definitely would've let them in."

I almost laughed.

In my previous life, I'd been furious, but I'd had no one on my side.

So I'd given in and mopped the floor.

But even after I finished, Kate claimed it wasn't good enough.

And Dick had piled on.

"If you agreed to do it properly, then do it properly. What kind of half-assed job is this?"

So I knew the truth.

The mopping had always been a smokescreen. Their real goal had never changed—it was to let Lily die.

I let out a slow breath.

"Kate, you just killed your precious baby boy with your own hands."

"And you destroyed any chance of saving him. You're going to regret this."

Kate stamped her feet in fury.

"I was actually thinking—if you'd sincerely apologized, I would've opened the door and given you that... whatever it's called, that AED thing, so you could save your daughter."

"But since you insist on being so stubborn, I'm not opening this door."

"You can wait. I'll come back to open it tomorrow morning."

And with that, Kate left. She didn't spare me another word. It wasn't until after nine the next morning that she finally walked through the door, carrying breakfast.

"Dick, time to eat."

But it wasn't Dick who greeted her. It was Lily.

Lily stood there holding a piece of bread, blinking her big eyes in confusion. "Grandma, why did you lock the door? I wanted to go downstairs to get my drawing pad, but I couldn't get out!"

"Are you looking for Mommy and Daddy?"

"Mommy's been crying the whole time. And Daddy... I don't know what's wrong with him. He's been lying on the floor sleeping. I tried calling him, but he won't answer me..."