Five-year-old Chloe stood on the coffee table in front of the whole family and proudly declared that she had been reincarnated. She pointed at me and said, "Two minutes from now, Mommy is going to hand me over to human traffickers, and they’re going to gouge my eyes out." Everyone thought she was just talking nonsense. But two minutes later, my daughter vanished into thin air. When we finally found her, her eyes were nothing but a bloody, ruined mess. I held my little girl in my arms, rushing her to the hospital in an ambulance, but she whispered, "In a second, Mommy is going to fake a car crash to kill me for good, because she thinks I'm not her real daughter." Sure enough, the very next second, a massive semi-truck plowed into our ambulance, flipping it over. After that, the entire family believed that my daughter truly was reincarnated and could predict the future. I desperately crawled out of the wreckage. I just wanted to save my daughter, but my husband grabbed me by the hair, furiously beat me to a pulp, and threw me to the side of the road, leaving me to bleed out. Chloe was saved. From her hospital bed, she told them, "Mommy was the other woman. she deliberately got pregnant with me just to steal Daddy away from Vivian. She never loved me." My husband's family was heartbroken for her. My husband immediately filed for divorce and kicked me out of the house. I was left homeless on the streets. Eventually, my wounds got heavily infected, and I died in a filthy alleyway by a dumpster. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day my daughter claimed she had lived a past life. "I've been reincarnated. I can predict the future!" My five-year-old daughter’s childish voice rang in my ears. I opened my eyes and found her standing on the living room table, her hands proudly planted on her hips. The whole family was sitting around. They treated it as the innocent, imaginative babble of a toddler. No one took her seriously. But a severe chill ran down my spine. In my previous life, it was this exact sentence that led to my gruesome death on the side of the road. I instinctively touched my body where my wounds used to be. The phantom pain was still fresh in my memory. My mother-in-law, Brenda, played along. "Yes, yes, of course! Our little Chloe is a psychic. You’re going to do great things when you grow up." But Brenda’s dismissive tone upset Chloe. She yelled at the top of her lungs. "I really am reincarnated! In my last life, Mommy was the one who killed me! She handed me over to human traffickers!" "They scooped my eyes out and made me blind!" Chloe glared at me angrily, as if every word were the absolute truth. Her outbursts finally annoyed my father-in-law, Arthur. "Hey, what kind of nonsense are you spouting? Have you been watching too many scary cartoons?" Hearing her grandpa scold her, Chloe looked incredibly wronged and threw herself into Brenda’s arms. "Grandma, I'm not lying! Mommy is a bad person! I don't want to die!" Brenda glared at Arthur. "She's just a kid with an active imagination, why are you being so mean to her?" Seeing Brenda coddle her like that, I couldn't help but let out a cold, internal sneer. Active imagination. If I hadn't literally died because of this kid's mouth in my last life, I might have actually believed it. After scolding her husband, Brenda turned to look at me. "Evelyn, don't just stand there staring. I think we’re out of milk in the fridge. Go down to the corner store and grab a gallon." I nodded. My mind was already racing, trying to figure out how to deal with Chloe. I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. Right at that moment, Chloe looked at me in absolute terror. "Ah! Mommy is going outside to call the kidnappers! Don't let Mommy take me away!" Chloe’s sudden, extreme reaction worried Brenda, who hugged her tighter. "Oh my goodness, what is wrong with this child today? Why does she keep saying these crazy things?" I stopped at the front door. I looked at my daughter curled up in her grandmother's arms, then glanced at the clock on the wall. It was exactly one minute away from the time Chloe predicted I would hand her over to the traffickers. In my past life, because I was worried that Chloe was having some kind of panic attack, I didn't go to the store. I asked Brenda to go instead. While Brenda was gone, Chloe told me her stomach hurt and she needed to use the bathroom. I took her to the downstairs half-bath. And then... she just vanished. To this day, the memory of her disappearing from a windowless room felt completely bizarre. It wasn't until the kidnappers called demanding a ransom that we knew she had actually been abducted. The police even sent a forensics team to inspect the bathroom, but they couldn't figure out how a five-year-old was transported miles away in under an hour. I hesitated for half a second. I closed the front door, pulled out my cell phone, and called my husband, Marcus. "Hey, when you get off work, remember to pick up a gallon of milk. Chloe is throwing a massive tantrum at home, I think she might be coming down with something." Marcus’s impatient voice blared through the speaker. "Are you kidding me? I'm in the middle of a client meeting! What do you even do at home all day? Go buy it yourself!" He hung up on me. I didn't get angry. I simply turned around and walked back into the living room. "Brenda, I think Chloe really is terrified of something. Let's just stay in the living room with her for now." "I'll book an in-home child psychologist to come take a look at her later." Brenda immediately frowned. "Isn't that a bit of an overreaction? Kids are just mischievous sometimes." "Mental health is just as important as physical health, Brenda. I'm her mother, it's my job to worry." I put on a highly convincing mask of maternal concern, walked over, and gently touched Chloe's cheek. Then, I stood up and pushed open the door to the downstairs bathroom. "By the way, Brenda, I noticed some roaches scurrying around the baseboards in here. I just bought some industrial-strength bug bomb spray. I'm going to fumigate the bathroom right now. Nobody use this bathroom for the next three hours, okay? It's highly toxic." My little maneuver clearly threw a wrench in Chloe’s plans. Her expression instantly panicked. Let's see how your 'prophecy' comes true now, I thought. The two-minute mark quickly passed. Chloe’s prediction of being handed to traffickers fell apart. The rest of the family still didn't think much of it. But right on cue, Chloe suddenly yelled out. "No! I have to poop! I'm going to poop my pants!" Brenda immediately panicked. "Oh no, what do we do? Evelyn, can we use the bathroom yet?" I had noticed Chloe’s eyes darting around nervously for the past few minutes. She was clearly scheming. Looking at her, I calmly pulled out a plastic training potty I had grabbed from the garage. "Use this. The bathroom is strictly off-limits right now." "I want to use the real toilet! I don't want to use the plastic pot! If you don't let me, I'll poop in my pants!" My five-year-old daughter was actually trying to threaten me. I just sneered. "Then do it. The bathroom is toxic right now. If you ruin your clothes, I'll just buy you new ones." My response completely blindsided her. She started screaming, "Mommy is a bad guy! Grandma, call 911 and arrest Mommy, or else she's going to kill me!" "Fine. Grandma can call the police right now. When the cops get here, I'll just tell them you pooped your pants." Seeing that I was completely unmoved, Chloe puffed out her cheeks, held her breath, and turned her face beet red in defiance. "Oh my god, Chloe, what are you doing?! Open your mouth!" Brenda was terrified the kid was going to suffocate herself and frantically pried Chloe’s mouth open. Watching her throw this massive tantrum, I felt absolutely no anxiety. I had always thought I raised her well. Whatever she asked for, as long as it was reasonable, I gave it to her. I tried with every fiber of my being to raise an honest, loving child. I couldn't comprehend why she turned out this way. Seeing that I wasn't backing down, Chloe actually forced herself to soil her pants right there in the living room. A foul stench filled the air. Brenda pinched her nose and scolded, "You little brat! You actually did it!" Brenda immediately got up to fetch a basin of warm water and some wipes from the upstairs closet to clean her up. I didn't stop her. I calmly stood up and walked into the master bedroom to grab a fresh pair of pants for Chloe. However, when I stepped out of the bedroom with the clean clothes, I froze. Brenda was standing in the living room holding a basin of water, looking at me in absolute bewilderment. Chloe was gone. The living room was completely empty. Arthur had fallen asleep on the sofa at some point, and Chloe’s soiled pants were just lying on the floor. Brenda started to panic. We searched the entire house, inside and out, but Chloe was nowhere to be found. There was no sound of a door opening. No footsteps. A five-year-old child had vanished into thin air, again. "How is this possible?" I was even more frantic than Brenda. I knew exactly what was coming next. Is fate really impossible to change? I gritted my teeth, tearing the room apart looking for clues, but found absolutely nothing. Panic set in. I instinctively made the exact same choice I did in my past life: I dialed 911. While waiting for the police, I didn't sit still. I ran through the entire neighborhood, scouring every street, but there was no sign of her. Refusing to give up, I begged the HOA security to let me check the neighborhood surveillance cameras, but there wasn't a single frame of Chloe leaving the house. When the police arrived, everything played out almost exactly like my past life. They found no valuable leads, told us to be patient, and left to file the report. It wasn't until I received the video on my phone—the horrifying video of my daughter’s eyes being mutilated—that despair truly set in. What was meant to happen, happened. The kidnappers called the house, demanding a one-million-dollar ransom. When Brenda saw the state Chloe was in, she cried until she had no tears left. Marcus rushed home from work. The second he saw the torture video, he backhanded me across the face so hard I tasted blood, screaming in pure rage. "I leave you at home to take care of our kid, and this is how you do it?!" "If anything happens to Chloe, I'll make you pay with your life!" If the police hadn't been in the room, I honestly think Marcus would have killed me right then and there. Later, when the police asked about any strange behavior before the disappearance, Arthur suddenly slapped his thigh as if he just remembered something. "Wait! I remember Chloe saying that her mother was going to hand her over to human traffickers, and that they were going to gouge her eyes out!" The prophecy came true. Brenda suddenly gasped, acting like she just had a revelation. "Yes! I was actually recording a video for my Facebook page right when she said it!" Brenda pulled out her phone and played a video she took earlier that day. In the background, Chloe was standing on the table, screaming the exact words that had dragged me into hell. I was dumbfounded. From start to finish, I never even noticed Brenda recording anything. Before I could fully process it, Marcus lunged at me like a madman, grabbing me by the collar. "That's your own flesh and blood! How could you be so sick? Are you a monster?!" Before the cops could pull him off, he delivered a brutal kick directly to my chest. I collapsed onto the floor. The searing physical pain suddenly snapped my brain into sharp focus. Wait. Something isn't right here. My mind raced at lightning speed. Looking at Marcus's twisted, furious face, I suddenly had an epiphany. "You're going to believe the random babble of a five-year-old?" I wheezed. "Your parents were both in the house with me! Why don't you accuse them of doing it?" Seeing my piercing glare, Brenda looked slightly guilty. "She's right, Marcus. Evelyn was in the living room with us the whole time. It couldn't have been her." "Then how do you explain this?!" Marcus looked like he wanted to kick me again. Finally, the lead detective intervened. "Enough! Finding the child is the priority. Stop fighting over a toddler's words." The officer’s warning forced Marcus to back down, but he continued to glare daggers at me. The police asked me to call the kidnappers back so they could trace the location. But a passing comment from Brenda made everything click in my head. "I don't know where she learned to say those things... could she really be reincarnated?" I froze. If Chloe was really a rebirther who had lived a past life, and she had been confronting me this whole time... wouldn't she have realized that I was acting differently too? Wouldn't she realize I was also reincarnated? Someone was coaching my daughter to lie. "We don't need to trace the call. I know exactly where they want to make the drop." The detectives looked at me in confusion. To prevent Marcus from doing anything crazy, I pulled the lead detective into a separate room and gave him an exact address. The detective was skeptical at first. But ten minutes later, a text came through from the kidnappers. The address was identical to the one I had just given him. Though shocked, the police agreed to follow my lead to save the hostage. I told the detective to only deploy a small tactical team to the drop-off location for the arrest. Meanwhile, I begged him to heavily patrol the route between the drop-off site and the nearest trauma hospital, and to intercept any suspicious vehicles. "I can't do that," the detective frowned. "That's tactically unsound. I have to prioritize the hostage at the primary location." "But what if the people at the drop-off are just pawns? What if the real killers are waiting on the road to ambush the ambulance and finish the job?!" I was borderline hysterical. "I refuse to watch my family die!" The detective noticed how desperate I was. Eventually, he agreed to a compromise, stating they would have units on standby along the route, but would adjust dynamically if things went sideways. I had a very good reason for doing this. In my past life, after the police raided the drop-off site, they interrogated the "kidnappers"—only to find out they were just broke college kids looking for acting gigs. Someone had hired them online to "play a prank" for a hidden camera show. They had no idea it was a real kidnapping. I arrived at the drop-off with the duffel bag of cash. Just like in my previous life, the raid went perfectly. The college kids were arrested without a fight, and Chloe was rescued. Because her injuries were severe, she was immediately loaded into an ambulance. I rode in the back with her. She looked miserable, crying in pain. The wounds where her eyes used to be were already showing signs of severe infection. She was only five years old. She was my flesh and blood. Seeing her like this shattered my heart. This time, I didn't wait for her to speak first. I leaned in and asked the burning question in my mind. "Chloe... tell Mommy the truth. Did Daddy tell you to do all this?" I never expected her reaction. The second the words left my mouth, she started screaming in sheer terror. "Ahhh! Mommy, don't kill me! I'm sorry! I won't ever say those things again!" But at the exact same moment she was screaming, she secretly pressed something hard into the palm of my hand. A smartwatch. CRASH! A deafening roar ripped through the air as a fully-loaded semi-truck slammed directly into the side of our ambulance without warning. Our vehicle flipped violently. In the end, what was meant to happen, happened anyway. I crawled out of the shattered side window of the ambulance, incredibly dizzy and fighting the urge to vomit. I saw Marcus, Brenda, and Arthur rushing out of trailing police cruisers, frantically running toward the wreckage. But when the paramedics pulled Chloe from the crushed metal... she was gone. She wasn't breathing. Half of the ambulance had been flattened. One of the EMTs had also died on impact. Police officers dragged the truck driver out of his cab and pinned him to the asphalt. "My baby! My little girl!" Still dazed, Marcus’s agonizing wails pierced my ears. I turned my head and saw him clutching Chloe’s lifeless body, sobbing in absolute despair. That raw, visceral grief... it wasn't fake. He was genuinely broken. "It was you! You killed my granddaughter! I heard her on the radio! She begged you not to kill her!" "Give me back my granddaughter! Give her back..." Brenda ran over, slapped me hard across the face, and then collapsed to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. The sting of the slap grounded me. I looked over at the truck driver pinned to the ground. I had never seen his face before in my life. No. This is wrong. Why is my daughter dead? In the last timeline, she survived the crash. What changed? What did I miss? Before I could piece it together, Marcus suddenly pulled a pocket knife from his jacket and lunged at me. I couldn't react in time. He stabbed me multiple times in the abdomen. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he wanted to eat me alive. "Why?! Why did you orchestrate her kidnapping?! Hasn't she suffered enough beatings from you?!" "She's just a little girl! Even if she found out your dirty secrets, why did you have to silence her?! You animal! You don't deserve to be a mother! You don't deserve..." Marcus kept screaming things that made absolutely no sense to me. I wanted to open my mouth to ask him what the hell he was talking about, but my body suddenly felt weightless. I collapsed. The police tackled Marcus to the ground. The crash site was absolute chaos. I had so many unanswered questions, but there was no one left to answer them. "Ms. Evelyn, I regret to inform you that your daughter has passed away. Furthermore, the police are currently investigating you as the primary suspect in her murder." "Your husband, Marcus, asked me to deliver this to you." A lawyer stood beside my hospital bed and handed me a stack of divorce papers. "Mr. Marcus has already signed it. He instructed me to tell you that he wants a clean break. He is leaving all joint assets and the house to you." "However, he will be pressing civil and criminal charges against you for the murder of your biological daughter. We will notify you of the court dates." With that, the lawyer turned on his heel and walked out. I stared at the divorce papers in my hands, gripping them until my knuckles turned white. "Why me?" I muttered to myself. Even though things played out slightly differently than my past life, the end result was the same. I didn't understand what I had done wrong, or where the glitch in the timeline was. I had suspected Marcus, but looking at his raw grief and his willingness to walk away from all our money... he didn't seem to have any motive to orchestrate this. Then why did my daughter turn into a monster who constantly claimed I was going to kill her? What kind of environment forces a five-year-old to do that? I thought about it for hours until I suddenly remembered the crazy things Marcus screamed while he was stabbing me. He definitely knows something I don't. But in his current state, there was no way he would sit down and have a rational conversation with me. Suddenly, it hit me. The moment I was discharged from the hospital, I went straight to the police precinct. Because I was a person of interest, they were keeping close tabs on me anyway. I asked the detectives for permission to see my daughter's body in the morgue. They allowed it, but with a strict time limit. When the coroner pulled back the sheet, I stared at the dark, mottled bruises covering her tiny body. I was completely paralyzed. The medical examiner told me those kinds of marks only appear in cases of extreme, prolonged physical abuse. "And those bruises are layered. New injuries over old ones. If you claim you didn't do this to your daughter, then someone else in that house absolutely did." The detectives also informed me that the truck driver who hit us had no clear motive for murder. The initial ruling was that he lost control of his brakes. Combined with the things my daughter yelled in the ambulance right before the crash, all the evidence pointed directly back to me. "By the way," one of the detectives noted, "during the autopsy, we noticed a tan line on her wrist consistent with a kid's smartwatch. Your husband mentioned she always wore one, but we didn't recover it from the scene. Do you know where it is?" The detective’s words struck me like a bolt of lightning. I played dumb, shook my head, and quickly left the precinct. Once I was safely locked in my car, I pulled out the smartwatch Chloe had secretly shoved into my hand in the ambulance. I powered it on, and a digital notepad app popped up on the tiny screen. As I read the little lines of text, tears began streaming down my face. I finally understood why my daughter had turned out that way. Because the cause of Chloe’s death was still under investigation, Marcus's family refused to bury her yet. I had no choice but to go back to our house. The moment I unlocked the front door, I heard laughter and cheerful voices echoing from the living room. "Oh, Vivian, honey, don't you worry. Marcus is finalizing the divorce with that monster. You're the only woman I acknowledge as my daughter-in-law." "Brenda, please, you shouldn't say that. I know Marcus is grieving right now. We should wait." "Yes, yes, we should wait. Oh, it’s such a tragedy about little Chloe. My poor, sweet granddaughter." The sound of the front door closing caused the entire living room to go dead silent. All eyes snapped toward me. A heavily made-up, glamorous woman was sitting cozily between Brenda and Marcus. The second Brenda made eye contact with me, she started screaming. "You murderous bitch! What are you doing back here?! Get out! Get the hell out of my house!" She marched up to me and started violently shoving my shoulders, trying to push me back out the door. Arthur stood up, his face dark with rage. "You murderer. Stop disgusting us with your presence. If you don't leave right now, I'll beat you to a pulp." Watching my normally "loving" in-laws drop their masks so quickly filled me with a cold, dark amusement. Before I could speak, Vivian casually strolled up to me, looking me up and down with utter contempt. "So, you're Chloe’s biological mother? To do that to your own flesh and blood... you're worse than an animal."
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