Chapter11
By the time my father returned from the police station, night had fallen.
He brought news that stunned everyone.
Linda had woken up.
But she wasn’t herself. She kept muttering things about “ghosts” and “karma.” The doctors’ preliminary diagnosis was that she’d hit her head in the fall and had slipped into a disturbed mental state.
More disturbing, the police had found some strange items among her things. Crumpled talisman papers, a small cloth pouch-and inside it, a lock of… a baby’s hair.
My father’s eyes flicked to me without meaning to.
My stomach dropped.
The baby hair? After I was born, Grandma had carefully wrapped my first lock of hair in red cloth and tucked it by my crib. I turned my head-my red cloth bundle was gone.
She had taken it during the days she had worked for us.
What did she want with my hair?
“My men found something that looked like an altar in her rental unit,” my father said in a low voice, as if afraid his words might make things worse. “There were candles, incense, talismans I couldn’t read… and a family photo. In that photo-our daughter’s face was crossed out in red.”
The air in the room froze.
Grandma paled and pressed her hand to her chest, murmuring prayers. Charlotte held me so tightly her fingers whitened; she trembled like a leaf.
It all suddenly made sense.
Linda had never been just a simple nanny. She’d come into our lives with a hidden, terrible purpose from the
start.
She meant to hurt me.
My death in the last life had not been an accident.
And in this life she had been preparing the same cruel ritual again-to take my life once more.
If my mother hadn’t, by instinct, driven her away early—if Linda hadn’t, with a guilty conscience, been wandering at night and accidentally fallen down the stairs…
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My mother and I would have plunged into an abyss with no return.
“Why… why would she do this?” Charlotte’s voice shook. “We never did anything to her…”
“The police checked her background,” my father said, exhaustion threading his voice. “Her only son was bullied at school five years ago and jumped from a building. The ringleader only served a few months
because he was a minor.”
He paused, eyes clouding as he looked at Charlotte. “The ringleader’s father… is the chairman of Harrington
Holdings.’
Harrington Holdings-my mother’s family company.
The father of the bully was Charlotte’s brother-my maternal uncle.
My mind felt as though it had exploded; all the scattered threads snapped together at once.
It wasn’t senseless malice. It was calculated vengeance.
Linda’s real target was not me alone.
It was my mother. It was the Harrington family.
She wanted Charlotte to taste the same unbearable loss she believed had ruined her life. She wanted to
avenge what she thought had destroyed her son-using the cruellest method she could imagine.
“Madwoman… she’s insane!” Grandma cried in terror.
But I knew better. She wasn’t insane; she had been consumed by hatred until reason left her. A miserable, hollow person eaten by revenge.
Charlotte sat motionless, drained of color.
She could not have imagined that the tragedy of her previous life had roots in her own family’s wrongdoing -that the fate she had feared might actually be a carefully planned human atrocity.
“Michael,” she said, lifting her head with an unfamiliar clarity and steel in her eyes, “I want a lawyer. I’m suing her charging her with attempted murder.”
–
“Charlotte-”
“She ruined my life once. I won’t let her ruin my daughter.” Her voice was soft but final, like a judge’s gavel.
She looked down at me. Gone were the hollow sorrow and the urge to run away; in their place burned a stubborn, all-consuming maternal resolve.
“Baby, don’t be scared.” She pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. “This time, Mom will fight to the end to protect you.”
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My eyes pricked with tears.
From that moment, I knew my mother-the woman who had loved me beyond reason in her previous life- had truly come back.
