Chapter 2

I exhaled slowly and stood up, glancing around.

This was the house I had lived in before my divorce in my previous life. I shared it with my daughter, husband, and mother-in-law—four people in total.

At the moment, my daughter was at school, my husband was away on a business trip, and my mother-in-law had gone out for her dance class.

The house wasn’t big, just three bedrooms. Typically, my mother-in-law occupied one room, my daughter another, and the third was filled with my daughter’s piano and books.

My husband, Zack, was always busy with work, frequently traveling and rarely coming home. When he did, he would stay in my mother-in-law’s room, and she would move to the largest bed in the house to share it with my daughter.

As for me, I slept on the sofa bed in the living room. During the day, it was folded up as a couch; at night, it turned into my bed, making me feel like an outsider in my own home.

My personal space was reduced to a single small cabinet in the piano room. Even then, my daughter often complained that my belongings took up too much room, wanting to throw my clothes out entirely.

The house was jointly owned by Zack and me, but after he cheated, it should have been mine. However, Zack and his mistress were cunning, and my mother-in-law fanned the flames. To secure custody of my daughter, I had no choice but to give up the house and leave with nothing, moving into a rented apartment closer to her school.

My daughter was furious.

She said the house rightfully belonged to her father and that if I wanted a divorce, I should leave on my own. Why drag her into it and make her suffer?

She accused me of pocketing the child support money and giving her too little allowance.

But the truth was, Zack never paid child support at all.

She believed I forbade her from seeing Zack because I was afraid he would take her away from me.

In reality, I didn’t want her to see Zack and his mistress living happily together, expecting the son they had longed for—a son that proved she didn’t matter to them.

From a young age, she thought Zack was the best person in the world and, because of him, adored my mother-in-law as well.

What she didn’t know was that Zack and my mother-in-law had always been dissatisfied with me for giving birth to a daughter instead of a son to carry on the family name.

Yet my efforts had always been taken for granted.

I had spent half my life for her, only to be misunderstood and resented in the end.

It was both sad and laughable.

But thankfully, I had been reborn.

This time, I still had the chance to choose how to live the rest of my life.

I called the music store, made a note in my ledger, and prepared to sell the new piano at a discounted price.

In my previous life, I had spent every penny I’d saved over the years to buy that piano for my daughter.

Her old piano was too worn out, constantly going out of tune despite numerous repairs. Six months later, she was set to compete in a national piano competition—her one shot at rising to fame. I couldn’t let a broken piano hinder her talent.

But what about her?

The carefully chosen gift I’d bought for her, she had smashed without a second thought.

If she didn’t want it, I would take it back.

Just then, my daughter came home from school, her backpack slung over her shoulder.

She smiled sweetly, almost flirtatiously, as she spoke into her phone, “I’m home now. See you later.”

The moment she saw me, her smile disappeared.

Her eyes filled with disgust, as though she were staring at a rotting dead rat.

I was standing in the piano room. She noticed and immediately started shouting, “What are you doing here, you old hag? Are you spying on me while I play the piano again? Don’t you think that’s disgusting?”

“I’ve told you already, I don’t want to play the piano. I don’t like it! I don’t want to do it! Why do you keep forcing me to practice that stupid thing?”

“Other parents are so open-minded. Their kids come home and can watch TV, read novels, or play video games. But me? I have to practice piano every day! And if I want to play a few more rounds of games at night, you still nag me to go to bed!”

Although I had already decided not to care about her anymore, her words felt like knives stabbing into my heart, each sentence twisting deeper.

I still remembered the look in her eyes when she was little, full of dreams as she told me she wanted to be a pianist one day.

Zack had refused to spend money on her lessons, and my mother-in-law had called her a waste of money.

Only I, under the pressure of their criticism, spent a fortune to send her to piano classes to help her achieve her dream.

And now, she claimed she didn’t like it? That I had forced her to play?

I asked her to practice for just an hour each night to maintain her skills, so she could perform well in the national competition. Was that really stripping away her freedom?

I tried to stop her from staying up until 2 a.m. playing games, knowing she had to wake up at six for school. Was that my fault?

The me of today no longer felt angry—just deeply, utterly disappointed.

I spoke calmly, “You’re right. I won’t force you to practice piano anymore.”