Chapter 2

In the holding cell, the cheap disinfectant smell was a grim reminder of my past life's end.

Izzy tried to bail me out, her voice on the phone laced with fake concern, "Ethan, darling, I'm so worried. Let me get you out."

"No," I said, my voice flat. I knew her game, get me out, make me look unstable, continue her plan.

"I'm fine where I am, Izzy. Don't bother." I hung up.

Then Carol, my stepmother, arrived. Her face was a carefully constructed mask of concern.

"Ethan, my dear boy, what happened? Izzy called me, she's hysterical, at the hospital."

"She'll live," I said, my eyes fixed on her. "Carol, I need to know you trust me, no matter what you hear."

She placed a hand on her chest, "Of course, Ethan. You're my son."

A lie, but a useful one for now. I needed her compliant, or at least thinking I believed her.

"Is Lily okay?" I asked, my voice tight, the real reason for my current calm.

"Lily? Yes, she's fine, at school. Why wouldn't she be?" Carol looked genuinely puzzled, a flicker of something I couldn't read.

Relief washed over me, so potent it almost buckled my knees. Lily was alive, at school. Not dead. Not yet. The timeline had already changed.

When Lily visited later, brought by a social worker, my heart ached. She looked so small, so innocent.

She held out a handmade card, "For you, Daddy."

I took it, my hands trembling. "Thank you, sweetie."

I pulled her close, my eyes scanning her arms, her neck, looking for the faint, old bruises I remembered from the visions of her small, still body in my past life.

Nothing. Her skin was clear.

This was new, confusing. The bruises had been a constant, unexplained torment in my memories.

Then I looked at the card. "Daddy," written in her childish scrawl.

A detail, so small, yet it hit me with the force of a physical blow.

The "suicide note" in my past life, the one supposedly written by Lily, had different handwriting for "Daddy."

It was a fabrication, a crude one, and I'd been too grief-stricken, too broken to see it then.

Izzy was feigning concern when she visited again, her arm in a sling, a small bandage on her forehead from her "fall" when I confronted her.

"Ethan, please, let me bail you out. We can sort this out. You weren't yourself."

I just looked at her. "Save your breath, Izzy."

I would stay here, for now. It was safer. It gave me time to think.

The first change was Lily being alive and unharmed. The card was the first concrete clue.

My primary objective was clear: find out who really hurt Lily in that other life, and why the evidence was faked.

And this time, protect her, no matter the cost.

I needed to review every detail of that past nightmare, every word, every action.

The core mystery wasn't just Lily's death, but the *reason* for the elaborate frame-up.

I feigned remorse. "Izzy, I... I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. Please, get me out."

Her eyes lit up with triumph, quickly masked. "Of course, Ethan. I knew you didn't mean it."

The moment I was out, I called a number I'd memorized from a desperate, late-night search in my previous life.

Jack Rourke, Private Investigator. "Mr. Rourke, I need your help. Urgently."