The Fitness Coach Mother Broke Her Daughter With A Watch Chapter 08

The Fitness Coach Mother Broke Her Daughter With A Watch Chapter 08

“I figured out a long time ago that there was something wrong with the trackers. As long as mine stayed tight against my wrist, even if I only ran for a little while, the numbers would keep going up afterward.”

Mom’s face hardened.

“What about Chloe’s? Why wasn’t hers like that?”

Mia’s voice was very small.

It carried the guilt of a child who had just been caught slacking off.

“They were actually all the same. But if the tracker loosened, the number from before would reset to zero.”

The phone screen lit up, drawing everyone’s eyes.

Mom tapped it open. There were two digital health screening reports on WhatsApp, along with messages from Ms. Reynolds.

“Ms. Morgan, the girls’ health screening results came in.”

“Mia is perfectly healthy, but Chloe… she has ALS.”

“I asked the doctor, and they recommend starting treatment as early as possible to slow the progression…”

Whatever Ms. Reynolds wrote after that, Mom could no longer see.

Her vision had already blurred.

So it was true when Chloe said she could not control her body and kept falling.

So she failed to meet the goal every day because whenever she fell, the tracker would stop sitting tightly against her skin, lose contact, and reset to zero.

So the teachers had not been worrying for nothing. Mom simply had not listened.

She had always claimed she loved her daughter.

But in the end, she had trusted a machine more than she trusted her own child.

She had cared less about her daughter than an outsider had.

In despair, she grabbed at her own hair and let out a broken wail.

Watching her like that, I felt a strange sense of relief instead.

I no longer had to carry the label of being lazy.

I no longer had to stay trapped under all those baseless accusations.

The truth had finally come to light.

When Mia saw Mom like that, her voice became even smaller.

“I… I didn’t mean to lie.”

“Mom told me to go get Chloe. Chloe wouldn’t move, so I said that.”

And it was true. Mia was only eight.

Her understanding of death was still too vague.

At most, she was just a little girl who liked competing for Mom and Dad’s affection and for praise from her classmates.

She only knew how to copy what she saw.

She knew Mom did not like Chloe and was always scolding Chloe. So she thought she could bully Chloe too.

It would be impossible to say I did not blame her. I was not that generous.

But I did not hate her either. She had not understood anything.

If I had to trace everything back to its source, it still led to Mom.

Even then, I could not fully hold it against her, because I had seen what she was like when she loved me.

In the end, it was concern pushed too far that had turned her into this.

Dad’s arms, which had been holding Mia a moment earlier, froze in midair.

For a while, he did not know whether he should keep comforting her or scold her for not knowing right from wrong.

In the end, the conversation could only end in a series of heavy sighs.

After we got home, Dad walked into the bedroom alone.

For once, he did not check on Mom or Mia.

Three hours later, he sent a digital copy of the divorce papers to Mom’s phone.