The Fitness Coach Mother Broke Her Daughter With A Watch Chapter 09

Mom was sitting in the living room, her fingers moving over the beads around her wrist.

At some point, she had dug out the bracelet I had made especially for her.

Now it was on her wrist.

She remembered that when she saw my body, the fitness tracker had still been strapped tightly around my wrist.

When the medical examiner removed it, it had already left marks on my skin.

I had probably suspected the tracker was the problem too and tightened it until it would not come loose even if I fell.

The phone screen lit up.

Mom thought it was the police updating her on the latest progress in the case.

But when she saw the divorce papers Dad had sent, the light in her eyes vanished at once.

After a long while, she walked to the bedroom door and knocked on the closed door.

“Can we talk?”

Dad did not open the door.

He did not speak either.

Only a low, suppressed sob came through the door.

It barely counted as an answer.

Mom looked as lost as I had been when she abandoned me on the track.

She knocked a few more times and asked him, “Do we really have to go this far?”

This time, a response finally came from inside the room.

“I told you long ago not to raise our children this way. Did you ever let me stop you?”

“When Chloe kept missing her goals, didn’t I tell you to let it go if it wasn’t working?”

“You agreed to my face, said fine, and then turned around and gave me the silent treatment for days. Don’t tell me you didn’t do that.”

“Now Chloe is dead. Are you satisfied?”

“If I don’t divorce you, am I supposed to stay by your side and watch you destroy Mia too?”

“Claire Morgan, the fact that I’m not trying to hold you legally accountable is already the last bit of consideration I can give you as your husband.”

“But if you want me to completely forget Chloe’s death, I can’t do that.”

After hearing that, Mom said nothing else.

There was nothing left for her to say.

She quietly signed the divorce papers.

Over the next few days, she pulled herself together again.

It was as if my death had never happened.

But every single thing she did was tied to me.

She obtained the death certificate and contacted the funeral home to make arrangements.

She bought clothes for the funeral and chose a cemetery plot.

She also hired a lawyer and sued the company that had manufactured the custom fitness trackers.

I never saw her cry again.

She seemed to turn into a machine, carrying out one pre-set task after another.

That lasted until the police notified her that the investigation had been completed.

They told her she could claim my body.

That day, when she looked at my autopsy report, which listed my cause of death as intracranial bleeding, her eyes reddened once more.

After the funeral home staff prepared my body, she and Dad stood in front of me for a very long time.

In the end, they watched as I was taken into the crematorium.

I was reduced to a small box and a small photograph.