The paramedics heard me and immediately moved toward the door.
Kate panicked.
"I'm the homeowner! If I say you can't come in, you can't come in!"
"I'm telling you the truth—nobody was electrocuted. My son is inside. She's just making a scene so the whole neighborhood can laugh at us!"
I had no choice but to make one last desperate attempt.
"If Dick wasn't electrocuted, then why hasn't he said a single word?"
"There are only three people in this house. I'm fine. If Dick wasn't the one who got shocked, then it was Lily—his own daughter. How could he possibly stay silent through that?"
The words landed, and Kate visibly froze for a moment.
But her mind worked fast.
She was certain it couldn't be Dick who'd been electrocuted.
So she fired back immediately.
"Dick not speaking is perfectly normal. He's my son and your husband—he's caught in the middle. Of course he'd choose to stay quiet."
"This villa was just renovated. How could there possibly be a faulty wire? And if my son really was electrocuted, do you honestly think I wouldn't save him?"
"She just doesn't want to live here. She looks down on us because we're from the countryside. She wants to go back to the city, so she's making her daughter fake being sick. This is a false alarm! She's wasting medical resources! I'm actually helping her avoid getting in trouble!"
The paramedics didn't buy it.
But the neighbors had listened to Kate badmouth me for years.
So they immediately rallied to her side.
"It's true! Don't let her fool you. This city wife thinks she's better than everyone just because she has money. She's impossible to deal with."
"Exactly. She's probably the one who told Dick to keep quiet. That boy's a good kid—just too soft for his own good."
"Electrocuted? Give me a break. Every house has circuit breakers now. She didn't even bother making the lie believable!"
"And if Dick really was electrocuted, how come that deaf little girl didn't react either?"
One comment after another, and just like that, they turned me into a lunatic who'd called 911 as a joke.
Kate even started crying and apologizing to me.
She promised she wouldn't pressure me about having a second child anymore and begged me to stop "making a fuss."
But the ambulance still wouldn't leave.
Kate gritted her teeth.
"You're not leaving?"
"I see what this is—you people just want my money. I'm calling the police right now. This is my home. Without my permission, I'd like to see who dares set foot inside!"
She pulled out her phone, making a show of dialing.
The ambulance crew had no choice. They gave up and drove away.
After the ambulance left, the gawking neighbors gradually dispersed.
Kate walked back to the door.
"Don't blame me. Blame yourself."
"If you'd just agreed to have another baby sooner... no, agreed to mop the floor so we wouldn't be embarrassed in front of the neighbors, I definitely would've let them in."
I almost laughed.
In my previous life, I'd been furious, but I'd had no one on my side.
So I'd given in and mopped the floor.
But even after I finished, Kate claimed it wasn't good enough.
And Dick had piled on.
"If you agreed to do it properly, then do it properly. What kind of half-assed job is this?"
So I knew the truth.
The mopping had always been a smokescreen. Their real goal had never changed—it was to let Lily die.
I let out a slow breath.
"Kate, you just killed your precious baby boy with your own hands."
"And you destroyed any chance of saving him. You're going to regret this."
Kate stamped her feet in fury.
"I was actually thinking—if you'd sincerely apologized, I would've opened the door and given you that... whatever it's called, that AED thing, so you could save your daughter."
"But since you insist on being so stubborn, I'm not opening this door."
"You can wait. I'll come back to open it tomorrow morning."
And with that, Kate left. She didn't spare me another word. It wasn't until after nine the next morning that she finally walked through the door, carrying breakfast.
"Dick, time to eat."
But it wasn't Dick who greeted her. It was Lily.
Lily stood there holding a piece of bread, blinking her big eyes in confusion. "Grandma, why did you lock the door? I wanted to go downstairs to get my drawing pad, but I couldn't get out!"
"Are you looking for Mommy and Daddy?"
"Mommy's been crying the whole time. And Daddy... I don't know what's wrong with him. He's been lying on the floor sleeping. I tried calling him, but he won't answer me..."
