Chapter 3

Memories exploded in my mind.

Tammy loved buying all kinds of hair ties.

Every one of them was different.

This Elsa-princess hair tie was the one I'd bought her last night when she came home from school.

The owner of the accessories shop had told me himself

that it was new stock that had just come in yesterday afternoon, a limited-edition collab.

Their shop was the only one in the whole city that sold them, and there was only one of each color.

In other words,

Dora and her son had absolutely no chance to get this hair tie beforehand.

I immediately took out my phone and pulled up the surveillance footage from earlier.

The footage recorded it clearly:

as I was leading Tammy out of my in-laws' house,

Tammy had this very hair tie on her head.

And now,

this same hair tie was clutched in Leo's hand...

A huge wave of unease flashed through me.

Just as I was trying to calm the turmoil inside me,

my mother-in-law's shrill, piercing voice suddenly came from behind.

"Theodore, Dora's right! On my way back from grocery shopping just now, I saw Tammy run out of the house with my own eyes, looking panicked!"

"Mom, when did you get back?"

"Just half an hour ago!"

Theodore glanced at his phone, then let out a long breath of relief.

He slowly turned to look at me, his eyes full of disgust.

"Myrtle Winfield, do you have anything left to say?"

"Half an hour ago is exactly when Dora said she saw Tammy push Leo down with her own eyes."

In my last life, Tammy tumbled down the stairs,

and the bloody image of her head hitting a vase made me shudder.

I kept my unease under control and shot back,

"Then how do you explain the surveillance footage?"

"If Tammy ran out of the house, why isn't she in the camera footage?!"

"Dora says the footage is fake, but ever since Leo's accident, I've been with all of you the whole time. Tell me, when would I have had time to fake the footage?!"

Faced with my challenge,

the resolve in Theodore's eyes actually wavered, just a little.

I couldn't help thinking to myself:

sure enough, in my last life I lost on sheer force of presence.

Until there was solid proof, I would never let Tammy be connected to any of this...

"Who says you can't fake it?!"

The sound of high heels clicking against the floor came from behind me.

The moment I turned around, I met my sister-in-law's contemptuous eyes.

She planted her hands on her hips and pointed at Theodore.

"Theodore, you really are an idiot!"

"I just called the technician who installed the security cameras at our house, and he told me himself that just twenty minutes ago their customer service got a message telling them to delete a segment of our home surveillance video from the back end."

"Normally they wouldn't delete it, but he said that because your wife and their boss are good friends, they went ahead and did it without a word."

My heart, which had barely started to settle,

was thrown right back up in the air by Ellie's words.

She was right.

The company that installed the security cameras at my in-laws' house belonged to my college classmate.

He'd left school in his sophomore year to start his own business,

so the fact that we were friends was something even Theodore didn't know...