A Mother's Second Chance: Rewriting Our Fate Chapter 1

For over half her life, my mother favored boys over girls. But at the age of fifty, an accident left her paralyzed from the waist down.

My freeloading brother, her precious son, didn't step up to care for her for a single day.

I never married. I took care of her all by myself for twenty years, right up until the day she passed away peacefully.

What nobody knew was that after my mother died, she was reborn. She woke up in the past, right in the year I turned eighteen.

* * *

"Harper Reed, did you actually buy a new phone?!"

During my summer break at home, a corner of my new phone accidentally peeked out of my pocket. Mason, who was lounging on the sofa watching TV, spotted it instantly.

Dropping his bag of potato chips, he lunged at me, snatched the phone from my pocket, and held it up excitedly, examining it from every angle.

Alarm bells went off in my head. I had a bad feeling about this.

"What are you doing? Give it back!"

"Heh, it's mine now!"

Mason tried to unlock it, failing a few password attempts before bossily ordering me to open it for him.

I panicked and blurted out, "I bought that with my own money from my part-time job! You can't take it!"

"I want it, so I'm taking it! Watch me!"

"You already have a phone! Why do you have to steal mine?"

I had worked myself to the bone, waking up early and staying up late at my part-time job just to afford this phone. How could I bear to just hand it over?

Besides, Mason was only in high school and already had the newest iPhone. Mine was just a basic $300 Android. He was just so used to taking my things. Even if he didn't need it, he had to take it!

"So what? What's wrong with having two phones?"

I suppressed my rage. "Give it back!"

"Mom! Hey, Mom!"

Hearing him call for our mother, my heart sank.

Since we were little, my parents always did everything in their power to give Mason whatever he wanted, let alone something of mine he simply took a liking to.

It wasn't that I hadn't fought back before, but my protests only ever earned me a scolding or a beating.

"You're the older sister, what's wrong with letting your little brother have his way? Why are you such an ungrateful brat?!"

"You'll get married and leave eventually. The Reed family is going to rely on your brother to carry the name. Don't even try to compare yourself to him, you hear me?"

I had heard those words countless times.

Seeing the defeated look on my face, Mason laughed smugly, making obnoxious faces at me. I was shaking with anger, wishing I could slap that look right off his face.

Smack!

A crisp, sharp sound echoed in the room. Someone had actually slapped Mason hard across the face!