After My Jinx Daughter Cursed Us Chapter 2

He missed a step on the way down the stairs. He tumbled, rolling all the way to the bottom, and his head landed squarely on a nail sticking out of a floorboard.

He died instantly. When the paramedics arrived, they just told us to call the funeral home.

My mother-in-law knelt beside him, her cries echoing in the stairwell. “How could you leave me so soon? What am I going to do without you?”

But her kind, gentle husband would never answer her again.

Mark rushed home from work, his eyes immediately turning red. But he held himself together, calmly calling relatives to make arrangements for the funeral.

I held Nora in my arms, guilt and self-loathing threatening to drown me.

But my daughter just looked on with wide, innocent eyes, as if nothing had happened.

I gently turned her face towards mine. “Nora, tell Mommy. Why did you say that word? Please?” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Why did you have to curse Grandpa?”

She couldn’t answer. The pressure of my fingers on her cheeks made her uncomfortable, and she burst into tears.

Hearing her cries, Mark hurried over and took her from me.

He frowned, his eyes filled with reproach. “It was an accident, Anna. It has nothing to do with Nora!”

My own tears started to fall. I wished more than anything that he was right.

But my father-in-law was dead. That was real.

From that day on, I stopped speaking to Nora. I forbade anyone else from speaking to her, too.

Mark thought I was losing my mind. My mother-in-law would hold Nora close and scold me.

“Anna, your father-in-law’s death was a tragic accident. You can’t blame a child for it.”

Nora would just play with her rattle, offering me a sweet, innocent smile.

And every time she did, a chill would run down my spine.

I didn’t know how to stop her curse, so I just tried to warn my family, over and over again.

Years passed in uneasy peace. I had almost managed to forget about the curse.

Until one day, Nora was watching TV and spoke her second sentence. “The snow by the door is red.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. I bolted downstairs and swept the front entrance clean of every last flake of snow.

There, I thought, panting. Let’s see the curse come true now.

Then my phone rang. It was Mark, his voice choked with sobs. “Anna! Get to the entrance of the complex, quick! It’s Mom… something’s happened to Mom!”

My hands trembling, I locked Nora inside the apartment.

When I sprinted to the entrance, I found my mother-in-law lying on the ground, covered in blood. A bag of salt she’d bought had burst open, the white crystals scattered around her, glittering in the sun like freshly fallen snow…

Nora’s curse had come true again.

She had been killed by a car that ran a red light. I couldn’t even hear the driver’s apologies over the roaring in my ears.

I couldn’t let her do this anymore.

I clutched the object in my pocket and turned back towards home.