Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 227

Chapter 227

Chapter 227

Dinner that evening started the way good dinners started, with everyone arriving at slightly different times and the smell of food pulling them in one by one until the table was full and the noise level had reached the specific pitch that meant everyone was present and comfortable.

Mrs. Chen had made roast chicken and the kind of potatoes that went golden at the edges and a salad that Lucas served himself three times without acknowledging he had done it. The candles were lit because Lena had lit them when she set the table. The window behind Alexander was dark with the autumn evening outside. They were halfway through the meal when Ria set her fork down.

Not dramatically. She just set it down and looked at her plate for one moment and then looked up at the table. “I got in,” she said.

Nobody immediately understood what she meant.

“The fashion school,” she said. “In New York. I submitted my portfolio three months ago and I heard back today. I got in.”

The table went completely still for exactly one second.

Then Lucia pushed her chair back and crossed to Ria and pulled her daughter into her arms before Ria had fully registered she was moving. Ria laughed, the surprised laugh that escaped when something happened faster than expected, and hugged her mother back.

“New York,” Monica said from across the table, the word arriving in her mouth like she was testing its size.

“New York,” Ria confirmed, over Lucia’s shoulder.

Lucas was grinning. Not the polite grin, the real one, the one that only came when something genuinely delighted him. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. “Which school?”

Ria named it.

Lucas let out a breath. “That is the best one.”

“I know,” Ria said.

Lucia pulled back to look at her daughter’s face. At seventeen years old, with the Lewis Fashion Institute behind her and this in front of her. At the girl who had stood on a stage and given a speech about forgiveness while her whole family watched from the audience.

“I am so proud of you,” Lucia said. Her voice was not entirely steady and she did not try to make it so. “Not just for this. For every step that got you here.”

Ria pressed her lips together briefly. “Don’t make me cry. I am specifically not crying tonight.”

“Then stop looking at me like that,” Lucia said.

Alexander raised his glass across the table. “To Ria.”

Everyone raised whatever was in front of them. Monica raised her juice. Lucas raised his water. Lena raised her wine glass and then looked at it and smiled at nothing in particular.

“New York,” Monica said again, like the word kept needing to be said to become real.

Ria sat back down and picked up her fork and tried to look like the moment was finished, but the colour in her face gave her away and she knew it and she didn’t mind.

The dinner settled back into itself. The chicken. The potatoes. The conversation flowing the way it did when everyone was genuinely at ease, which was a thing this table had not always managed and now managed often enough that it felt ordinary, which was its own kind of extraordinary.

Lena turned to Monica somewhere in the middle of the second helpings.

“The Youth Art Exhibition,” she said. “It’s this weekend. I’ve been looking at the submission requirements.” She set down her fork. “Monica, you should ente

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Chapter 227

Monica looked at her. “Me?”

“Two pieces. Any medium. The panel includes three gallery directors and two professional artists, Lena’s voice was direct and specific the way it got when she had already thought something through and was presenting the conclusion rather than the deliberation. “Your still lifes from the past few weeks. The bowl of fruit and the windowsill series. They would be right for it

Monica was quiet for a moment.

“It’s this weekend,” she said.

“The submission deadline is Thursday.” Lena said. “Which is tomorrow. Which is why I’m telling you now. The table had gone slightly quieter around them, everyone listening without appearing to

Monica looked at her plate. She thought about the sketchbook she had carried everywhere since coming home. The bowl of fruit drawn from three angles on three different days. The windowsill at dawn, at noon, at dusk. The things she had made when big paintings felt too far away and small things felt manageable. She had made them for herself. She had not thought about showing them to anyone.

“They’re just pencil drawings,” she said.

“They’re extraordinary pencil drawings,” Lena said, without softening it into an opinion. She said it the way she said things that were simply accurate.

Monica looked up at Lena and then at the table and then at nothing specific somewhere in the middle distance.

“Okay,” she said.

Lena nodded once, satisfied, and picked up her fork.

Lucas had been waiting for his turn with the patience of someone who had timed it deliberately, letting the other conversations land before he added his own.

“I joined the football team,” he said.

This landed differently from Ria’s news, not less important, just differently shaped. Lucia turned to look at him. Alexander set his glass down.

“Varsity,” Lucas said, answering the question before it was asked. “First training was this week. Coach had seen the scholarship application video.”

“Lucas.” Lucia’s voice had the specific quality it carried when something was very good and she was still processing the size of it.

“It’s just training,” Lucas said quickly. “I haven’t played a proper game yet. I don’t know if I’m the right fit for their system, their formations are different from what I know.” He was doing what he always did, pulling back slightly from his own news before anyone could make too much of it. “But it’s a start.”

“It is not just a start,” Alexander said.

Lucas looked at him.

“You have been working toward this since before you came to live with us,” Alexander said. “You trained through everything that happened this past year. Through the kidnapping and the trial and everything else. You kept training.” He did not elaborate. He did not need to. “It is not just a start. It is everything that came before it arriving.”

Lucas looked at the table for a moment. When he looked up his jaw was set but his eyes were bright.

“Yeah,” he said. Quiet and certain. “Okay. Yeah.”

Dinner went on.

Outside the window the autumn evening sat dark and cool against the glass. Inside the table was warm and full of food and people who had chosen each other and kept choosing, through everything that could have undone them and did not.

Chapter 22

Monica was already thinking about which drawings to submit L gallery would look like. Ria was already thinking about New York

a was already thinking about what the

Lucas was thinking about the training session on Friday and the play the coach had drawn on the whiteboard that he had not fully understood yet but was going to

Lucia looked around the table at all of them and felt the specific weight of an evening that would probably seem ordinary in a few years, just dinner, just the family, just a Wednesday.

She hoped she would remember it anyway.

Subterbed

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