Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 257

Chapter 257–

Chapter 257

The highway stretched out infront of them, and nobody in the car was talking

Josh Senior gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his knuckles white against the dark leather. The radio was off. The air conditioning hummed. Outside, the city slipped past them like something they no longer belonged to, and Marie sat in the passenger seat watching the world move and feeling like she was drowning in stillness.

Your sister loved you.

The words kept coming back. She could not push them away. They sat in her chest like something alive, something that kept breathing even though she wanted it to stop.

Claire stared out the passenger window in the back, her forehead against the glass, not moving. Not blinking, Just watching the city disappear. Josh Junior kept his phone pressed to his thigh, checking it every few seconds like it might contain a message that would undo the last few hours. His knee bounced. His fingers twiched. He was waiting for something. Waiting for Stella to change her mind. Waiting for his daughter to text him even though she did not have his number yet. Waiting for anything that would let him believe this was not actually happening.

Marie tried to remember Margaret at eight years old. There was something there, something at the edge of her memory but it felt far away. Margaret had drawn something. A picture. Marie had been busy. She had been cooking or cleaning or doing something that had seemed so important at the time. Margaret had stood in the doorway of the kitchen with her drawing in her hands, waiting to show her mother. And Marie had told her she was busy. Just like that. Without looking Without asking what Margaret wanted to share.

She closed her eyes.

She could see it so clearly now. Margaret’s face shifting when her mother did not turn around. That small moment when a child understood that she was not important enough to interrupt what her mother was doing.

Margaret loved you.

David’s voice was still in her ears. It lived there now, in the car, in the silence, in the space between her ribs where she could not reach it and could not make it stop.

The drive was forty minutes. It felt like longer. It felt like forever. The buildings gave way to neighborhood streets. The neighborhood streets gave way to quieter roads. And Marie sat in the front seat remembering things she had spent years not thinking about.

Margaret at fourteen, crying in her bedroom after Josh Senior told her she would never be like Claire. That Claire had ambition and Margaret just had excuses. Marie had heard him through the wall. She had known her youngest daughter was crying. She had not gone in. She had thought it would be better to let Josh handle it. That it was a father’s place to trach bis daughter about hard work and expectations. She had turned the television up so she would not have to hear anymore.

That was the choice she had made.

That was what she had chosen to de

Josh Junior’s phone buzzed. His entire body went rigid. He brought the phone to has face so quely was dienose His expression collapsed as he read whatever the inessage said. He set the phone down on his lap without restwesting

“What?” Josh Senior asked.

“My lawyer Josh Junior answered. His voice sounded like something hollow. “The Kane tamaly’s legal testa sent a cease ani desist. I cannot contact the children I cannot go near them I cannot speak to them. Violating

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2:08 pm PA

Chapter 257-

Mom. I know Pad-links I’m a disappointment, but I wish just once you would tell me he was wrong

Marie stopped breathing

The words were simple. The were not long. They did not explain anything or an for anything compleated. They were post a sentence. Just one sentence that her youngest daughter had written and folded and addressed and then never gr

Marie could not move. Could not think. Could not do anything except sit on the floor of the halls hands and understand that at some point, maybe when Margaret was ten or eleven or twelve, her daughter had wroten Her daughter had wanted her mother to defend her Towell her that her father was trong about her. To tell her hat not a disappointment

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