Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 270

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Chapter 270

Chapter 270

Claire did not decide to go to the prison. She was driving with no destination, the kind of driving that happened when staying still was unbearable and motion gave the feeling of doing something even when it was doing nothing. David’s voice was still in her head, not the whole conversation, just the pieces that kept surfacing regardless of what she tried to put over them, resurfacing like something that refused to stay buried.

Our marriage ended a long time ago.

Our children deserve peace.

Fix what your family has done.

She was crying and she was driving and neither of those things was safe and she pulled off the road and sat with the engine running and her hands pressed flat on the wheel until the crying had exhausted itself into something drier and colder and she could breathe without the sensation of drowning.

When she looked up at what was in front of her she understood that something in her, some part she did not consciously consult, had brought her here. The precinct was directly ahead. She sat looking at it for a long time and the conclusion that formed in her mind was the same one it had always formed, the one that had been forming since she was old enough to feel what she felt, which was that everything had a starting point and the starting point had a name.

She wiped her face and went inside.

An officer at the desk recognized her from the previous visits, the small recognitions that accumulated when you had been to a place enough times to become familiar. He asked her name and she gave it. He asked who she was visiting and she told him. The waiting was longer than usual and she sat in the plastic chair with the divorce papers in her lap and the visiting room smelling the way it always smelled, stale and institutional and wrong, and she thought in circles, the thinking that happened when you were trying to reach a conclusion you had already decided on.

Margaret came through the door.

Claire watched her cross the room and something was different. Not in the circumstances or the clothes or the setting. In how Margaret moved. She walked with the particular quality of someone who had put something down that they had been carrying a long time, not healed, not finished, but lighter in a specific and new way. She sat across from Claire and looked at her with an expression that was more surprised than guarded.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Margaret said.

Claire put the divorce papers on the table and pushed them across.

She watched Margaret pick them up and read the first page. She watched her sister’s face when the words landed and understood them.

“David filed for divorce,” Margaret said quietly.

“Congratulations,” Claire said. “You finally got what you always wanted.”

Margaret looked at her with confusion moving across her features. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t,” Claire said. Her voice came out cracked at the edges. “Don’t sit there and pretend you don’t understand. You have been waiting for this. Waiting for my marriage to fall apart the way everything else in your life did.”

“Claire…”

“You know what it feels like?” Claire continued, and the words came fast now, running into each other, the accumulation of months and years finding a space to move through at last. “To grow up and watch everyone look past you? To walk into a room and know before you speak that they’re thinking about someone else?” Margaret sat with her hands folded and did not interrupt, which somehow made it worse, made Claire need to keep going.

“Teachers,” Claire said. Her voice dropper’

awer, the sound of something that had

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Chapter 270

been living underground for decades. “Neighbours. Relatives. Everyone. Claire is lovely but have you seen Margaret. Claire is smart but Margaret, now Margaret is something special.” She pressed her palms against the table. “Boys looked at you first. Always first. I walked into a room and they waited to see if you were coming. They waited to see if you existed before they saw me.”

Her breathing was uneven and she pushed through it.

“Do you know what that does to a person? To spend your entire childhood in the shadow of someone who did not even seem to notice she was casting it?” Claire’s hands moved in small circles on the table. “You never had to try. Everything just came to you. The attention. The interest. The love. You could have had anyone and instead you wanted the one person who had finally, finally chosen me.”

Margaret was looking at her hands.

“David was the only man,” Claire said, and her voice broke on it, “who ever looked at me like I was enough. Not wondering if you were coming. Not comparing. He looked at me and he stayed looking.” Her chin came up but her eyes were full. “I would have done anything to keep that.”

The visiting room was very quiet around them.

Margaret lifted her face and her expression held something Claire had not anticipated, something that looked like understanding instead of judgment.

“Do you really believe,” Margaret said slowly, “that I wanted your life?”

“Yes,” Claire said immediately.

“I never wanted your life,” Margaret said. Her voice was steady. “Not once. I wanted my own. I wanted someone to love me the way David loved me before you took him away from me. I wanted true love like the one i shared with David and I went about trying to find it in the worst possible way and it cost everyone.” She stopped and looked directly at her sister. “I was wrong. What I did with David after you were married, it was a betrayal of you and of him and of whatever was left of anything decent in me. I will carry that for the rest of my life.”

Claire stared at her sister.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said.

“I know,” Margaret said. “But it doesn’t change what I need to say next.”

Claire waited.

“Your marriage didn’t end because of what I did years ago,” Margaret said. “It ended because you stopped being David’s wife.” She held Claire’s eyes without looking away. “I lit the match. But every one of you chose to keep feeding the fire. Every lie, every video, every accusation. You all decided to feed it, and I cannot own that for you.”

“I was protecting my family,” Claire said, her voice rising.

“I believe that’s how it started,” Margaret said. Her voice remained level, not matching Claire’s pitch. “But somewhere it became about something else. About winning. About me. About who had more and who was owed what and a scorecard that was never going to balance no matter what anyone paid you.” She leaned forward slightly. “I know that because I did the same thing. I turned everything into a competition with Lucia for something that was never mine to compete for, and it cost me everything and everyone, and I am going to be in this cell for the rest of my life because of it.”

“Because of you our entire family is going to prison,” Claire said. “All of this. The lawsuit. The hearing. Everything that is happening to our parents and our brother and…”

“No,” Margaret said.

Claire stopped.

“No one put a hand on Monica’s arm except Josh,” Margaret said. “No one made our mother sit in front of a camera and say things that were not true. No one forced any of you to go to the tabloid or the press conference or to keep going after every warning you were given. Those were your choices.” She looked at her

Chapter 270

sister steadily. “You can be angry at me for what I started. I accept that. But what came after it was your family’s doing.”

Claire’s jaw was tight and her hands moved into fists on the table.

Margaret reached across and slid the divorce papers back toward her.

“Go,” Margaret said. “Go and fight for your marriage.”

Claire looked at the papers.

“After everything,” she said.

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