Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 285

Chapter 285

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Monica went slightly pink. “Thank you?

The planner opened her notebook on her knee and looked around at the assembled family, at Alexander and Lucia on sofa, at Kia already leaning forward to examine the color samples, at Lucas who had claimed the armchair with his arms crossed in the manner of a person attending under protest, at Lena on the floor cross–legged with a cup of tex

“My only rule today, the planner said, “is that I hear from Monica first. Everyone else adds afterward.” She smiled at Monica “So. If you could have exactly the birthday you wanted, what would it look like?”

Monica thought about this honestly, the way she thought about things, without performing the thinking

“I don’t want the biggest party, she said.

Several family members looked surprised. Ria caught herself mid–reaction and schooled her face back to neutral.

“I just want the people I love,” Monica said. “That’s the most important thing” She looked at her hands. “And I’d like to invite some children from the orphanage. The one the donation helped fund.” She looked up. “I want them to celebrate with us.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Lucia’s expression did the thing it did when Monica said something that cost Lucia nothing to hear but everything to feel. Alexander looked at his daughter with the quiet steadiness of a man who had been surprised by her more than once and was still finding her surprising

The planner wrote without comment, which was itself a form of respect.

“Beautiful,” she said simply. “Who’s next?”

Ria’s hand was already up.

“Garden party,” she said. “Elegant, not fussy. Lots of flowers, something seasonal, I’ll pull references. Live music, something ambient and warm, not too loud. Photo stations rather than a booth. Dessert table with real options, not just for aesthetics She was already reaching for the color samples. “These tones are close. Maybe slightly warmer.”

The planner’s pen was moving quickly.

Lucas unfolded his arms.

“Teenagers don’t want to stand around looking at flowers,” he said. “No offense. He added this to Ria, who waved it off with the serenity of someone who had long since stopped needing his agreement to proceed with her opinions. “Games. A proper

Salance floor. Some kind of outdoor activity that isn’t just talking to each other while standing up.

“Both things can exist at one party” the planner said..

Lucas considered this. “Fine.”

Lena had been quiet, turning her cup in both hands, watching the discussion.

“What if the gifts were books?” she said.

The room turned toward her.

“Instead of presents.,” she said. “Each guest brings a book. They can write something inside if they want to. And afterward, all the books get donated.” She looked at Monica. “A library for somewhere that needs one.”

Monica’s face did the thing it did when something was exactly right. “I love that,” she said.

“Birthday Book Drive,” the planner said, writing it at the top of her page and underlining it.

Lucia reached over and took Monica’s hand.

“Whatever the decorations look like,” she said, “whatever the food is or the music or any of it. I just want you to feel it. How loved you are.” Her thumb moved across the back of Monica’s hand. “That’s the only thing that matters to me.”

Monica squeezed back.

The planner looked at Alexander.

“Mr. Kane?”

Alexander did not hesitate.

“Whatever makes my daughter happy,” he said.

Ria looked at him with the particular expression of fond exasperation that she reserved for moments when he said something completely Alexander. “That is the most unhelpful answer of the morning.”

“It’s also the correct one,” he said.

Lucas made a sound that was almost a laugh. Lena smiled into her tea.

The planner closed her notebook with the satisfied click of someone who had everything she needed. She promised a full proposal by the end of the week, thanked the family for their time, and left with her assistants, the rolling case, and the color samples, the living room returning to its ordinary proportions once the professional energy of her presence had departed.

The family stayed.

soften it.

She wrote about hating. About how she had thought, for a period she was not proud of, that the hating was something she owed her father. That it was a form of loyalty. And how she had eventually understood that it was doing nothing to the person she was directing it toward and a great deal to herself. Holding onto pain doesn’t change the past, she wrote. It only changes what the present can be.

She wrote: You hurt me. You hurt my family. Nothing will ever erase what happened.

When she wrote. But there were also moments when you were kind to me. And those were real. Both things can be true

She wrote: I forgive you. Not because you deserve it. Not because prison efases what happened. Not because I have forgotten. I forgive you breathe I refuse to let pain be the thing that decides the rest of my life.

She sat for a long time after writing that

Then she wrote the closing

I hope one day you forgive yourself. Goodbye, Margare

She signed her name.

She folded the letter twice and put it inside an envelope. She wrote Margaret on the front in her careful handwriting. She did not seal it.

She just looked at it.

Then she walked to the window.

The garden was ordinary and peaceful below, the same garden it had been all morning, the trees at their September weight, a bird doing something in the hedge along the left border. Somewhere beyond the garden there were children’s voices, drifting from the direction of the road, high and indistinct.

She put one hand flat on the envelope.

She did not know whether she would ever send it. She thought probably she would know when she needed to know and not before. That was how these things worked, she had come to understand. You could not decide in advance the exact moment when something became right.

But the writing of it had finished something that had been unfinished for a long time.

She put the envelope in the desk drawer and closed it,

She stayed at the window for a while, her hand resting on the edge of the desk, looking at the garden and listening to the voices somewhere beyond it and feeling, in the particular quiet of her own room, something she had not felt for a very long time.

Light.

Not without the weight entirely. Just lighter.

Downstairs, her family were still talking about flowers and books and music and whether Lucas would survive wearing a suit for three hours, and her birthday was three weeks away, and the envelope was in the drawer, and for right now, this moment, that was enough.