Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 305

Chapter 305

Alexander was dressed and downstairs at seven–fifteen for an appointment that was not until nine.

Lucia came down at seven–forty and found him standing in the living room with his coat already on, looking at his phone with the specific alertness of a man who had mentally left for the destination twenty minutes

ago.

She looked at him.

“We’re thirty minutes early,” she said.

“The traffic on the Meridian road is unpredictable at this hour,” he said.

“The clinic is twelve minutes away on a bad day.”

“I like to account for variables.”

She poured herself a glass of water.

“You’re going to make the doctor nervous,” she said.

“I am perfectly calm,” he said, and checked his watch.

She almost laughed.

ید

The sounds of the house waking up started overhead. The particular rhythm of four people on the same floor who had been living together long enough to have distinct morning signatures. Lucas was the heaviest on the stairs. Ria was the one who could cross the landing without making a single sound. Lena talked to herself while she was getting ready, not conversations, just commentary. Monica’s door opened with the characteristic sound of someone who had not yet got around to oiling the hinge.

They appeared in stages.

Ria came first with her coffee and sat at the island. She looked at Alexander in his coat.

“Why are you dressed already?” she said.

“We’re going to the clinic,” Lucia said.

“The prenatal appointment?”

“Yes.”

Ria set her coffee down. “Then I’m coming.”

Lucas appeared from the direction of the toaster. “Coming where?”

“The baby’s first scan,” Ria said.

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“Then I’m coming,” he said.

Lena slid through the kitchen doorway in her socks. “Nobody is leaving me behind.”

Monica came in last and read the room.

“The appointment,” she said. Not a question.

“Yes,” Lucia said.

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Monica sat on the nearest stool and folded her arms with the decisive posture of someone who has already made a decision and is presenting it as a fact.

“I’m coming,” she said.

“It is a doctor’s appointment,” Lucia said.

“It’s my baby,” Monica said.

Lucas turned from the toaster with a very specific expression. “It is absolutely not your baby.”

“It is my brother or sister,” Monica said. “Which makes it my baby.”

Lena pointed at her. “She has an argument.”

Lucas looked at Lena. “Don’t encourage her.”

Alexander cleared his throat in the way he cleared his throat when he was about to say something he had already decided.

“Only one person gets to decide,” he said.

Everyone looked at him.

He looked at Lucia.

“Your mother,” he said.

The four children turned to Lucia with the specific coordinated energy of people who have just been told where the decision lives and are going there immediately.

“We’ll be completely quiet,” Ria said.

“I’ll leave my phone in the car,” Lucas said. Everyone registered this as a significant offer.

“I’ll stop talking for the entire appointment,” Lena said.

The room turned toward Lena.

Lucas stared at her for a moment. “Now we know you’re lying.”

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Lucia laughed.

:

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Monica slid off the stool and walked over and put her arms around Lucia from the side and looked up at her with the expression she had used with some success since she was small.

“Please?” she said.

Lucia sighed in the way she sighed when she had already made up her mind and was giving the sigh its proper moment before delivering the result.

“Fine,” she said.

The cheer that came from four teenager was not proportional to the situation, but it filled the kitchen and Alexander stood in the middle of it in his coat and said, to no one in particular, “The doctor is going to think we’re trying to move in.”

The clinic nurse at the desk counted them coming through the door.

“This is quite a support team,” she said, with the warm amusement of someone who had seen families arrive in all configurations and found this one particularly impressive.

Monica looked at her. “We’re here for the baby,” she said, as though this was self–evident.

They waited in the consultation room with Alexander in the chair beside Lucia’s bed and the other four arranged along the far wall, which Lucas had noted was more organized than he had expected them to manage.

The lights were dimmed.

The doctor ran the wand across the cold gel on Lucia’s stomach and looked at the screen, and the room went quiet the way rooms went quiet during things that could not be rushed or filled with noise.

Alexander had Lucia’s hand.

He had not let go of it since they came into the room.

The doctor’s expression shifted from professional focus to the smile she kept for this part.

“Everything looks exactly as it should,” she said. “Strong and healthy.”

And then the sound came.

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the rapid rhythmic flutter of something very small that was already doing the most important thing a body could do, which was keeping going.

Nobody spoke.

Lucia turned to look at Alexander’s face.

He was looking at the screen. His jaw was very still. His eyes were full in the way eyes went full when something arrived that was larger than what the body knew how to contain quickly.

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“That’s your baby’s heartbeat,” the doctor said.

Monica made a sound that was halfway between a word and not.

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Then she was crying, quietly, with her hand pressed over her mouth and her eyes fixed on the small grey shape on the screen.

Lucas was standing very still with his arms crossed and his head turned very slightly to one side and his jaw doing a thing, and then his hand came up quickly and brushed the corner of his eye and went back down and he recrossed his arms.

Ria put her hand on Lucia’s shoulder and kept it there.

Lena did not say anything at all. She just watched the screen with the expression she brought to things that moved her, which was the same expression she brought to good books and to conversations that went somewhere real, a quiet complete attentiveness.

Alexander looked at Lucia.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead and kept them there for a moment.

“Thank you,” he said, against her hair.

Lucia covered his hand with hers.

“We made this,” she said.

The doctor printed the ultrasound image and turned from the machine, and before she had fully extended her hand with the photograph Monica had crossed the room.

“That’s mine,” Monica said.

“It absolutely is not,” Lucas said, already moving.

“It should be framed.” Lena said.

“We can make copies,” Ria said, which was the most practical suggestion but landed in the middle of a negotiation that was not interested in practicality.

Alexander reached past all of them and took the photograph from the doctor’s hand with the calm of a man who had thought about this in advance.

“I’m the father,” he said.

There was a brief unified protest.

He held the photograph at arm’s length, above the reach of Monica, who had determined height was the primary obstacle, and looked at the image.

“Copies can be made,” he said. “This one is mine.”

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The car home was a continuation of the morning’s argument, which had now expanded to include names, which Lena had introduced and which everyone had immediately entered strong opinions about. Lucas wanted something strong and traditional, which Ria said was indistinguishable from boring, which Lucas objected to, which Monica listened to from the back seat with the expression of someone watching a tennis match and enjoying it.

“Twins solve all of this,” Lena said.

“No,” Alexander said, from the front.

“You’d have one name each,” Lena said.

“No.” Alexander said.

“Just think about it,” Lena said.

“I have thought about it,” Alexander said. “The answer is no.”

Lucia was watching the road through the passenger window with a small private expression that the day had produced, the specific expression of someone who has been carrying a great deal for a very long time and has been handed something that is purely and simply good.

That evening Lucia’s assistant arrived with an envelope.

Inside was an invitation on heavy cream paper with the kind of print that felt like it had been pressed rather than printed. Best Businesswoman of the Year. A national award recognizing outstanding achievement in business and leadership. A ceremony in three days, attended by business leaders, politicians, press.

Lucia read it twice and set it on the table.

“I’m not going,” she said.

Alexander looked at her.

“I don’t want another camera pointed at me right now,” she said. “Not with everything that happened this week. Not with a pregnancy that has already been taken from me once before I was ready to share it.”

Monica looked at the invitation on the table.

“You earned that,” she said. Simply.

“Strangers don’t get to take this from you too,” Lucas said.

Lena added: “You’ve spent your whole life standing up for what you built. Don’t sit down because people made it uncomfortable.”

Ria came and stood beside her mother.

“You taught us,” she said, “never to hide because of what other people think.” She looked at Lucia steadily. “You taught us that specifically.”

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Lucia looked at the invitation.

Alexander took her hand.

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“You won’t be on that stage alone,” he said. “Every one of us will be in the room.”

Lucia looked at her family. At the photograph of the ultrasound that Alexander had placed on the counter when they came home, the small grey shape of someone who was not yet anyone but was already changing everything.

She picked up the invitation.

“Then we’ll go,” she said.

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