Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 314

Chapter 314

The call came in the afternoon while Lucia was reviewing documents in her study

Margaret’s lawyer. She hadn’t spoken to him directly in months, not since the legal proceedings wound down, rice on the phone carried the careful quality of someone passing along a message that wasn’t strictly legal hu

Margaret had asked if Lucia would visit.

He said it plainly, without arguing the case for it. Just that Margaret had asked, and he was passing the request along whatever Lucia decided was entirely her own decision.

She thanked him and ended the call.

She sat with the phone in her hand and looked at the wall for a long time.

Alexander found her like that when he came to ask about dinner.

“Who called?”

She told him.

“What are you going to do?”

She set the phone down. “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

He didn’t push, just asked what she wanted for dinner and went to arrange it. Lucia sat in the study another hour before she moved.

She didn’t sleep well. She lay in the dark with Alexander’s breathing steady beside her and turned the question over the way she turned difficult things, from one angle to another, looking not for the answer she wanted but the one that was actually

true.

Margaret had asked for her by name.

Lucia thought about what it had felt like making that phone call to her assistant a few nights ago, the strange weightlessness of it, a decision made not only for Margaret’s sake but for her own, for the version of herself she wanted to be able to live with.

She had paid the bills.

She hadn’t visited.

Somewhere between three and four in the morning she understood those were two different things, and that the real question wasn’t whether she wanted to go, but whether she could go and still be who she wanted to be on the other side of it

She decided around dawn, quietly, without much clarity, just the understanding that she was going to go.

At breakfast she told Alexander.

He looked at her over his coffee. I’ll come with you.”

She hadn’t expected that, hadn’t planned to accept it, and then found herself saying yes,

St. Michael’s was quiet in the mid morning, the particular seitling of a hospital after the early rush Excia walked the corridor toward Margaret’s room with Alexander beside her, feeling the strangeness of choosing to be somewhere rather than arriving out of necessity.

22

11:10 Wed, Jul 22

Chapter 314

The door was open

Claire sat in the chair on one side of the bed, Marie on the other, both looking up as 1 lewd Alexander appeared in the doorway

Margaret was propped against the pillows. When she saw Lucia her expression moved through several things skly surprise first, then something close to relief, then the careful stillness of someone trying not to read too moch was seeing

You came. Margaret said.

Her voice was quieter than Lucia remembered, not weak exactly, just different, the voice of someone whorl been thing something physical and hadn’t fully recovered her own weight yet.

“I came

She stepped into the room. Alexander stayed near the doorway, present but at a distance that said Me not for the conversation.

Claire stood and pulled her chair back slightly, making space

Lucia sat.

there for Lia

“I didn’t think you were coming,” Margaret said. “When the lawyer told me you hadn’t refused but hadn’t said yes either. I thought” She stopped. “I thought you weren’t going to.”

“I wasn’t sure.” Lucia said. “I thought about it for a long time.”

Margaret nodded slightly, understanding, not making it smaller by saying Lucia didn’t need to explain

“I owe you an apology,” Margaret said. “I know I’ve said it before. On camera. In letters. I know the words have already been said. She looked down at her hands. “But you’re here now. I want to say it to your face!

Lucia waited.

“I destroyed your marriage. I pursued a man I knew was married and I didn’t stop. I told myself things to justify it, the way I’ve told myself things my whole life to get what I wanted, and I kept going even when I knew it was wrong” She looked at Lucia. “I walked into that basement. I put a gun in a room with your daughters. I pointed it at Monica” A pause. “I took Marco from his children.”

The room went still.

“I am sorry,” Margaret said. “Not because I’m dying. Not because I need something from you. I’m sorry because what I did was wrong, and you’ve spent years carrying the cost of it.”

Lucia looked at her and found she couldn’t say nothing.

“You hurt me,” she said. “You hurt my children. There are things I’m still working through, and I won’t tell you I’ve fingivent you, because I don’t know if that’s true yet.”

Margaret held her eyes

But I can tell you something else,” Lucia said. “What you did made me understand something I should have understood years earlier. I had been relying on the wrong things. The wrong people. A version of security that was never veal,” She paused. “Losing that showed me what was actually there’ She glanced toward Alexander at the door. He came hack no me Not because of what you did. But I found my way to him clearly because everything else had been stripped away” She looked back at Margaret. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully forgive you. But my life now is better than the one I had before any of this. Somehow that has to count for something

22

LIT

O

11:10 Wed, Jul 22 J

Chapter 314

Margaret’s eyes filled. “Thank you. For the bills”

You don’t need to thank me for that

“I do. Margaret said. “After everything. You didn’t owe me any of it. And you did anyway” She breathed “Vares be person than I ever was, I need you to know I know that,”

Marie stood Larcia. I am sorry for what this family put you through. The videos. The lies we told Her eyes we st “Thank you for what you did for Margaret. For not letting her face this alone”

Claire stood beside her mother. Tm forry,’ she said simply, no performance in it, just plain truth. For everything T beginning

Lucia looked around the room, at the bed, at the woman in it who had been her husband’s affair and her enemy now simply someone running out of time.

“I hope you get better,” Lucia said. “I mean that.”

Margaret nodded and said nothing else. There was nothing else to say.

Lucia stood and walked to the door, where Alexander took her hand. They left the room, down the corridor, through the hospital entrance, out into cold, bright late autumn air.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like something heavy has been put down,” she said.

He kept her hand in his. She breathed in, and they walked to the car.

Behind them, in the hospital room, Margaret watched through the window as the two figures crossed the parking lot below, small and distant, until they disappeared into a car and drove away.

“I spent years trying to become her,” she said quietly, to no one. “I never once thought to simply admire her instead.”

AD

Comment

Send gift

No Ads

22

O