The Invisible Bridge: My Last Goodbye

CHAPTER 4: THE FIRST EMBER

The silence in the apartment was no longer empty. It had weight, texture, a strange, humming presence. In the first hours after Justin left, it had been a vacuum, sucking all the sound and warmth from the world. Now, after three days, it had become a cocoon. It was a sanctuary of pure, un-violated space where the only voice that existed was her own, and the only reality that mattered was the one she would choose to acknowledge.

For three days, Belgiana did not go to work. On the first morning, she had called in sick, her voice a hollow, convincing monotone that betrayed nothing of the cataclysm that had shattered her life. She did not answer the subsequent calls from unknown office extensions, nor the single, terse text from Justin that had arrived on the second day: "We need to talk. Are you okay?"

The hypocrisy of that question was so vast it was almost funny, a black-hole kind of humor that threatened to collapse into something infinitely sad. Are you okay? after he had personally held the blade and twisted it. It was the question of an arsonist calling the fire department to ask about the temperature.

So, she sat. She sat on the floor, her back against the cool wall, and she let the memories wash over her. Not the poisoned memories of Justin—his lying mouth, his treacherous hands—but the deep, sustaining memories of her mother. Elara’s laugh, a sound like wind chimes dancing in a summer storm. The way she would hum old, heartbreaking Kundiman songs while frying fish in the tiny kitchen of their old home, the oil sizzling a counterpoint to her melancholy tune. The feel of her hands, rough from laundry and gentle as moonlight, braiding Belgiana’s hair, her touch a language of love all its own.

“Some treasures, anak, are meant to be kept in the heart, not worn on the neck.”

Lola’s words, once a gentle, philosophical warning, were now a battle cry, a mantra of survival. The pendant was gone. The physical proof, the beautiful, cold metal, had been stolen. But the covenant was not. The love that it represented, the history it held, was not stored in a piece of gold. It was stored in her. In the cadence of her breath, in the marrow of her bones, in the very rhythm of her heart, which, against all odds, continued to beat. They could steal the symbol, but they could not steal the soul.

On the fourth day, the light through the window was different. It was softer, holding the promise of afternoon rain. She stood up. Her body felt stiff, foreign, as if she were re-inhabiting a suit of skin she had shed. She walked to the small, wooden altar in the corner of her room, a sacred space dominated by a faded photograph of her mother. Elara’s young face, forever smiling, stood beside a simple crucifix and a fresh, wilting sampaguita garland whose sweet, funereal scent filled the air.

She looked into her mother’s eyes, into that timeless smile, and the tears that came now were not of helpless rage, but of fierce, defiant love.

“They stole the proof,” she whispered, her voice raspy and unfamiliar from days of disuse. “They stole the map. But they cannot steal the territory. They cannot steal the fact that I am your daughter.”

It was the first truth. The foundation stone upon which she would build everything that came after. It was absolute and unassailable.

She didn’t go back to Laurent-Lee Holdings. She knew, with a certainty that felt like a physical law, that that world was a lie, a gilded stage designed for Jessica’s manipulations and Justin’s cowardice. To walk back through those glass doors, to sit at that cubicle, would be to genuflect before their false reality, to accept their gaslight as the sun. Her resignation was not an email she needed to send; it was a truth she had already internalized. She was already gone.

Instead, she showered, the hot water a baptism washing away the residue of paralysis. She dressed in simple, comfortable clothes—no more corporate armor. She gathered her small, meager savings, her laptop, and a single, dog-eared notebook filled with her mother’s handwritten recipes and stories, and she walked to a quiet café a few blocks away, one she had always loved but never had the time to frequent.

The world outside was startlingly normal. The jeepneys roared past, splashing through puddles. The street vendors called out their wares. Life, in all its messy, vibrant indifference, went on. And for the first time, its indifference felt not like a dismissal, but like a freedom.

In the café, the familiar scent of roasted beans and the soft, percussive clatter of cups was a balm. This was a world untouched by her personal apocalypse. Here, she was not the woman who had been betrayed; she was just a woman with a laptop, a story waiting to be told.

She found a corner table, the afternoon light painting a warm square on the worn wood. She opened her laptop. The screen glowed to life, a blank, white document waiting. The cursor blinked, a tiny, persistent heartbeat. A question. An invitation.

What did she have? She took inventory, not as a victim tallying her losses, but as a general assessing her remaining troops.

She had no heirloom to prove her heritage. But she had her mother’s stories, whispered into her childhood ears like secrets. She had the history of the Lágrimas del Sol, as told by her mother, who had heard it from Charles—a story of a lost tribe, a chieftain’s daughter, and a love as fierce as the sun. She had the flavors of her Lola’s cooking—the tang of adobo, the richness of kare-kare—each dish a chapter in her personal history. She had the myths of the provinces, the soul of the Philippines that was her birthright, her anchor.

And she had the other half. The half she had spent her life yearning for. The European art, the history of the Ardennes, the tragic romance of a love that crossed oceans and class divides. The legacy Charles Laurent had tried to give her with a name, then failed to protect. It was not a void; it was a palette. A story of two worlds, forever linked by blood and betrayal.

Her fingers, which had felt so useless and trembling for days, now hovered over the keys, steady and sure. They began to move, tentatively at first, then with a gathering rhythm.

She wasn’t sure what it was. A blog? A memoir? A business plan for a venture she couldn't yet name? The label didn’t matter. It was hers. It was the one thing they could not tax, could not audit, could not steal. It was her voice.

She titled the document, the letters appearing on the screen with a quiet, final certainty:

BELGIANA.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, the first full breath she felt she had taken in days. Then, she wrote the first sentence. It was not a plea, not a question, not a defense. It was a declaration.

“My name is Belgiana Rosales. This is my story. It begins not with a man, but with a woman. My mother. And it will end with me.”

The cursor blinked, no longer a question, but a promise. The first ember had been struck. The fire would follow.