When Celebration Turns To Ash
988 Words
Prisca didn’t cry.
She didn’t pace or wring her hands or stare anxiously at the door the way she used to when Gabriel was late. Instead, she stood in the middle of her living room, phone in hand, sunlight spilling across the polished floor, and felt something dangerously close to joy.
It had been days.
No news. No sightings. No calls returned.
Victoria was gone.
People didn’t vanish like that unless something had gone terribly wrong—or terribly final. Prisca chose the version that served her best.
She let out a slow breath and smiled, lifting her chin as though the world had finally corrected itself.
“So that’s it,” she murmured. “You couldn’t survive the truth.”
She moved to the mirror, studying her reflection with deliberate calm. Her eyes were bright. Nothing like the hollow look Victoria had worn toward the end—thin, pale, and clinging to hope like it was oxygen.
Prisca had never understood that kind of weakness.
She picked up her phone again.
Gabriel hadn’t called her that morning. Hadn’t texted either. But that didn’t worry her. Men always withdrew right before surrendering. He was grieving and processing things. Soon, he would reach for the person who had always been there.
Her.
She typed without hesitation.
Now nothing stands between us again.
She hit send.
The moment the message delivered, a thrill ran through her chest. Not relief but anticipation. The kind that came before a door finally opened.
She imagined Gabriel reading it, imagined the silence afterward, the slow acceptance. She even allowed herself to picture him arriving later that evening, exhausted, broken, and finally ready to choose.
Her phone rang.
It was Gabriel.
Prisca’s smile widened.
She answered immediately. “Gabriel—”
“What is wrong with you?”
The rage in his voice slammed into her so hard she stiffened.
Prisca blinked. “What?”
“Is this the kind of woman you are?” he snapped. “Is this the kind of mother you think you are?”
Her breath caught.
“I don’t understand—”
“My child,” Gabriel said, each word shaking with fury, “has been lying in a hospital bed for weeks. Weeks. Fighting for her life.”
Prisca’s heart skipped—not with guilt, but with irritation.
“I’ve been busy—”
“Busy?” he roared. “Busy doing what? Because it wasn’t coming to see your daughter. It wasn’t calling her doctors. It wasn’t answering my messages.”
Prisca straightened, defensiveness rising. “I told you I had work—”
“I begged you to come,” Gabriel cut in. “I sent message after message. I told you she was scared. I told you she kept asking for you.”
Silence fell between them, thick and suffocating.
“And now,” he continued, his voice dropping into something colder, and sharper, “the first time you decide to reach out properly, it’s to talk about another woman’s death?”
Prisca’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“I didn’t say death,” she said quickly.
“You didn’t have to,” Gabriel shot back. “Your message said everything.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“You didn’t ask about your daughter,” he went on. “Not once. You didn’t ask if she was stable. If she was in pain. If she cried herself to sleep last night.”
Prisca felt something twist uncomfortably in her chest—but she pushed it down.
“You’re overreacting,” she said. “You’re emotional because of everything that’s happenning.”
“No,” Gabriel said flatly. “I’m finally seeing things clearly.”
That frightened her.
“Do you know what kind of person celebrates when they think someone else is dead?” he asked. “Do you know what kind of woman uses another woman’s suffering as a stepping stone?”
Prisca’s voice sharpened. “Don’t turn this on me. Victoria ruined our lives—”
“Stop,” Gabriel barked. “Don’t you dare say her name like that.”
There was a pause.
Then, quieter—but far more dangerous—he said, “Pray. Pray that nothing happens to my child.”
Prisca’s stomach dropped.
“Because if anything does,” he continued, “I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for being absent when she needed you most.”
She swallowed. “Gabriel—”
He didn’t let her finish.
“You’re wicked,” he said, his voice shaking now—not with grief, but with disgust. “And whatever you think you’ve won, you should know this—”
He exhaled sharply.
“You’ve never been the woman I trusted my life with.”
The line went dead.
Prisca stared at her phone.
For a long moment, she didn’t move.
Then the silence in the room pressed in on her, heavy and unfamiliar. The sunlight that had felt warm moments earlier now seemed harsh, exposing.
She replayed his words in her mind.
Wicked.
Absent.
Pray nothing happens to my child.
Her chest tightened—not with remorse, but with something far more dangerous.
Fear.
Because Gabriel hadn’t sounded like a man clinging to her anymore.
He’d sounded like a man stepping away.
Prisca lowered herself slowly onto the couch, her confidence unraveling thread by thread. She hadn’t expected this—not this anger, not this judgment.
Victoria was supposed to be gone.
This was supposed to be over.
Her phone buzzed again.
She flinched, checking the screen.
No message.
Just the time ticking forward, indifferent to her certainty.
Somewhere else, machines beeped steadily beside a hospital bed.
Somewhere else, a woman everyone had written off was still breathing.
And somewhere deep inside Prisca, a terrible realization began to form:
She had spoken too soon.
And she had revealed far more than she meant to.
- Writer
