by Eliza Victoria

Image by Maurice Engelen on Pexels. (All photos and videos on Pexels can be downloaded and used for free).

Before Teresa saw the woman in white, she was focused on converting the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius, wondering how much trouble she was in now. The sudden snowstorm had downed airplanes, stranded passengers, and killed people, but the Viejos still decided to gather outdoors in this horrible weather. One of the cousins was going to be proposed to, and the family was out in force, complete with electric lanterns, a bouquet of wildflowers, a Spotify playlist, and nephews hiding in the bushes with cameras to capture the magical moment. She tried to focus and advised an uncle, who was also Filipino but weirdly anti-immigrant, which Ed Sheeran song to play to celebrate her cousin’s engagement.

The couple in question – Andrew, the boyfriend, and Katherine, the clueless cousin – were now ten minutes late. Earlier, Teresa had heard people murmuring that it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit. She could only imagine temperatures in Celsius. After conversion, her phone screen screamed -1. She showed it to her cousin Chloe who was assigned to hold Katherine’s bouquet. 

“Oh my God, I’m standing inside a fridge,” she exclaimed, which made Chloe snort. Teresa had never been in sub-zero temperatures before; it felt like she could instantly feel her toes turn black and gangrenous from the cold. She was wearing a hoodie beneath a wool jacket underneath a scarf wrapped around her neck and covering half her face. She had decided to forgo the gloves and earmuffs Aunt Nina had handed to her, leaving them in the Subaru, thinking wearing them would be overkill. Her decision seemed foolish now in hindsight. 

The temperature only dropped to this point in the past hour, so there were still people stubbornly taking a walk around the lake: parents pushing strollers, couples snapping photos of the lights twinkling on the lake’s frozen surface, a woman in a double-breasted white coat that reached her knees now staring at Teresa.

“The news said it’s going to hit negative 2 at some point this week.” Chloe pushed down Teresa’s hand before she could type on her phone. “That’s negative 19 in Celsius, cousin.”

“I’m going to die here.”

The woman in the white coat held a red cigarette holder to her red lips, the color striking against her coat and the snow, and blew smoke toward the frost-tipped branches strung with yellow fairy lights. The cigarette holder looked like a prop for a 1920s flapper costume, but the woman held it as if it were a part of her. The woman smiled and, out of reflex, Teresa smiled back.

“Not if we kill Andrew first.” Chloe glanced at her watch. “He said six on the dot, and now look at the time.”

Uncle Benjie, the immigrant-hating immigrant uncle, came over and handed Teresa a blanket. “Your Aunt Nina said you may need an extra layer. Chloe helped him wrap the blanket around Teresa’s shoulders. “She also said Andrew just texted. Kath took a long time choosing what boots to wear and so they just left the apartment—”

“Are they now just going to dinner?” Chloe looked about ready to pop a vein. “They’re already late!”

“They’re skipping dinner,” Uncle Benjie shrugged. “They’re heading here first. They’re just stuck in traffic.” A playful slap on Teresa’s arm. “Filipino time, ano? Dapat pala inagahan pa natin ang meeting time para kay Kath, tipong five p.m. para saktong six, nandito na sila.” Uncle Benjie was still laughing as he walked across the snow back to the cluster of aunts and uncles waiting near the park entrance, where Andrew had planned to propose. 

“What did he say?” Chloe asked, suspicious. Teresa, who grew up in the Philippines and could speak Tagalog, was seeded higher in the niece rankings in that regard, the golden child the aunts and uncles could share gossip with because she could understand what they were saying and respond in the language. But she knew Chloe, who graduated from an Ivy League university, married with children, and an executive in a Fortune 500 company, outranked her in other, more significant, more material, more visible ways.  

“He made some joke about ‘Filipino time’. He said we should have told Katherine to be here at five, so they’d arrive by six.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why he keeps saying that. I resent being late to anything.” They shared a glance, and Teresa saw Chloe look her up and down, not quite with pity, but close to it. “Wished Aunt Marcie was here with us.”

Chloe was one of the few US-born cousins who had met Teresa’s mother before she died of cancer. Chloe traveled to the Philippines years ago, baking in the sun while Teresa and her peers bought tubs of whitening cream from the grocery store. 

Teresa didn’t like talking about her mother. Her grief felt like a thorny dead-end, a cul-de-sac she couldn’t leave. Best to not go there. She picked up a different thread of the conversation. “Uncle Benjie also made a joke last night about shooting the refugees arriving by boat. Not sure if you caught that one. He said it during dinner.”

Chloe sighed. “Sometimes, Tess, I’m thankful I can’t understand Tagalog.”

“Aunt Nina translated it for Andrew, and he laughed.”

They let this anecdote sit in the air, much like the cigarette smoke the strange woman in a white coat is blowing up into the trees, before Chloe waved it away. “Maybe he was trying not to offend. He could clearly see where the wind was blowing in this family, politics-wise. Unfortunately.”

“I didn’t laugh. You wouldn’t too, if you heard.”

“I saw you smile when one of the aunts said she hated Manhattan because there were too many gay people.”

Teresa was affronted. “I smiled because I felt so uncomfortable. It was just reflex. I wasn’t—”

“I know, I know, and I’m not blaming you,” Chloe said. “I have two kids, but I still feel like a kid around these bigoted assholes. Like I need to still respect our elders? Even when they’re saying the most vile, hateful shit? You know what I mean? What I’m saying is, Andrew’s laugh was probably just that, a reflexive response to an uncomfortable situation. You know?”

Teresa recalled the dinner last night. It was at an upscale Chinese restaurant, one of the few they had in Tulsa, with live lobsters in tanks and lazy Susans and white tablecloths on the table. She looked up from her mapo tofu and witnessed Andrew laughing. There was nothing awkward or uncomfortable about it. There was nothing in it but sheer delight. Then Andrew was leaning closer to an uncle who was going on his evergreen tirade about how these refugees were getting visas left and right while I’ve been waiting for years for my green card, do you think that’s fair? Katherine was sitting right next to Andrew, but she was talking to a cousin about a reality show they were both following, not paying attention to her beau.

Teresa looked away from Chloe and noticed that the woman in white was looking at her again.

“Don’t you like Andrew?” Chloe asked. “I don’t know him that well. But Kath’s been dating him for more than a year now, and she seems happy.”

All Teresa knew was that he liked going to the gym and enjoyed the DC movies more than the ones from Marvel. That was the extent of her Andrew knowledge, culled from one or two chance conversations when they ended up in some aunt’s kitchen during a late-night card game, grabbing a can of Diet Dr. Pepper or a scoop of Braum’s ice cream. But from those brief interactions, Teresa already harbored a deep distaste of her future cousin-in-law. Andrew always made a meal out of not understanding her accent: “Oh, sorry,” he would say with a light chuckle. “Can you say that again?” Or he would repeat her question, slowly, wide-eyed and enunciating every syllable, as if he were speaking to a toddler: “Do-I-want-ano-ther-can-of-so-da? No, that’s okay, I already grabbed one, thanks.” He never did this with the cousins who were born here, as American as apple pie, saying their polite Yes, ma’ams and y’alls with a Southern twang and a confidence that the world would do them no wrong. He also never did any of this when Teresa was protected and ensconced four deep in cousins and aunts and uncles, which made clear to her that he knew he was being nasty. 

“And if he were racist,” Chloe continued, “why would he propose to Kath?”

Teresa wanted to retort that the white men who bought mail-order brides weren’t exactly a bastion of tolerance and inclusivity either, but she was too cold and too tired to open this particular can of worms. 

One of Aunt Marjorie’s bespectacled little kids, Shane, hopped over and tugged at Chloe’s hand, wanting to show her a bird he saw in the crystallized playground, and away they went, the wildflowers bobbing up and down in Chloe’s arms as they moved into the crowd. When Teresa turned her head to look toward the park entrance again, willing the couple to materialize, the woman in white was already standing next to her.

Teresa startled. “Oh. Hello.” Up close, the woman also looked Filipino, but she couldn’t be too sure. Teresa had been mistaken for a Singaporean or Malaysian or Indonesian more times than she could count. 

“Hey.”

Teresa gestured at the woman’s cigarette holder. “That’s pretty cool.”

The woman smiled. “Thanks. You’re Teresa.”

“How did you—”

“I heard one of the kids call you that.”

No one in her family called her Teresa, not out loud. She was always Tess or Tessie or Ate Tess.

The woman smelled like roses, but after a while it became cloying, the pungent smell of flowers dying. Then she elbowed Teresa, a conspiratorial nudge, which made Teresa flinch.

“You’re just like me,” the woman whispered. “A visitor. I can tell.”

“It’s not that hard to tell that I’m not used to the cold,” Teresa responded, trying on a light-hearted quip to push away the sudden heaviness that descended upon her. Snow dusted the woman’s bangs and the bridge of her nose, making her look soft and childlike, but the look she gave Teresa was piercing, sharp. 

“I’m from Manila,” Teresa explained. “I’m just visiting family here.” 

The woman looked around the park. “You seem to have a lot of family here.”

Teresa burst out laughing. “Yeah, everyone’s here. All of my father’s siblings came here in the 80s, then Father followed a decade later.”

“He left you and your mother behind.”

Teresa squinted her eyes, as if the woman were a bright object. Did she know her? “He did. Now my relatives are trying to figure out how to keep me here long-term.” Despite her discomfort, she found herself adding, “My mother died last year.”

She was so used to this pronouncement being met with an earnest I’m so sorry to hear that, or How awful, or even I’m sure she’s looking after you, wherever she may be. 

“I know.” 

The woman’s response surprised Teresa like a swift punch to the gut. “What?” She wondered if this woman was another cousin she had never met before. Someone who lived in Oklahoma City or Houston or San Diego, who flew in before the storm. “What do you mean you know?”

“I was just visiting someone,” the woman said. “He was waiting for his brother to wake up from a coma. I had to be the bearer of bad news. Now his brother is never waking up.”

It was as if the snow had sunk into Teresa’s bones. “Hey,” she said in a small, hesitant voice. “That’s not—why would you tell me that.”

The woman smiled around her cigarette holder, red lips against red glass. She took a deep drag, blew smoke up at the sky. “And yet you’re not walking away,” the woman said, “because you know I have more to tell you.”

Where the fuck was Chloe? It was as if she and this strange woman were all alone in this park, all alone in this desolate planet buried in snow. She hugged herself, gripping her elbows, dislodging Uncle Benjie’s blanket. The woman stepped closer, stopping the blanket from sliding off her back with her free hand. 

“Don’t touch me,” Teresa said, tears suddenly brimming from the corner of her eyes. 

The woman laughed at her reaction. “You hated the life your mother chose for you. You could have had everything your cousins have. The right education, the right connections. Even the right accent, so people like Andrew wouldn’t think you’re a piece of dirt at the bottom of their shoe. So your beloved cousin Chloe wouldn’t look at you with pity. If only you had the opportunities they had. You would have been unstoppable. But your mother hated your father and your father’s family, and so you were left to rot in a poor town, working hard with nothing to show for it. Thank goodness Mama’s dead now, huh?”

“Get your hands off me.” 

“Tell me I’m lying, and I’ll let you go.”

Teresa had never told anyone these thoughts. She wouldn’t even admit them to herself. 

The woman nodded and ran a finger through Teresa’s hair. “What if I told you that the blue van you rode in on would be in a terrible, terrible accident on your way back to your uncle and aunt’s place?”

That’s Uncle Benjie’s car, Teresa almost blurted out. 

“Everyone riding in it would die,” the woman said. “What if I told you that? What would you do?”

This can’t be happening.

The woman tucked the blanket into Teresa’s arms. “If I were you, I would ride home with one of the cousins.” The woman bit on her cigarette holder and rubbed Teresa’s arms up and down. The gesture was sweet and gentle, but Teresa felt like screaming, felt like pitching this woman headfirst into the frozen lake. “But here’s the thing: since you know the blue van is going to crash, you have the power to choose who else would live and die. Isn’t that amazing?”

The woman gestured toward the entrance and the main road. “In a minute, a black sedan will skid to a halt, nearly hitting a family. The roads are extra slippery tonight because of the ice. The man will say ‘Watch out, pal, you nearly hit my daughter.’”

Teresa turned just in time to see bright headlights appear out of the gloom, a black sedan screeching to a stop, several drivers leaning on car horns, a collective and horrified Oh! rising from the crowd as a woman pushing a red stroller stopped in shock in the middle of the pedestrian lane. A man’s voice cut through the din: “Watch out, pal, you nearly hit my daughter!”

Teresa turned back to the woman, could feel her heart throbbing in her throat. “You could have just guessed all that.”

“True,” the woman replied, tapped a finger on her lips. “How about this? Katherine will say no.”

Teresa felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped.

“Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

It was Katherine, dressed all in red, curly hair dyed honey-blonde framing her face. Teresa turned to the woman in the white coat but she was gone. She turned her attention back to Katherine, looked past her, and saw in the distance Andrew running toward them. 

Chloe appeared at Teresa’s elbow. “Tess hasn’t been to this park before,” she explained to Katherine. “We’re just showing her around.” 

“In this weather?” Katherine reached up to fix Teresa’s scarf. Teresa caught a whiff of her almond butter lotion. “You poor thing. You must be freezing. Do you need gloves?”

“There was a woman–” Teresa began to say.

“What was that?” 

But Andrew had reached the group at that point, and Teresa’s voice was lost between Andrew’s impatience and Chloe’s anxiety and Katherine’s confusion as Andrew grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “I need to show you something.”

“I’ll get you a pair of gloves, Tess,” Katherine called back.

“Weren’t they supposed to be at the entrance?” Chloe said. “Andrew’s the one who planned this whole thing. What are they doing at this side of the park?” She glanced over her shoulder. “I had to drop the flowers back there. Hope no one’s stepped on them. I’ll be right back.”

Cigarette smoke replaced the scent of almond butter: The woman in white was standing next to Teresa again. Her hand on the small of her back, giving her a little push. “Now,” the woman said as they walked toward the entrance, “watch closely.”

Teresa could see her relatives moving ever closer, zeroing in on the scene but still silent and incognito, the bright lights that festooned the archway hiding the advancing crowd in shadows. One of the cousins made the mistake of switching on one of the electric lanterns, a quick bright blip that was quickly extinguished as Andrew went down on one knee. An anticipatory gasp. 

Teresa noticed Chloe beside her, the wildflowers back in her arms, jumping lightly on her toes and squealing an excited “It’s happening!” under her breath.

Andrew was still on his knee. Katherine was looking around her, looking distraught. Andrew saying something, Katherine responding, gesturing with her hands—

“Oh, no,” Chloe said, a decibel too high.

Now, Andrew was standing up, brushing off the snow from his knee. Katherine was still talking. It was as if the Viejos had become one organism, holding its breath, and when Katherine turned to walk away from Andrew, it exhaled, and the cousins, aunts, and uncles were chattering all at once. Teresa could hear Shane asking, “What happened? Mom? Did Kath say yes? Are we going to dinner now?”

The woman in white put her arm around Teresa, standing close enough to make Teresa’s eyes sting with ash and cigarette smoke. “In a week,” she said, “this humiliation would hit Andrew even harder, and he would pay your Aunt Nina a visit, because he knows Katherine will be there, staying with her mother after this awful night. Your Aunt Marjorie is visiting for Sunday brunch. Little Shane is with her, and so are Chloe and her little kids. Andrew would be offered coffee and pan de sal, and he would shoot 32 rounds from his 9mm handgun, killing them all before killing himself.”

Teresa’s breath quickened, her knees buckling. “He would unload most of those rounds on your cousin Katherine,” the woman continued, “because how dare this bitch say no to him, how dare she embarrass him in public like this, after all he has done?” 

“Stop it,” Teresa said. “Stop.” She could see her breath, visible in the evening air, coming out in spurts, her vision turning gray.

“Breathe, Teresa,” the woman said, eyes twinkling. “Breathe. You know how to stop it.”

Teresa couldn’t catch her breath.

“What if Andrew were to ride a doomed blue van?” The cigarette holder clinked against the woman’s teeth. “Wouldn’t that solve everything?”

Teresa’s thoughts were big gulps of the cold air that burned her lungs. She tried to home in on a practical detail. “He has his own car. Why would he ride in the van?”

“Silly girl,” the woman said, smiling. “He doesn’t have his own car.”

“Tess!” Chloe called. Teresa wanted to walk toward her, but she couldn’t seem to move her feet. “Hey.” Hands on her shoulders. “What a disaster. Andrew’s car won’t start, and Aunt Nina insists that he must ride with us. Because he’s family.” Chloe rolled her eyes. “We’re back in the parking lot across the road. I’m just rounding people up, then we can figure out who’s riding with who, make sure Kath and Andrew aren’t in the same car. See you there?” 

When Teresa didn’t respond, Chloe peered at her face. “Are you okay?”

After what felt like ages, Teresa only managed to say, “Andrew’s car won’t start?” 

“Yeah, I know.” Chloe shook her head as she walked away. “Tonight of all nights.”

A soft exhale, cigarette smoke moving like a gray veil in front of her eyes. The woman in white, seemingly invisible to everyone else, stared at her in silence.

“Who are you?” Teresa said. 

The woman smiled, watching the Viejos leaving the park. “I’m of minor importance,” she said. “Not a luminary, oh no. A subluminary, if you will.” She winked at her. “Just amusing herself.”

“Amusing yourself? Amusing yourself?!”

“That distresses you?” The woman stopped smiling, and the change was so sudden, the effect almost making Teresa fall to her knees. 

“What do you want from me?” 

The woman looked annoyed. “Nothing.” She flicked her cigarette holder, ash falling from her cigarette like a second snowfall. “I gave you a gift. That’s how gifts work, Teresa. I’m not asking for anything in return.”

“I can’t choose who lives or dies.”

“Why not?”

Teresa thought of her mother. Her tears felt warm rolling down her frozen cheeks. “Why me? There are so many people here. Why me?”

The smile came back. “To quote a serial killer I met last week, ‘You just happened to be there.’”

“This is not how the world is supposed to work.” Teresa wiped her eyes with her scarf. “If this is all true, where were you when my mother was dying?” 

The woman shrugged. “I wasn’t there. Which sucks for you, but matters not to the rest of the living. Do you think there’s a great engine of fairness running the universe? It’s just filled with creatures trying to amuse themselves and hurt each other. You survive by getting out of their way or hurting them back.”

“That’s not true,” Teresa said. 

A sharp laugh. “’For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.’ Do you believe that?” The woman placed her hand against Teresa’s face, at first lightly and then pressing hard, the tip of the cigarette holder digging into her cheek. “If you want to give sunlight to both the evil and the good, then you simply need to do nothing. Forget everything I told you. I won’t tell you who would die in the blue van tonight, because you believe in the fairness of the universe. But I would tell you that it won’t be Katherine or Aunt Nina or Aunt Marjorie or Shane or Chloe or Chloe’s children. Because they would be murdered by Andrew a week later. When you open the front door and hit the floor after slipping in your family’s blood, don’t you dare think no one had been looking out for you.”

Something slammed into Teresa, almost knocking her over. “Tessie!” Shane, jumping up and down as one hand held onto her and the other held an electric lantern, his glasses sliding down his nose. “I found you!” 

Teresa was soon flanked by Chloe and her other cousins. She allowed herself to be led away from the woman in white who no one else seemed to see, past the lake, past the archway where just a few moments ago Katherine had rebuffed Andrew, past the ice-slick road where the black sedan skidded to a halt. Katherine and Andrew were having a fight in the parking lot. “Not now, Andrew,” Katherine said, trying to de-escalate. “Not in front of my family.”

Teresa took Shane’s electric lantern and held him close to her side. The rest of the family kept their distance, but everyone was listening in. “Now you’re embarrassed?” Andrew screamed. “Just tell me. Just tell me why.”

Katherine turned to Aunt Nina. “He is not riding with us.” Behind her, the blue Subaru gleamed like a dead beetle in the snow.

Chloe had sidled up to Teresa and Shane, whispered, “This ought to be good.”

“Just tell me!” 

Katherine threw her purse to the ground. “I know you fucked Emma!”

A collective gasp. The freezing wind whistled like a scream. 

“Oh-kay,” Chloe said, breaking the silence, leaning down to pinch Shane’s cheek. “Time to go home, yeah?” To Teresa: “Emma works with Shane in the casino.”

But Teresa couldn’t care less about who Emma was, because now the family was deciding who was going to ride in which car.

“He is not riding with us,” Katherine repeated. Uncle Benjie picked up her purse and gently led her to the blue van. Andrew followed them, sputtering a denial, an explanation.

Teresa rode with Uncle Benjie and Aunt Nina. Aunt Marjorie and her family came in their own car, and so did Chloe and her family, and so did the other aunts and uncles in the Viejo clan. The blue van was the only vehicle with room for both Katherine and Andrew. 

Uncle Benjie was explaining this now to his distraught daughter. “We can’t leave him here, anak, it’s freezing out here. And, you know,” voice dropping to a whisper, “maybe you can talk with each other, ha? Calmly? On the way home? Maybe work this out?”

“Dad!” 

“Classic Uncle Benjie,” Chloe said under her breath. 

Aunt Nina joined the huddle. More quiet negotiations, until Katherine screamed, “Do whatever the hell you want then!” and climbed into the blue van.

Fear like sharp crystals in her lungs. “No,” Teresa said, too loud. The Viejos looked at her, startled. 

Katherine, mascara smudged black around her eyes, snow clinging to her hair, squinted at her. “What’s that, Tess?”

“No, you can’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You—” It was as if Teresa could feel the tip of the woman’s cigarette holder digging into her cheek, like a spear, a phantom pain. “You can’t—”

Chloe leaned in, “Are you okay, Tessie?” 

Andrew jostled to get closer to Katherine, and Katherine screamed at him to get away from her, how dare you rope my family into this, do you think a diamond ring can fix this mess you stupid son of a—

Teresa started to cry. 

Chloe touched her shoulder. “Hey. What’s wrong?” 

“It’s too cold,” Katherine said, stopping mid-tirade. She walked up to them and grabbed Teresa’s arm. “Come into the van with me, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

“No,” Teresa said, pulling back. “No. The van isn’t safe.”

“What are you talking about, sweetie?”

“I think she’s sick,” Chloe said. 

“It’s way too cold for her, Ate Chloe, that’s what I’ve been telling you,” Katherine said. “She’s not used to it.”

“Marj,” Aunt Nina said, “why don’t you let Tessa ride with you and the children, we can take Jim and Andrew in the Subaru.”

“I’m sure Andrew can switch with one of the other cousins, Tita,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes at Katherine.

“I can go,” Shane said, raising a hand as if he were in class. “I want to ride with Dad in the van. Then Andrew can ride in my mom’s car.”

“Why don’t you go ride with my parents?” Katherine told Andrew. “They think you’re their son anyway.”

“Hay naku, let’s go, Andrew,” Aunt Nina said. “Come on. It’s getting late. You can continue discussing this in the morning.” An arched eyebrow. “When you’re ready to talk like adults.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Katherine muttered. 

Teresa couldn’t stop crying.

“Ano ba’ng nangyayari sa’yo, Tess?” Aunt Nina said. “This is getting ridiculous. The children are starving.”

“Mom,” Katherine said. “Can’t you see she’s sick?”

“Nabuang na,” Uncle Benjie said. “Parang nanay niya.”

A flash of memory, her mother in the hospital pulling at her IV needle, wanting to rip it out of her arm. The group chats, the Bible verses that Uncle Benjie would share that couldn’t stand in for his lack of grace or mercy.

My mother wasn’t crazy, you heartless piece of shit. She was in pain. Teresa lifted Shane’s electric lantern and threw it with all her might at the van’s windshield. 

A sharp crack drowned by her cousins’ surprised screams. The electric lantern sticking out like a victim drowning in a frozen lake. Powdery crystal at the point of impact, then spiderweb cracks crawling across the glass. Aunt Nina saying her name like she wanted to strangle her.

Teresa fell, her knees sinking into the relentless snow.

Katherine and Chloe yelped in surprise. They stooped down to help her up. “She’s disoriented,” Katherine said to the relatives and strangers ogling them. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“We can’t ride in the van now, can we,” Shane said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“No, baby, it’s not safe. Uncle Benjie and Aunt Nina need to call Triple-A.”

Shane hugged Teresa’s torso, small hands latching onto the blanket that Uncle Benjie had draped around her shoulders just moments ago, a hundred years ago. “Tessie, Tessie. Why did you throw the lantern?”

Uncle Benjie screaming into his phone. Her aunts, uncles, and cousins standing around her in the falling snow, hands on mouths, stunned, confused. Do you think we should drive her to the ER? Katherine tugging gloves over her hands, Chloe clamping earmuffs over her head. A theory was floated about hypothermia, how symptoms included poor coordination, mental confusion. Well, she had great aim with that lantern. 

In the sea of faces, Teresa saw the pinprick glow of a cigarette, red lips against red glass. The woman in white blew smoke towards Andrew’s direction. He didn’t flinch. He was staring at Katherine. 

Andrew walked away from them all, shaking his head. 

The woman in white smiled as Teresa walked away from her relatives. 

Teresa followed Andrew as he ambled toward the road.

“Wait,” she said.

When Andrew turned, she saw tears in his eyes.

Oh.

“Careful,” was all she could say, waiting next to him on the sidewalk. Waiting, thinking. She could hear him sobbing. He sounded like a little child. She placed a hand, lightly, on the small of his back. Headlights appeared from the snow-filled gloom, another car speeding down the slippery road. 

About the Author: Eliza Victoria is an award-winning author writing horror, science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between. Her latest novel is Ascension, published by Penguin Random House Southeast Asia in 2024. Her other titles include Dwellers, which won the Philippine National Book Award for Best Novel, Wounded Little Gods, After Lambana (with artist Mervin Malonzo), Nightfall, Seventeen Prayers to the Many-Eyed Mother, and What Comes After. She has had stories and poetry published in various venues since 2007, most recently in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction, The Apex Book of World SF, Future SF, Multispecies Cities, and Asian Literature Project. She has won prizes in the Philippines’ top literary awards, including the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the National Book Award. Visit her at elizavictoria.com.