I conjure you, father
On her twenty-second birthday, a terminally ill young woman lies in a Monaco hospital bed and pens a final, unsent letter to the father who cut down her childhood lemon tree to make room for his cars.
From the rusting swings of a once-private amusement park to the barbed-wire walls of a Riviera mansion that swallowed love in silence, she conjures memories of Noel (the lanky gateman who guarded his stomach more than the gate), Aunty Margarita (the cook whose pots sang lullabies), and a brother lost to boarding-school exile.
She remembers the day she fled on a Qatar flight, the years of rowing through foreign cities, and the moment death began walking up the Côte d’Azur to claim her.
Now, with Chris her poet-chip seller—holding her hand and the scent of jacaranda on the angel’s wings, she forgives the man who never looked back, asks only to be remembered as the girl beneath the fallen tree, and signs the letter simply: Your daughter, Always.
A single, devastating breath of literary family tragedy where every word is an oar, every silence a wave, and the shore is both ending and home.