All Chapters of Love At Sea: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The eighth day is when he truly begins to crumble.I wake to the sound of him vomiting in the adjoining bathroom. A guttural, wet, desperate sound. I lie in bed for a few seconds, just listening. Each heave feels like a silent victory that warms something cold inside my chest. I don’t feel pleasure. I feel relief. As if every piece of him that falls apart is a piece of me coming back to life.Margaret runs down the hallway, barefoot, robe open. I get up slowly, still sore, and go to the bathroom door. He’s on his knees on the marble floor, clutching the toilet, his face gray and sweaty. His eyes — the same eyes that terrified me for decades — are red, bloodshot, confused.“Richard…” Margaret kneels beside him, rubbing his back. “Let’s go to the hospital. Please.”He weakly slaps her hand away.“

The seventeenth day is when he stops pretending he will survive.I wake up to the sound of Margaret crying in the hallway. A low, contained sob, as if she were still trying to keep up appearances even inside her own home. I get up slowly. My body still hurts, but the pain has become familiar — almost a silent companion. I put on the silk robe he likes to see me wearing and go downstairs.My father is in the living room, sitting in his favorite armchair, his body hunched forward as if the weight of the air itself is too much. His skin has a sickly yellowish-gray tone, his eyes sunken, his lips cracked and purplish. He’s breathing with difficulty, each inhale a labored, noisy effort.Margaret is kneeling beside him, holding his hand.— Richard… please, let’s go to the hospital — she begs, her voice breaking. — You’re not well.He weakly pushes her hand away, irritated.— I said no. I’m not going to die in a white room that smells of disinfectant. I’m going to die here. In my house. With

The twentieth day feels like an eternity stretched thin.I sit beside his bed for hours, watching the slow unraveling of the man who once held my entire world in his cruel hands. The room smells of sickness now—medicine, sweat, and the faint metallic tang of blood he keeps coughing up. The doctor came again this morning and left with a grim face, muttering about organ failure and the need for immediate hospitalization. My father refused, as expected. He still believes he’s in control.He’s wrong.Margaret has become a ghost in her own home. She moves silently between rooms, bringing trays of food he can barely eat, changing sheets stained with sweat and worse. Her eyes are sunken, red-rimmed. She no longer tries to speak to me. She just watches — a mixture of horror and resignation on her face.I don’t blame her for her silence anymore. I understand it

The twenty-fourth day dawns gray and heavy.The air inside the room feels thick, almost suffocating, heavy with the scent of impending death. My father hasn’t properly woken up since the early hours. His breathing is now a wet, irregular rattle, as if his lungs are filled with water. His chest rises and falls in short spasms, fighting for every millimeter of air.I’m sitting in the armchair beside the bed, legs crossed, watching him with a calmness that frightens me. I feel no joy. No hatred. Only a cold, empty vastness, as if every feeling had been drained from me during these days.Margaret is curled up in the corner of the room, knees against her chest, rocking slightly back and forth. Her eyes are red and swollen, with no tears left. She looks like an empty shell of the woman who once pretended to be my mother.“He’s going to die today,” I murmur, without taking my eyes off his face.Margaret doesn’t respond. She just rocks harder.My father lets out a low, hoarse groan. His eyes

The silence in the house after my father’s death was deafening.I was upstairs in the bedroom, finishing packing the small backpack I would take with me. A few clothes, the money I had managed to gather, a new phone, and the almost empty bottle of poisoned lotion — kept as proof of what I had done. My movements were mechanical, precise. There was no rush, but there was also no room for hesitation. Every second I spent in that house was one more second I didn’t want to live.I looked at myself in the cracked mirror one last time. The artificial blonde still felt strange, but it was necessary. The black-haired woman who had entered this hell weeks ago was dead. The one who would leave would be someone new. Someone who had killed her own demon.I went down the stairs slowly, the backpack slung over my shoulder. The house was submerged in a heavy silence, broken only by the distant ticking of the living room clock. Margaret was in the kitchen, with her back to me, washing the dishes with