Page 96 of The Perfect Marriage

Ahh, those regrets.“I never gave up on us,” I say, and I mean it. “I may have been unfaithful, but I never gave up on us. I love you. Always have and always will, not that that is for much longer.”

She just stares back at me with a thousand-yard stare. I know she heard what I said, but it’s not registering. She seems to be looking through me, to the wall behind my head as if I’m not really here. Or maybe it’s her that isn’t really here, and this is merely a phantom proxy of her. A projection of the person I wished would show up today of all days. She squeezes my hand an eighth time.

“I’m sorry for not being a better wife to you.”

I snap back from my train of thought.Where is this coming from?She’s not to blame for any of this. These were my actions. I caused all of this. I didn’t commit murder but I did cheat. I did throw away what we had, carelessly like a piece of litter into a trash can I was passing. I can’t leave this earth with her blaming herself for everything that happened. She is the only one who defended me through all of this. The only one who truly believed me. The last person on earth who loves me, aside from my mom. “Sarah… none of this was your fault. You were a wonderful wife. You worked hard and were the only person who believed me and defended me. You loved me during my darkest times. You did everything you could for me and my career. I don’t blame you for anything. You have nothing to apologize for.” I try to hold back tears. She squeezes my hand a ninth time. I squeeze back.

“You think I was good to you?” There’s a peculiar lightness to her voice as if she is teasing me in a game on the playground.

“Of course you were, Sarah. Don’t ever think otherwise. Someday you’re going to make another man so hap—” At this point I can’t hold back. The tears pour down my face and a small pool forms on the rough steel table. I shake my head and take a second to compose myself. “It hurts to say that. Because I wish I were that man. I wish I could still be that man. But I can’t, my time is up. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t deserve you, I never truly did. I had you for a time, and you were mine to lose, and I fucked everything up.”

“You did,” she says pointedly.

“I know,” I sob. “Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you these past eleven years.”

The hard slam of steel hits the concrete wall as the guard re-enters. “Time’s up.” He smacks his gum loudly and is purposefully not looking at either of us to convey his disinterest.

She squeezes my hand for the tenth time. I squeeze back. She stands up, “Goodbye, Adam. For what it’s worth…” She walks around the table to my side. Sarah leans over and plants a soft kiss on the side of my cheek. She then leans in, whispering into my ear, “I know for a fact it wasn’t you.”

I turn and look at her. She is smiling at me with no teeth. A sinister up-turn plastered across her face. There is a fire burning in her eyes that I have never before seen, not in a human at least.

“What does that mean?” My mind starts racing, trying to piece together what I just heard. “Sarah, what do you mean? Who was it then? If you know you have to tell me! You have to get me out of here! Sarah!” I scream for an answer. The guard grabs me by my shoulders, turning me toward the door.

Sarah keeps walking backward away from me, staring at me with that fucking smile. “Adam, you will spend the rest of your very brief life thinking about me, and I want you to know that I will never think about you ever again.” And just like that she leaves, a cloud of hate and toxicity still hanging in the air.

I stand in a stupor as every sound leaves the room like a vacuum. I don’t even remember the guard escorting me back to my cell. I thought Sarah still loved me or at the very least, cared about me in some way. Not the way she had before but a part of her must still, in some way. But who was that in there with me?

I didn’t ask her to forgive my errors. I am the root of all of this. But why did she leave me with that? What did she expect me to do? What the fuck does she want me to think?

I can’t even control my own thoughts. They are like a speeding freight train with a broken brake lever. Nothing is going to stop it until the inevitable crash. So many words are racing through my head and the more they race and repeat and rearrange, the more they start to make sense.

About thirty minutes later, the prison guard comes and escorts me into a new room with a brown gurney and several pieces of health monitoring equipment. A doctor and a nurse and two other prison guards are waiting for me, my last and greatest surprise party. The gurney is facing a large blacked out mirror that faintly shows my reflection. I know full well that on the other side of that mirror, people are anticipating this moment, anxious for what is about to happen. I don’t fault their anger, it is just misplaced.

I lie down on the gurney and the guards strap me in. They hook me up to an IV and a heart monitor. The prison guard asks, “Would you like a priest or rabbi, or someone else brought in for your last rites?”

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

“Any last words then?”

Forgiveness. Vows. Broken. Cheating. Kelly. Fact. Kill. Sheriff Stevens. Jenna. Bob. Anne. Lake house. Jesse. Rebecca. DNA. End it. Matthew. Hudson. Scott. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.

All of these words race through my head. I had hoped my last thoughts would be of the life I lived or the people I loved. Kind of poetic in a way that the struggling writer can’t even think of a few good last words to say. The only thoughts swirling inside my brain are of my own demise. Something doesn’t feel right. Something isn’t right.

And then it happens. It’s as if I can see right through the mirror in front of me and straight into Sarah. I see that smile and the look in her eyes. The counted out squeezing of her hand. Her curious parting words and her callousness. But why now? Why of all days did she need to say this, treat me like this? It’s as if… wait. No, it couldn’t have been…

I feel numb at first and think I might fall asleep. But soon I begin to flail and squirm, and then a stabbing heat starts to rip through my organs, and I scream. And then suddenly it stops. Everything stops.

I see nothing but a black canvas with the tiniest of holes punched in it, a white light growing from the center out, like an old tube television warming itself up. Images start to appear. Images of Sarah. Meeting her. Loving her. Marrying her. Watching her. And then everything I missed. They’re almost like deleted scenes of a film. Except I didn’t delete them. I just didn’t pay any attention. Her planning, her plotting, her calculating, my demise.

Sarah controlled everything in her life, myself included.

I underestimated her. Like I did so many times before. This time it was just one too many. The images fade and then go black. Sarah is my last thought, my last image. She was right about everything… absolutely everything.

64

Sarah Morgan

I’m looking through the one-way mirror at the scared man I once called my own. I had to be here for this moment, see it through to completion. A little to my surprise there is a familiar face. Eleanor, in all her seventy-something-year-old glory, has shown up to see her precious boy one last time. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since the end of Adam’s trial. Normally, I would detest the idea of having to spend even a second in her presence but for this moment, this event, I’m delighted to see her. I go over to where she is sitting, bringing along my most sober of moods and a pre-ordered set of tears ready to pool out of my eyes.

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