“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.