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

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.

As I stand over her, she doesn’t look up but simply says, “Sarah.”