The Perfect Marriage

by Jeneva Rose

It didn’t take much to convince Sarah that we should purchase this home away from home. I think she could sense that I was drifting away—mentally, emotionally . . . or maybe she just wanted to show me that she could buy it. To remind me, once again, of her fiscal hold over me, wielding it as a show of power. Whatever the reason may be, I still got the house, so who cares?

I’ve always felt like Sarah was taking on the world while I was just struggling to live in it. That’s the woman she wanted to be, a powerhouse, a one-woman show where I just happen to be cast as an extra.

Well, I suppose success flickered for me, for a moment, and went away just as quickly, and has yet to come back again. That’s the funny thing about dreams. You always eventually wake up from them.

I’ve tasted a small sampling of triumph, but I haven’t exactly lived out my dreams. Sarah’s dream was to be a criminal defense attorney, one of the best. She’s not one of the best: She is the best—like I always knew she would be. I just never thought I’d resent her so much for it.

Sometimes, I get a glimpse of who we used to be, and I think we can be that couple again. But I’ve screwed up too much for that to ever happen, and Sarah’s career has always come first—before me, before a family, before everything. I don’t foresee that ever changing. I thought when we had kids, she’d slow down, but she told me five years ago she didn’t want kids. I thought I’d be able to change her mind. I couldn’t.

There was a time that Sarah and I couldn’t get enough of each other either. That time passed long ago. Occasionally, those feelings resurface, but they’re short-lived and usually induced by alcohol or time apart. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sarah. If I didn’t, I would have left her long ago. It’s that love that I hold on to—not the money, the security, or the houses. Kelly gives me the love that Sarah can no longer give. They both complete me. It’s sick, I know, but it’s true. I need them both.

We sit there in silence, drinking our glasses of scotch, trapped in loveless marriages where we come second to our spouses. When Kelly and I are together, we come first.

I thought for sure when she picked out such a large house it was because she had changed her mind about starting a family. We turned two of the bedrooms into offices, one for her and one for me. A third bedroom was converted into a library-study, a fourth into a gym, and the fifth into a guest room. She hadn’t changed her mind.

The silence stretches, and I wonder what it is that she’s thinking. Is she mulling over case files in her head? Is she thinking about me? About us? Can she see the cracks in our marriage? Does she want to fix them or keep pretending like they don’t exist? Like I don’t exist. Like we don’t exist.

“I’m thirty-three years old. Like, do I even have the energy to be a mom anymore?”

What?? She is still super young.

I’ve done so much in my career and have achieved things that most people never will. I’ve defended crooked politicians, murderers, and money launderers. I run corporate law firm teams, and I’ve helped build this company from the ground up. But for some reason, despite all I’ve accomplished, the one thing that scares me is being a mother, something that should come naturally.

“Well, his career has flatlined. So, a kid will make him feel like his life has meaning again. It’s the only reason the human race isn’t extinct, because people with no purpose breed,” he says nonchalantly.

Sarah is gone when I open my eyes. For the first time in a long time, I wake up feeling good—like everything is going to be okay. Sarah finally wants what I want: a family. We’re on the same page. All this time, I’ve been several chapters ahead of her, and now she’s caught up. I hope she’ll take a step back from the firm and focus on starting a family.

He comes across less like a confused man in the wrong situation and more like a wild animal backed into a corner, capable of anything to claw its way out. I see a fire in Adam’s eyes that I didn’t know existed. To be honest, before this moment, if someone had asked me if I thought Adam was capable of murder, I would have quickly said no. Deep down, I thought he was a bit of a pussy. But now I see that I was wrong. Lurking beneath the surface is something else, something more.

The connection between us that felt strong that morning had weakened by afternoon. Kelly seemed to have put her guard up, and I was ready to walk away. It was silly of me to get wrapped up in this idea of Kelly and me saving each other. Saving me from a dull marriage and an inattentive wife, and me saving her from Scott, a man who had hurt her in some way.

I straighten my papers, aligning all the edges perfectly. It’s what I do when I don’t know what to do. I tidy. I clean things up.

“Ugh. I really wish you would have paid more attention to my son and upheld your wifely duties. Adam wouldn’t be in this predicament otherwise. Such a shame.”

A husband is not supposed to go outside of his marriage even if his wife is not fulfilling his needs. Adultery is never okay.

“Your son is a liar, a cheater, and possibly a murderer. Your coddling and over-the-top mothering has gotten Adam into this mess. The best thing you could do as a mother is to take note from mine and kill yourself.”

My father was the sole breadwinner and was the only thing keeping our little nucleus rotating smoothly. But that came to a screeching halt. We lost everything with one unfair act. A father, a husband, a provider, a protector, the only person who pushed me to be more and kept me engaged with life, and the only person keeping my mother from nose-diving off her plateau of happiness and into a sea of depression.

When he was gone, we had nothing: no money, no income, no spark of life. My mother couldn’t hold a job because she was so depressed that she slept all day and rarely ate or spoke. In my eyes, she merely saw the reflection of the woman she used to be. Where I once was a collective joy for her and my father, I was now only a symbol of pain and loss.

I resented her for this. Not just that though. True, she abandoned me emotionally when I needed her the most, but she also showed weakness in ways that I no longer could feel sympathy for but rather anger and embarrassment. W...

By the time I was fifteen, we had lost the house and bounced around between women’s shelters and motel rooms. I waitressed early mornings before school and on nights and weekends to afford the necessities like food, clothing, and shelter while my mother prostituted herself to afford her growing addictions.

On my sixteenth birthday, I found my mother’s body in a cockroach-infested motel room we had been staying in. I would no longer have to care for her, work forty hours a week to support us both, have to fight off the men that thought I would be a sweet indulgence after she had passed out. I stared at her pale, thin body for over an hour—a hollow, lifeless shell. Four empty needles were stuck into her arm. I packed up our things and walked to a pay phone to call 911. That was the last I ever saw of my mother, and I vowed to never be like her.

He had lost all hope after his conviction, and a human without hope is a wild animal. I needed to move on, and I did. If Adam hasn’t, well, that choice will be made for him today.

Adam may not have murdered Kelly Summers, but he is paying for his crimes.

Lethal injection for a crime I did not commit. That last part is what stings the most.

No further evidence was ever found in my case, so my fate has remained unchanged. It was the perfect crime and the perfect setup by whoever did this. I gave up hope a long time ago, yet for some reason, I thought on this day, maybe by some miracle, Sarah would walk in with a bombshell discovery to blow the lid off whatever conspiracy was sealing me in; my knight in shining armor here to save me. Her outfit certainly matched the part.

“Goodbye, Adam. For what it’s worth . . .” She walks around the table to my side. Sarah 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 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.

His last thoughts were of me. I could tell by the stupid look on his face. I stand and exit, following Kelly’s parents. They were weeping throughout the whole ordeal, pouring out the catharsis they came here to find. They probably think they witnessed some form of closure; the man who murdered their daughter being put to death.

They seemed to see me as one of them, a victim caught up in the mess left behind by the manifestation of evil on the other side of the glass. Something that just happened to all of us. This evil pit of toxic tar and sludge that we all were dropped into and couldn’t free ourselves from. Not until the beast was slain.

I hear little whispers behind me—“I’m glad this is over,” and “I’m happy he’s finally paid for his crime,” and “Jenna can rest in peace now.” I nearly bite a hole through my tongue to stop myself from chuckling. From turning around and laughing right in their faces.

Timing is everything, and I timed everything out perfectly. Adam always thought he was so smart, so well read—the deep one, the introspective one. The warrior for justice and art and everything in between. And he was all those things. He just assumed I wasn’t watching, and he was wrong.

We decided to kill Kelly and frame Adam. After all, they did have it coming. Bob was out of town when she was killed to ensure that when the connection between him and Kelly was found out, he’d have an alibi. I didn’t want any loose ends.

Adam thought he was so smart. He thought Jesse was a real suspect. I knew Jesse was just a creep who was overly infatuated with Kelly, but following up on Jesse made it look like I was actually working on the case. Jesse was my decoy, just a way to look busy when, in reality, I was just waiting for everything I put in motion to play out.

So, who was this third guy? Had he seen anything? Thank God it ended up being that dipshit Sheriff Stevens.

Sheriff Stevens ended up helping me anyway without knowing it, thanks to his sloppy police work. Adam definitely had Rohypnol in his system. I know this because he didn’t move, not even once, when I stabbed Kelly to death.

So, either that half-wit sheriff didn’t actually test Adam’s blood, or he messed with the evidence to get the case closed quickly. I think it was the latter, considering his involvement. It’s also why I left that third set of DNA out of the trial. Sheriff Stevens unknowingly did me a favor, so I returned it in kind.

And what about Rebecca Sanford? The young wannabe journalist on whom Adam banked all of his hope. She was, in fact, a private investigator, but she wasn’t hired by Scott. She was hired by Bob, and when her job was done, she left town as arranged.

I’ll never know what really happened between Kelly and Greg or Kelly and Scott. Was she a victim of the men in her life? Was she abused? Or was she a girl who cried wolf? I’ll never know, and neither will anyone else. That’s the thing about relationships, you never really know what’s going on in them unless you’re a part of them. Just like no one will ever know what happened between Adam and me. We all have our own truth and everything outside that truth is just a story.

Speaking of story, Adam did go on to write his tell-all. He titled it Innocence Isn’t Enough: The Adam Morgan Story. Of course, he couldn’t resist having his name on the cover . . . twice. It was a huge success, a New York Times bestseller, translated into forty different languages, and Netflix even made it into a four-part true crime documentary miniseries.

Stabbed thirty-seven times. You might be wondering how I could do that to another woman. Easy. If someone came into your home and stole something of yours, would you defend yourself? You probably think I’m talking about Kelly Summers, but I’m not. I’m talking about Adam. There are always casualties in war: Kelly was just that.

A divorce would have given Adam half of everything I own. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve me. I vowed to never be like my mother. Allowing any man to take what I had earned and what I had worked hard for would make me just as weak as she was. In the end, Adam got the one thing he did deserve.

“Mommy,” Summer says from the back seat. “Yes, sweetheart.” I look back at her and smile at my beautiful eight-year-old baby girl. She’s the spitting image of Bob and me, perfect in every way, and I vowed when I found out I was pregnant that I would never make any of the same mistakes my mother made. Summer won’t have to save herself from me like I had to save myself from my mother.

My mom didn’t kill herself in the technical sense. One needle of heroin with her tolerance wouldn’t do it, but the other three I stuck in her arm would. She was killing herself a little every day; I just helped speed up the process. I’ll never put my daughter in that position.

My life is back to being exactly what I wanted it to be . . . and I intend to keep it that way.