Whether it was the invasion of the home and life we had made together. Her affair. The subsequent abortion, or just my heavy case-load and seminars at the time...the fact of the matter is
I killed my wife.
(I told the police as much. Told them how responsible I felt being gone when it happened They told me that it couldn't have been helped, and that I shouldn't blame myself.)
I am not talking in the abstract, here. Not like she was alone too much or I broke her heart by forcing her to terminate her pregnancy.
No.
I killed Sarah.
Before you think of me as some kind of a horrible monster, let me explain.
I was, after all, the victim.
It was late Friday night. I was speaking at a seminar in Philadelphia on Saturday and had headed out to make an early night of it. Determined to get a fresh start the next morning from the hotel. Half-way through the four hour drive I realized, distracted by my day at the office, I had left my note-cards for the lecture at home. So I turned around and headed back to the house.
Just before I reached our long winding gravel drive through the trees back to the cabin I saw a car turn out of it. Not a car I recognized. I made a mental note of the make, and color, and then turned where the blue Chevrolet had pulled out only moments before. I caught a brief visual of the man driving away. It would be enough to make a positive ID days later.
(When I told the police that my wife had complained about someone of his description at the market making odd comments, and then watching her from an older make blue Chevy, several times. No, we didn't bother to report it. Thought it was strange but harmless. Turns out the guy was kind of a nobody, a loner no family, and had several previous arrests. All his priors were non-violent crimes.
His current employer took the stand and told the court during the trial that Steve had "really been pulling his life together" and that he had formerly been a transient.
"There's always a first time." the officer had told me while patting my back in a comfort gesture.)
I parked the car just out of line of sight and walked up to the door, only to find it unlocked.
"Steve?"
I heard Sarah call out from our room. Our bedroom.
"Glad you're back...you forgot to say goodnight to Baby"
Did I bother to tell you she had named that flea-bitten Siamese "Baby"?
"She would have pouted, you kn..."
And her words froze.
Unfinished.
The last person she expected to see walk into the house that night was me.
She turned white.
Would not look at me, or answer.
She was wearing only her panties and sitting with the cat in the wadded cum-stained sheets where she and Steve had been only minutes before.
I remember grabbing one of the heavy wood based lamps beside the bed and striking her across the face with it in a rage. The damned cat hissed at me, then scrambled from the room. I was so angry I hit her over and over. Body. Face. Head. She became the embodiment of my cheating whore of a mother who had cost me my baby sister's life.
Sarah was my only love.
The only woman I ever trusted.
And now she had spoiled that, forever.
When she stopped screaming, stopped crying, stopped moving I realized it was too late. I had gone too far. Her face and head were beginning to turn purplish and swell. She was curled in a foetal position and the red marks that would soon be bruises over most of her body.
(The police would later tell me the attacker had broken several of her fingers, shattered both wrists and forearms as she fought him off. They also found the bastard's fingerprints throughout my home.)
I threw the base of the lamp in our wood-stove to burn, upended furniture and scattered books and papers to give the appearance of a struggle. Then I left her in that blood soaked bed. It was dark by the time I left the house and I locked the door, then used a tire tool to pry it open. I left it standing ajar.
I went back to the hotel and heard nothing more until our housekeeper found her. The police notified me. The shocked look on my face when they told me she was on life support, and still alive, was real.
Frankly, I am surprised she didn't die through the night.
She was always the tough one, my Sarah.
She never regained consciousness. They put her in a medically induced coma hoping that it would permit some of the swelling in her brain to go down. Several areas of her skull were crushed.The doctors told me that even if she lived she would basically be a vegetable for the rest of her life.
Eventually, she died.
When they arrested Steve for the murder of my wife he tried to concoct some story about how the two of them had been engaged in an affair for more than a year. He also said he had given her the Siamese Cat, that she was in love with him, and planning to leave me.
(Obviously obsessed and delusional, they concluded. Fixated on my wife.)
When he was convicted and sentenced I sat silently in the court-room. He was underwhelming as a physical specimen. Thin, non-athletic with dark hair and a full shadow of a beard. He had thick lensed hard-framed glasses giving him a rather slow appearance, very nervous and displayed a tendency to stutter under pressure.
Quite unattractive, actually. Sitting there, I found it hard to believe that my Sarah would have...have...anyway...when the jury came back with the death penalty he completely lost it. Crying and gibbering like a distraught child.
It was, overall, a very satisfying moment for me.
He sat on Death Row until his appeals were exhausted, and they shipped him to Terre Haute, Indiana for the execution. I flew in to witness it. Hopefully, my face was the last one he ever saw when they pumped the chemicals in his vein.
I buried Sarah in our plot behind the cabin.
I buried that damned cat there the same day.