Dear Jayna:

I wish it didn’t end this way. But I can’t do the silent dinners anymore, picking at scabbed over casserole while you pretend you’re interested in a “Law & Order” episode you’ve seen six times. You know the one with the doctor. Come on, we watched that one on our third date.

Our third date. Jesus. What were we, sophomores? I doubt you even remember. Maybe you don’t want too.

If you knew about Michelle you didn’t let on. I honestly felt terrible about it for a while. Sneaking texts in the bathroom when we should have been in bed together, having to step outside for all those “work phone calls.”

Was it wrong? Maybe. But you pushed me to this.

We’re going away for a bit, me and her. I’ll come back for my things after you move out.

It’s nice to be happy again, Jayna. I hope you find that one day too.

– Rory

Jayna stopped typing and read the letter over. It sure as hell sounded like her husband: pleading, hungry. The man’s heart was like fucking quicksand. She got angrier as Rory’s simpering man-child voice rolled over her thoughts in waves.

Jayna turned, locked onto his misty eyes. Still pleading. Still screaming love me.

At least he wasn’t talking. The sedative and the ball gag had seen to that.

Jayna lowered the gun toward him, the same weapon she’d used to shoot Michelle before typing Rory’s “goodbye note.” Hopefully the letter would be found before the bodies. Hopefully that would give her a head start.

She pressed the barrel to his head and whispered in his ear.

“I wish it didn’t end this way.”