Suspect Number One

I knew she was his wife. I knew better than to get involved with her. But I did anyway. She understood me like no one ever had. We shared secrets, hopes, and dreams. She was my soulmate, my lover, and my best friend. 

When she broke it off that night without warning or apology, I was angry, and it broke my heart. The next day, someone broke her neck. 

Fingers pointed at me. They didn’t believe my alibi, but they believed I had motive and opportunity—enough to convict me by a jury of my peers. The jilted boyfriend is always suspect number one. 

Today, as I await my execution, I receive one last visitor, my former best friend, here at my request. Her husband. 

He sits behind the bulletproof glass partition, stares at me, and says nothing. I have plenty to say. I say I’m sorry for his loss. I say I didn’t kill her, and I don’t know who did. I say I’m innocent, and I was framed, and they got the wrong man. I say all the things every convicted murderer on death row has ever said. 

His gaze invades my eyes—piercing, judging, condemning. “I know,” he says. “The night she came home, she told me everything. She said you didn’t take the breakup well, and she needed a way out. So I gave it to her.” 

“I’m sorry you took the fall my friend, but you deserve it. That’s what happens when you screw around with another man’s wife.” With those scathing words, he rose from his chair and walked out the door, leaving me to my fate.  

The jilted boyfriend is always suspect number one.