July 22, 2017
The bold-lettered headline jumped off the cover of the Seattle Times: MOTHER KILLS TWO
CHILDREN IN MURDER-SUICIDE.
Adam Marshall thought it was a twisted prank when he received the newspaper in his prison cell
in Herlong, California, over six hundred miles from his hometown of Seattle.
The photo accompanying the article was a recent family picture of the mother and two children.
Grins wide, teeth pearly-white, and no obvious concern about their father rotting away in a
prison cell for a crime he never committed.
It was no prank—the newspaper was as real as the concrete walls around him. Hot tears rolled
down Adam’s face and splashed onto the page as he mentally inserted himself into the family
portrait. Where he should have been.
Ten minutes passed before emotions got the best of Adam, prompting him to expel the contents
of his stomach into his cell’s metallic toilet.
“You okay in there, Marshall?” a voice called from the other side of the wall. It was his
neighbor, PJ Phillips, serving a ten-year sentence for tax evasion.
“I’m fine!” Adam replied quickly, wiping the puke from his lips with a square of toilet paper
before flushing it all away.
Adam was far from fine. Being falsely sentenced and imprisoned had taken its toll on his mental
health, but reading the news that had broken out of Seattle sent his mind into a deranged tailspin.
Would the headline exist if none of this bullshit had happened? Adam had been an involved
father, there every day for his children. Never missing a baseball game or dance recital. Never
too busy with work to cower behind the excuse so many parents used to get out of such events.
Rage intertwined with an overwhelming grief he’d never experienced before. If he could just
lower his head and plow through the wall like a wild rhinoceros (and take out that cocksucking
Warden Burke in the process), he might find some peace of mind.
Instead, he sat helpless on the ground, back against the wall while his hands trembled the
newspaper. He was never getting out of this hell. Even at thirty-two years old, with eighteen
years remaining in his twenty-year sentence, the duration seemed an eternity.
Adam needed to be home. He could close his eyes and smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen
before heading out for work, Emily finishing up the dishes after feeding the kids breakfast.
Jaxson’s school was on his way to work, so he dropped him off every morning, leaving his son at
the door with words of encouragement and a kiss on the forehead. He could still imagine that
youthful scent between his lips if he tried hard enough.
That lifetime, though only three years in the past, had seemed another century entirely.
Sometimes Adam wondered if it had ever been real. How could he go from having his dream
job, house, and family to sitting in a six-by-nine prison cell, counting down every single day of a
twenty-year sentence? Most people didn’t know how many days were in twenty years, but Adam
knew the precise answer: 7,305.
The only shining light was knowing he’d see his family a couple times during the kids’ summer
break, and that they’d be waiting for him after all of those days had passed. Emily had believed
him when he explained himself, and she still had. Or else she wouldn’t have kept visiting every
summer. She knew the man he was, and couldn’t connect the dots that tied him to the money
laundering accusation. Adam had never even fully understood what money laundering was, let
alone how to commit the crime.
Now Adam had none of that to look forward to. What would his life look like when he took his
first step back into freedom as a 49-year-old man in 2035? He’d be utterly alone. His parents
might have passed on by then—they were already in their mid-sixties. His three siblings had
disowned him after the guilty verdict and hadn’t so much as sent a letter during his first few
years in prison. Friendships had already started dissipating once he had kids, and the few that
remained surely wouldn’t survive a two-decade absence.
Adam had these thoughts swirling in his mind as he read the article over and over, hoping by
some miracle there was fine print deeming it a fake story.
Emily had shot each child in the head while they slept before turning the gun on herself, the
reporter explained. Jaxson was their oldest, a seven-year-old boy who loved sports and playing
with his little sister, Tegan. She was five and loved to dance and sing all over the house.
And Emily was the love of his life. A caring wife and mother who always put everyone else
before herself.
Adam struggled to piece the story together. Where did Emily get a gun from? They had never
kept one in the house. Who showed her how to use it? Did they know what she had planned on
doing? Was it even a plan at all, or a crime in the heat of the moment?
He figured she would have gotten a gun since she served as the sole protector of the house. But
they lived in a safe neighborhood. The worst crimes around were teenagers shoplifting from the
mall. Did something happen that would have sparked her desire to have extra protection at
home? He’d never know.
Adam brushed his thumb over Emily’s face in the newspaper. “What happened?” he whispered.
“What drove you to this?”
A lump bubbled in Adam’s throat as a fresh wave of tears overtook him. He tried to put himself
in his wife’s shoes and imagine how awful life must have become for her to end it for all of
them. It had to be tied to Adam’s absence, and the thought sent sharp pangs of guilt throughout
his body. Guilt for something he didn’t do.
Adam imagined the night of the deaths in his mind, his fists balled up, fingernails drawing blood
from his palms as he imagined his wife murdering their children in their sleep.
He never understood how miserable it must have been for his family. Emily had mentioned
nothing on their visits—only talking about the good things happening in their lives. He never
considered his family just might have it worse in their struggle to continue their life together
without Adam in it.
His life was straightforward. Swallow watered-down eggs for breakfast. Scrub the prison floors.
Receive a two-minute shower. Sit in his cell for two hours before having another shitty meal for
lunch. An hour outside. An hour inside reading. Scrubbing the floors again. More time in the
cell. Another shitty meal for dinner. Back to the cell for the rest of the night.
It was the same monotonous routine every single day. He had been told of new chores after a few
years, but none had come yet. They planned out his life until his release. Emily and the kids had
to scramble to establish a new routine while being shackled to the story of their father caught in
one of the biggest money laundering schemes in recorded history.
They had it much worse than Adam.
He closed his eyes, and everything that led to this came flooding back to his mind.
He saw himself applying for the job at WonderHome. Interviewing with the CEO and other
executives. Receiving an offer letter. His first day on the job as a full-time personal assistant with
a major salary. He remembered how on top of the world he had felt through it all. He was happy,
in the truest sense of the word. All until the day the FBI barged into their offices and went
straight to his desk. He could see the agent who had spoken to him, hiding behind a pair of
sunglasses while two other agents yanked Adam’s arms behind his back to arrest him.
The panic and confusion that had consumed him in that moment still hadn’t left to this day. He
saw the jail cell. The hours of interrogation by so many attorneys and legal experts. He
remembered the courtroom. The jury. The district attorney and his team who were so hell-bent
on sending Adam to prison. And the judge. The fucking judge who never allowed an objection
from Adam’s defense team, but always did for the opposition. He remembered the smug look the
judge gave him while reading the twenty-year sentence aloud, and the way he waved his hand to
dismiss him from the courtroom like he was nothing but a nuisance who had wasted tax dollars
and time.
Adam opened his eyes. His family was gone. That was the reality of where this fucked-up road
had led him. He’d remain stuck for the next eighteen years in prison, wishing he could just go
back and stop it all from happening. ...
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