It’s almost impossible to explain why I did what I did. I have no real answers to give you. Just that one day I was fine and the next day I wasn’t and it could be explained perhaps because of the death of the girl or my reaction to the accusation of my involvement or maybe just because it had been gray for four days in a row and I couldn’t stand one more gray moment, much less day. So that’s when I took a taxi to the airport and bought a ticket to the Bahamas where the sky would be blissfully blue and I could sit on the beach and bask in the mild sun for as long as I damn well pleased or until the police figured out that I had skipped the country and came looking for me.

I didn’t kill the girl, though I realize my flying the coop suggests otherwise. I just happened to be in the wrong place when everything happened and it will be impossible to prove my alibi. I am not a noble man, but I do have some scruples, which include not implicating people who exercise the bad judgment of spending time with me. So there went any chance of a convincing defense since I did see that unfortunate child that day though she was alive and well when I did.

So, here I sit on that lovely beach, hearing the waves lap so gently onto shore and wonder how life will be in that prison cell and then later as I face the firing squad. That poor child will greet me in heaven, I presume, with arms wide open. And those friends of mine – or that friend – will go sit in church for a while after he hears the news and thank God I resurrected a sense of conscious so that his life – while changed by this – will not forever be destroyed.