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An excerpt from Misfortune:

I couldn’t have picked a better day for her to die. I like the idea of July Fourth, the Day of Independence. Tonight, fireworks will explode against the blackened sky in bursts of green, red, blue and gold. Sparklers will sizzle while I celebrate in private the true liberation. As years pass and I advance toward my own death, the anniversaries of this day will sustain me.

I wonder if she will know it is her last breath. I wonder whether she will experience the agony of dying, of squarely facing her own mortality, of realizing what she has done, what pain she has caused, or whether it will all be over so soon that she will remain in ignorant bliss. I’ll never know, but I will forever wonder what she feels as she collapses. Does she have a single regret?

I’ve never seen the inside of a morgue, that place where she’ll be stored along with all the other unlucky souls. She wouldn’t like the motley company, but death is democratic. It doesn’t much care who you were, where you came from, or what you did. No one gets to be special.

There will be an autopsy. Certainly her death is a surprise. But if I’ve done everything right, the medical examiner will be disappointed. He’ll find no poisons, lesions, evidence of violence. Her death will be declared an accident. Only I know otherwise.

Alone, I content myself with the knowledge that I am right to have done what I’ve done. I know that. My hatred is unambiguous. The depths of my pleasure at her death are unfathomable. The world is a better place without her.