"A Murder In Milburn", Book 3: Death In The Library Read Online Free PDF Page B

that drove her to kill herself. Not us. Not our gossiping and our lies. Well, soon after, the pastor went in to clean their house, and do you know what he found? A letter hidden in a dusty diary that had not been seen for years. A suicide letter. Turns out, my uncle Joseph had killed himself because he was facing financial ruins.”
    Nora nodded.  
    “You must all have felt horrible.”
    “I do penance for my sins even today,” Maria said. “I suppose that’s why I stuck with Reynold, no matter what. I knew he needed me. I knew his was a soul that only I could save.”
    “Reynold was a good husband to you, I hope,” Nora said.
    “Reynold tried,” Maria said. “He was… an impulsive man, that’s what the children never understood about him. Most of us, we decide on our feelings based on the facts, you see? If someone slaps me, a fact, I feel hurt, a feeling.”
    “Yes?”
    “Well, Reynold was the opposite. He’d adjust the facts to suit his feelings. If he felt you were angry at him, then everything you did was a plot against him. If he felt that he was a loser, then no amount of money that he made was good enough for him,” Maria said. “Reynold tried hard to control his impulses, but sometimes, he’d lash out in pain and fear. He was a hard man to live with.”
    “Why was he that way?”
    “Inside, he was insecure,” Maria said. “I know not many people would believe me. A man like Reynold, insecure? Impossible! After all, he had a multimillion dollar business empire. How could he feel unlovable or unworthy? Yet he did. All his life, he searched for someone who could fill the grand canyon of pain that he held in his heart.”
    “Oh!”
    “I loved my husband, but there were many a time when I wanted to separate myself from him,” Maria said. “All the things that made him good could be forgotten when he was in one of his moods. When he was in one of his moods, no matter how much you loved him, you were the enemy. No matter how much he had achieved, he was a loser.”
    Nora said, “He was a very unhappy man, was he?”
    “He was more than unhappy.” Maria sighed. “I think there was something wrong with the way his brain worked on a fundamental level. If one has a disease on the skin, it’s visible, and you take more efforts to cure it. But a thought pattern that’s wrong or twisted? That’s not so easily visible. He was great at denying things too. If I confronted him after his temper tantrums about the things he’d said, he’d either deny that he’d ever said them, and do it so well that I’d be convinced he was right. Or worse, he’d tell me that I deserved every single thing he’d said.”
    “So why did you stay?”
    “Because…” Maria said. “Because he’d hold me sometimes, and sob. He’d tell me all the ways he’d failed in his life. He’d count them off. He couldn’t save his younger sister from dying of scarlet fever. He couldn’t save his father’s business from imploding. He couldn’t save his mother from her grief when his father ran away. He couldn’t save himself when he’d gotten beaten up by bullies.” Maria sighed.  
    “I loved my husband, Nora. Not just for his weakness, for his strengths too. He could be a bad man, but he was, at times, very generous. When I told him about a bad drought in my old village, he went and paid everyone’s taxes that year, and he never even told me about it. I didn’t find out until five years later, when I visited!  
    “He could be romantic too. He’d make me feel like I was the most wonderful woman in the world. More than once, he filled my house with flowers for no reason at all! One time, he rented out an entire theatre just so the two boys could see their favorite cartoons, and he let in all the children in their class for free, with popcorn and soda paid for.”
    “It sounds like he was trying to buy love,” Nora said.
    “It does,” Maria admitted. “I can see why you’d think that. But it isn’t true. He