Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors Read Online Free PDF Page B

streets.
    No one but her best friend, Kiirsi, and a few others knew how Susan was struggling. Susan finally told her sister Denise how stingy Josh was, and Denise was appalled. None of the Cox family really knew how bad things were; Susan was too proud to tell them, and she didn’t want them to resent Josh if somehow they managed to pull their marriage together.
    Josh spent hours on the phone almost every day talking with his father, but he resented it when Susan took or made calls to Denise. Susan and Denise, the two middle daughters in their family, had always been close. They’d shared confidences, fun, and had even managed to breed parakeets and fish when they were in their teens.
    “Those two once had twenty-seven parakeets,” Judy Cox marveled.
    One of the times Susan really grew impatient with Josh was when he disapproved of her phone conversations with Denise.
    “You talk to your father for hours, and he fills you full of how hateful Mormons are,” she argued. “And then you won’t let me talk to my sister? That isn’t fair.”
    Jennifer Graves, Josh’s older sister, saw what was going on, and while she loved her brother, she felt sorry for Susan. Jennifer saw that Josh was “regressing,” going downhill as the years passed. With every year, he was more of a failure at every job he had and in turn he seemed to control Susan more.
    Personal power meant everything to Josh Powell, and the less he had, the more demanding he became. His appearance had changed so much in the seven years since he and Susan were married. He had bags under his eyes, and his face had a pinched look about it. Josh affected a wispy beard and mustache, and he usually had a frown on his face. The fresh-faced, teenager-like man that Susan had married had disappeared.

Chapter Three
    The summer of 2008 was especially bad. Susan didn’t mind working while Josh stayed home with their little boys, but she knew they needed to see a marriage counselor. Her husband was so “angry, irrational, and unpredictable” that after one prolonged fight, Susan threatened to call the police. He was beginning to frighten her. But when she said they had to get counseling, he adamantly refused, using one excuse after another.
    At first he complained that there was no point in counseling, because he knew what they would say.
    “Then do it [what they say],” Susan retorted.
    Next he said counseling would be too expensive. When Susan said Wells Fargo would pay for counseling, Josh claimed that their private lives would become public—everyone would know—and they wouldn’t be able to get any more life insurance or health insurance with that on their record.
    Susan made an appointment with her bishop. She was living a life of despair, trying to save her marriage, even though most women would ask, Why? She was almost in tears when she arrived for her appointment.
    The bishop opened their session with a prayer, and Susan realized she was rambling as she told him about the emotional chaos in her home. To her surprise, he agreed with her on all points.
    “Josh has mental issues,” she emailed a friend, “and isn’t dealing with reality. My bishop agrees I’m a stressed, overworked, neglected/abused mother down to her last straw.
    “And then my bishop said, ‘What can I do to help?’ ”
    Susan wanted counseling so much—not together with Josh at first—but for herself and Josh separately. She believed Wells Fargo would cover most of that under her health insurance. The bishop assured her that the church would pay the twenty-dollar-a-session copay that was Josh’s current reason to refuse counseling.
    For a time, she had hope. It was nearly the Fourth of July in 2008. When Josh asked her why she’d gone to see the bishop, she told him she’d asked for help on groceries and bills and Josh was okay with that.
    Susan was working full-time, bicycling to work and back. It took her forty minutes in the morning and fifty minutes after work because the