Julie:
'What a waste.' I thought as I laid the rose on my daughter's coffin. What a god damned waste fucking WASTE! For the last five years, ever since that trip to the tractor supply store I had wondered how my husband had found out about my one and only affair, or even if he had found out, and what his revenge for me might eventually be.
I honestly do not think he figured on our daughter dying as a result of his plans for me, but he does not really think about much anymore. If he had any idea things would have turned out this way he might have gone through with one of his first plans to rid himself of me, or possibly just killed himself.
'It was just one time.' I thought to myself again. Dimly I could hear the priest delivering his sermon over my daughter's grave, but I wasn't paying attention. Over and over the thought kept circling my mind, 'How could one tiny, insignificant indiscretion have destroyed my life so thoroughly?"
Syphilis, he found out because I gave my husband syphilis. I never knew because I was asymptomatic and never had the slightest idea I was infected let alone passed it along to him; and he in his hatred of me never got treated. I suppose the cops must have told all the women they could find that Rick was the Typhoid Mary of the STD. But as I never confessed and was never suspected I was never told, and those ladies who were told were too ashamed to admit to anything publicly.
End stage syphilis rots the brain, leading eventually to dementia, paranoia, & delusional thinking. It is a horrible way to die, and I still can't believe he hated me enough to suffer through all of that just to one day punish me.
He declined so steadily, and the doctors couldn't figure it out; all those trips to doctor's offices, the myriad pills and treatments. Looking back, I can see how adroitly he avoided having any brain scans done until it was too late. And its not like they scan for tertiary stage syphilis as part of any standard blood test.
The night he killed out daughter he was ranting about how she had broken in and kidnapped "our daughter." I can still see the incredulous look in her eyes as he drove the knife through her ribs. The shock and horror in her eyes haunt me everytime I fall asleep.