(7/13) “How could I not have known? I’ve asked myself that so...

(7/13) “How could I not have known? I’ve asked myself that so many times. We were married for twenty years; I knew all his friends, all his coworkers. Every day we’d eat lunch together at his office, and we’d talk about everything. He did travel a lot for work. Over the years he’d built up a huge pile of business receipts: for plane tickets, and hotels. I could never understand why he wouldn’t turn them in, so that his parents could reimburse us. We needed that money. Our credit cards were maxed out because Tripp lived above his means. Even though he brought home less than $50,000 a year, he was always paying for other people’s dinners. He bought a computer and projector for our son’s football team. But if I ever tried to challenge him on his spending, he’d fly into a rage. On the day our youngest daughter was born, he was so ugly to me in the hospital. He pushed the nursing cart across the room. He screamed: ‘Why don’t you get an F’in job?’ I tried to calm him down. I said: ‘I’m thinking about getting my real estate license.’ He laughed at me. He said: ‘Yeah, right. Sure you will.’ But that’s exactly what I did. I signed up for courses as soon as I got out of the hospital. On my first day the broker gave me a survey to fill out. There was a line where it asked me to choose a desired salary, and I chose the minimum,  $20,000. It was never supposed to be a career. I just wanted to bring in a little extra money. I got my first listing while we were out of town at a soccer tournament. I remember crouching down outside of the hotel room. My hands were trembling, because Tripp was angry about something. But I closed the deal. It was a $5,000 commission. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. We were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. We’d finally gotten a new house, but it was completely gutted. We were living in a tiny apartment in the back. One night I was dozing off, nursing the baby. Tripp was out of town on business. The kids were asleep. It was late, much too late for phone calls. And the phone rang. There was a woman’s voice on the other end. She said: ‘Venus, you don’t know me. But I’m calling to tell you what an awful man your husband is.’”