The current novel has our hero, Jim, coming home to take over the family business, a newspaper, after his brother, Alex, is murdered. I had to explain to myself and my readers why a wife would kill her husband. The short section of the dialogue below is meant to answer that question. Here’s who the characters are. Alex is the murdered brother. Sally was his wife. Karen is her lesbian lover.
After you read this short section of dialogue, do you think it explains why Sally would kill her husband?
“I think Alex spoiled me. I didn’t realize how much I needed the physical side of our marriage until menopause hit me. It could be painful making love. We stopped making love. Maybe if we had worked together and seen a doctor, we could solve those problems. I’ll never know,” Sally said.
“How did you meet Karen,” Jim asked.
“It was almost an accident. I saw her tea shop and just stopped to look around. She invited me to sit down and talk over a cup of tea. That’s how it started.”
“I don’t know how to ask this, but how did it become physical?”
“It just sort of happened by accident too. I’ve thought about that many times. I didn’t know I could feel that way about another woman. She completely satisfied me,” Sally said.
“Why did you have to kill Alex?”
“That also happened by accident. I was thinking of leaving Alex for Karen, but there were money problems. Out of the blue, Alex told me one day he was going to get that life insurance policy because of the drug story he was working on for the newspaper. It seemed like an ideal solution. The drug dealers would be getting their revenge by killing Alex, and no one would look further than that.”
