Things that make you go hmmm.

I recently wrote a piece called Alex and Julius. It was prompted by my realization that my sister handily cut her first husband off from his best friend by fostering a relationship between me and Alex and then presumably agreeing he was a bad guy taking advantage of me or perhaps suggesting it.

Isolating the victim from their social support network is what abusers do. It cast new light on her husband supporting her career. Making the victim financially dependent is another tactic of abusers.

My sister talked a great deal of trash about her second husband and his family. Part of that was telling me his mother used to tell him "She killed her first husband and she'll kill you, too."

I have a serious medical condition and special needs kids. I wasn't there. It was secondhand gossip. I took my beloved sister's word for the "poisonous mother-in-law" trope.

With realizing she isolated Julius socially who was financially dependent on her, so she was most likely the abuser in an abusive relationship, it made me realize that things she's said separately may suggest her late mother-in-law actually had reason to think that my sister was a murderer if you put them all together. 

I knew that she got involved with her second husband before the day her first husband died.

I knew her second husband was "a loser" still living with his mom when she got involved with him.

I knew she spent the night at his place that day and that "his place" was his mom's house. 

Somehow I always imagined that she began dating him and met his mother later and the mother learned after the fact that her first husband died under circumstances where police considered murder enough of a possibility to test her hands for gun powder and just was making wild, unfounded claims and my sister absolutely wanted me to see it that way, that it was crazy talk by an old woman with issues.

But the reality is his mother almost certainly saw my sister the day her first husband died in the hours following the event. So she may have seen something that didn't add up and couldn't be explained away.