Sleuthing

I'm still Facebook friends with lots of people that we, my wife and I, were actively friends with a wile back.  Most of your local friendships have been with the parents of friends of our children.  There are some people we know from work, a local running club, neighbors, etc.  But I didn't grow up around here, so there are no childhood friends within 1,000 miles.

Anyway, getting to the point.  I saw a post on Facebook of a friend who had been to some kind of event, probably a wedding and there were a bunch of pictures, which I scrolled through.  What I didn't see, were any pictures of her husband.  Curiosity overcame me and I scrolled through her photo album:  After 2017, he is nowhere to be seen.

A quick Google search turned up three items:  1. A man matching his description listed at a nearby address, which is different from their house. 2. A public record of the sale of the house, from the two of them to just the (possibly former) wife.

I discussed all of this with my wife and we are both somewhat sad about all of it and she related a story that she probably told me about before, but had forgotten:  She went to some movie with her, as she calls them "lady friends"  after words, some of them went to a local, townie kind of place for drinks.  She noticed a disheveled man walk by on his way in and afterwards recognized him as the husband.

Item 3. which I kept to myself, (she doesn't read my blog--which I suppose I should mind, but don't.) is that I turned up a police blotter from our local paper, dated about 7 years ago--around when she spotted him:  It indicated he'd been arrested for DUI and it was a repeat offense.  I didn't want to tell her this, because, depressing.  I does raise a question in my mind:  Did his drinking break-up the marriage, or did the break-up lead to excessive drinking?

It should be noted that whenever we got together with this couple, they both drank, not excessively, but also, not sparingly.