They say the wages of sin is death. I know that is true. Tonight, God sent someone to pay me in full for the wrongs I committed against my wife.

The first time I met Merope Gaunt, back in the days when she had been allowed to run wild before her mother died and her father started to subdue her, to beat her into submission in an attempt to force her into the role her mother had once occupied, it was not love at first sight. I had called her a hag and threw a rock at her. She called me every name in the book - many of which I had never heard before - and despite being two years younger than me and half my size gave me a black eye and a split lip. It was the beginning of a rather interesting and all too brief friendship in the halcyon days when I and a gang of local boys plus Merope (on the few occasions she had been able to give her drunkard father and older brother the slip with help from her mother) had run through the streets of Little Hangleton and the surrounding woods and fields getting into mischief before I had been dragged back to the manor and forced to learn how to be a gentleman. After that all too brief summer where I had run wild with Merope, the cook's son and a small band of local rascals I hadn't seen much of her.

During the years I was away at boarding school, and spending my summers with my new friends who were all in my social class, I grew up to be a near clone of my father and the surprisingly ugly child that was Merope Gaunt had grown up to be a rather plain young woman. When I saw her upon returning home from a tour of the continent after my graduation, I barely recognized her. If it weren't for the odd fact that Merope had what looked to be two lazy eyes, I probably would not have. The wild hellion who had followed after me and my childhood friends and had a right hook that knocked one of the largest of the local bullies into next week was replaced by a shy creature that would peek out at me from her garden hedge, gazing at me and something nearby in a rather adoring and almost worshipful manner when she thought I wasn't looking. I pitied her. When it came to her father and her brother, I looked down upon them in disdain, but her I pitied.

Probably the worst of the sins I committed against Merope had been the fact that I had never loved her.

Marrying Merope had been one of my first and one of my last acts of rebellion against my father. I had honestly tried to court Cecilia as my parents had wanted, and there were times when I had been almost happy during our time together, but I could never bring myself to marry her. Marriage to Cecilia was seen as advantageous for both our families as while hers was on a slightly higher rung of the social ladder, ours had more money. There was every logical reason for marrying her but one, I was afraid of her. When she thought I wasn't looking or I wasn't around, I tended to catch small glimpses of what was lurking beneath the mask that was her face, and I didn't like what I saw. Considering the number of husbands she has gone through since our failed courtship, I believe my decision not to marry her had been the correct one. Chances are that had I married Cecilia, I would have been dead within three years of the wedding, and the fortune my family had spent generations amassing would be in her hands like those of "Dear Roland", "Darling Edward" and "Peter Dear".

My father who wanted to build connections in circles higher than ours had decided one evening that I had been stalling long enough and ordered me to propose to my "Cecilia darling" before the week was out. I told him that I would rather marry Merope Gaunt, and God help me, I followed through. It had been some point after my father and I had been arguing for at least two hours that I had decided to show him I was serious about the fact that I would rather marry the Gaunt girl than Cecilia. I stormed over to the Gaunt shack and proposed to Merope that night. I am sometimes eaten with guilt when I remember the look of utter joy on the poor girl's face. Merope and I were wed in Greater Hangleton the next morning and decided to go to London to wait for my father to cool down.

Despite being well...ugly, Merope was just about everything a man would want in a wife. I am certain that if I hadn't foolishly run off with her to prove some stupid point to my father, she would have made someone very happy. She had devoted herself to me utterly from our wedding day. Her very existence had revolved around my comfort, but unfortunately, with our limited means there had been little she could do in that area. The poor girl had been forced to stretch our budget nearly to the breaking point several times because I absolutely had to have some thing we couldn't really afford.

Had I been less wealthy growing up, less used to the luxuries I had taken for granted, we may have made a nice life together in London. I had found a job within a few days of our arrival and we soon procured a small flat that we moved into almost immediately. While it was practically heaven for Merope who had grown up poor without the conveniences of electricity and modern plumbing, it was nearly hell for me. Growing up in a large manor had not prepared me for life in a small apartment. Setting out early in the morning six days a week for a tedious and rather boring job had taken a great deal of getting used to as well. The work I did was far from onerous, but it was a far cry from the days of leisure I had grown accustomed to and was far beneath what was acceptable for one of my social standing or rather what was then my former social standing. The idea that if I lost the job Merope and I could very well starve had been a hard one to swallow. I had not been ready for the responsibilities and hardships of life outside my family's estate, and if I had known what would be ahead, I would have chosen differently.

It had been during a particularly bad month that the letter begging me to "Cease my childish behavior and come home." had arrived. Through no fault of my own, I had become unemployed and found myself looking for work. Jobs unfortunately, weren't as readily available as the year before and I found myself still looking after three weeks rather than a few days. Then there was the added stress of learning that I would become a father sometime very late that Autumn or early that Winter. What little savings Merope and I had managed to scrape together were rapidly being depleted.

I think the last straw had been my birthday. I had grown accustomed to exceedingly lavish affairs at which I was the center of attention for that one day of the year. The small cake and the rather inexpensive gift brought home to me how far I had fallen in a way that nothing else could. I think when I left Merope that night as she slept, leaving a note telling her I'd send divorce papers at a later date on my pillow I had expected everything to miraculously return to the way it was before, that the magic that Merope had sworn before a priest never to use again would turn the world back to where it had been when I had foolishly run away taking my poor childhood friend along for the ride. I had half expected to see Merope peering through the garden hedge at me with that adoring look as I made my way to the one place where I knew I wasn't one pay day away from starvation.

When the world failed to return to where it had been before, I had waited for my wife who hadn't been in the apartment when the papers had arrived to show up at the shack in which she had been raised. She didn't. The shack became empty when old Marvolo died that Winter and remained so until Marvolo's son got out of prison.

The second worst sin I committed against Merope had been leaving her alone and pregnant in London without any means of support. The third worst would have to have been that I had allowed my parents to slander what little good name Merope had left in the village as they came up with an excuse for why I returned without my wife. I think some of the villagers suspect that I have murdered her, and I know now that that is close enough to the truth. Her death had been my fault. She died homeless, alone, and half-frozen giving birth to my son in an orphanage.

As my child brings death to me as he had his mother, I go knowing that God has given me the son I deserve.