During the reading of "The Reader Is the Protagonist" the ex-wife and her family had to run away from her first husband. The husband told her about the time he killed a man back in New York. he tried to make is seem like it was the right thing to do by saying the man he killed raped a girl and that no one would miss him or even cared about him. After this everything that she thought she knew about him was completely wrong. This is showed by his own words in the book at one point he states "Baby, my life is a open book" to "Never judge a book by its cover".