Deadly Beloved(31)

“That’s because they were the weddings of people you didn’t know well,” Tibor said. “It’s not weddings you’re so upset about, it’s Donna’s wedding. Something finally changes in your life here. Things will never be the same.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”

“Krekor, please. You should give me more credit than to compare me with Freud. But what I’m telling you is true. It is true for Bennis too. She gets through it by interesting herself in the details, but when she comes up for air she is all upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Gregor said. “I like Donna. I like Russ. I think they ought to get married.”

“I do too,” Tibor said. “Everybody thinks they ought to get married.”

“And old George is right,” Gregor went on, “it’s going to be good for Tommy. I don’t think Donna could go through another round of him waking up in the middle of the night, crying and hysterical and wanting to know why his father doesn’t love him. Did you know about that?”

“I had heard about it, Krekor, yes.”

“Tommy’s bedroom is right over my head. The first time it happened, I was ready to go up to Boston and open Peter Desarian’s head with a meat cleaver. But that wouldn’t do any good, would it? He’d still be Peter Desarian. Tommy needs a father, but he sure as hell doesn’t need Peter Desarian.”

“Donna doesn’t need Peter Desarian either,” Tibor said. “Yes, yes, Gregor, I know all the arguments. I agree with all the arguments. This marriage is a wonderful thing. It is good for everyone involved. Donna and Russ should definitely go through with it. But I worry.”

“About it changing things.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think we’re being illogical here?” Gregor asked. “It all seems so complicated and confused and I don’t see why it should. It wasn’t this ambiguous when I got married to Elizabeth.”

“When you got married to Elizabeth you were twenty-five.”

“What about you and Anna?”

Tibor shrugged. “Me and Anna were a long time ago under very different circumstances. We were introduced by the bishop, you know. That was how it was done in that time and place. It was hard for a young man in the seminary to find someone suitable to marry.”

“But even if the bishop found Anna, you loved her.”

“Oh, yes,” Tibor said. “I definitely loved her.”

“Well, then.” Gregor moved some more books. Tibor had a copy of How to Have a Perfect Wedding and also a copy of The Five Essential Steps to Divorce. Gregor picked them both up and put them on the seat of the chair behind him, nearly toppling a stack of Harlequin romances.

“That’s funny,” he told Tibor. “I was thinking about divorce this morning. About how easy it is these days.”

“Too easy,” Tibor said solemnly.

“Probably,” Gregor agreed, “but I was thinking about how it’s changed things for homicide. Easy divorce, I mean. Men still kill their wives, of course, and wives still kill their husbands, but the kind of spousal murder you get these days is different than it used to be. I’m putting that badly. You always had all kinds of spousal murder, the drunken-rage kind and the sudden-snap kind and logical-conclusion-to-twenty-years-of-beatings kind, but in the old days almost every big city police department had at least one escape-hatch spousal murder every three years or so. You know what I mean?”

“You mean the men and the women couldn’t get a divorce and so they murdered the person they were married to.”

“Right,” Gregor said. “When you had laws that let one spouse refuse a divorce, you had a certain incidence of people who really did work at committing a murder they were trying to get away with. A murder that they’d planned. There isn’t much of that in spousal murder anymore. There was that lawyer up in Boston who shot himself in his stomach after he killed his wife so that he could claim they had been attacked by muggers. That’s the kind of thing I used to read in those mystery novels Bennis is always giving me and I’d refuse to believe it. Who would shoot himself in his own stomach? That kind of thing hurts.”

“I’m sure it does, Krekor.”

“Anyway, there isn’t much of that kind of thing anymore. People file for no-fault and they don’t even need their spouse’s permission.”

“That’s not a good thing either, Krekor.”

“No, I don’t think it is. But it makes the situation I’ve just been drawn into very interesting. Did you know John Jackman called me last night? He has something he wants me to work on.”