“Why I’d have a fit about what?”
“I was thinking that the best thing to do would be to charge Peter with child abuse. The next time he comes to see Tommy, which is practically never, but now with all this stuff going on in court he wants to come up and take Tommy out for the day. And you can just guess how Tommy feels about that. This is not good just to begin with. And I thought that after Peter brought Tommy back I could say—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“That’s what Bennis said. But why not?” Donna demanded. “It’s not like I’d be doing any real injustice to Peter Desarian, is it? He’d deserve the trouble he got into. He deserves more than that right this minute.”
“Do you think you could get Tommy to he?” Gregor asked. “Do you think you could get him to lie consistently enough so that nobody would ever find out that he’d lied?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean child abuse charges have to be substantiated. If you made a charge against Peter, the court would be required to bring in psychologists, pediatricians, whole rafts of people to see if you’d made it all up. And they’d be assuming that you had made it all up.”
“Why?”
“Because you aren’t the first person who’s ever thought of this. In the past ten years or so there have been a raft of these cases, and judges are fairly fed up. Fed up enough so that the first thing that would happen is that the judge wouldn’t believe you. And the next thing that would happen—assuming Tommy couldn’t keep himself from telling the truth, which is probably the case—is that the court would reject your bid to terminate Peter’s parental rights.”
“They’re going to do that anyway. You said that yourself.”
“Yes, I did,” Gregor said. “And it’s probably true. But that’s all they’ll do with things as they are now. If they think you’re engaged in some kind of vendetta—that you’ve become emotionally unstable and are unable to provide Tommy with a positive image of his father—they might end up handing custody over to Peter.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire.
“Peter wouldn’t take it,” Donna said finally. Her voice was very unsteady.
Gregor sighed. “Peter wouldn’t take it, but that harridan mother of his might. Do you really want to jeopardize Tommy’s future this way? Is it really necessary?”
“I want Russ to be able to adopt Tommy.”
“I know you do.”
“I want Tommy to have a father, Gregor. A real honest-to-goodness father.”
“He’s already got a father, in Russ, even without the adoption. The adoption is a legal construct, that’s all. It would be better if it went through. Life wouldn’t end if it didn’t go through. Your marriage wouldn’t end. Tommy’s relationship with Russ wouldn’t end. There’s no need for a scorched earth policy to deal with Peter Desarian at this time.”
There was another long pause on the phone. Gregor wondered where Donna was—in the living room of the apartment above his own, in the living room of the new townhouse down the block, sitting on the steps of Lida Arkmanian’s townhouse with a cell phone in her hand. He wondered if Donna was trying to keep this secret, or if she’d decided that there was no hope of that in any case.
“I think a scorched earth policy is the only way to deal with Peter Desarian,” Donna said. “If that had been my policy from the beginning, I would have ended up in far less trouble.”
“You would have ended up without Tommy. On this one, Tibor’s right. Don’t regret what gave you the best thing you have.”
“Well, Gregor, let me tell you. Don’t blame me if I wish the whole thing had happened by artificial insemination. How long are you and Bennis going to be out in Connecticut?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, the papers are full of you up here. You wouldn’t believe it. Do you know who did it yet?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I used to think you always knew, right from the start. You just looked over the suspects and you could tell. Tell Bennis to call me when she comes in.”
“I’ll leave her a note.”
“There really does have to be something I can do about Peter Desarian, Gregor. There really does. I’m not going to just sit back and let him get away with this.”
“Don’t do anything without the advice of your attorney,” Gregor said.
“Very funny. But I mean it. I’m sick of being a football. I’m sick of that idiot just tearing my life up every time he gets bored. And I don’t believe for a second that he cares one way or the other if Russ adopts Tommy. He’s just trying to spoil things. It’s what he does.”