Jerome passed that sentiment on to their father.
The day of the rehearsal dinner, Bertrand and Yves ran some errands in Thousand Oaks and picked up the tuxedo that had been altered to fit Yves. Yves wanted to reestablish contact with Greg, but he was torn as to whether this was the best time to do so, especially given what Jerome had just told him. Yves said he forgot something back at the house, but Bertrand said they didn’t have time to go back because they were late. So, Yves asked to be let out of the car to take a walk. Ultimately, he decided not to attend.
June 5 was the perfect sunny day for a wedding, albeit a little humid. Because of the good weather, the ceremony was held under the larger of two gazebos in the olive tree–lined courtyard of the Padua Hills Theatre, an historic Spanish Colonial building nestled in the Mt. San Antonio foothills of northern Claremont.
As the guests assembled to watch Greg and Kristin exchange vows, a little blond girl handed out white roses to the women, while a string quartet performed a selection of Bach pieces.
Ralph walked his daughter up the aisle as she carried a bouquet of flowers that, from the photos, look like roses. She was beaming, as if she felt she’d made the right decision.
Because Kristin had no bridesmaids or maid of honor, Greg had two best men, his brother Jerome and Kristin’s brother Brent. Bertrand was the only groomsman.
The minister delivered a ceremony that was peppered with religious references as he spoke to the couple under the gazebo, with family and friends looking on from folding chairs.
“Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God,” the minister said.
He asked Kristin and Greg the usual questions, starting with the bride: “Kristin, will you have this man to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
“I will,” Kristin said sweetly, making a vow that would echo with irony in a matter of months. Greg made the same promise, repeating the words softly and with meaning. Then the minister led the guests in prayer and guided the couple through their final vows.
After the ceremony, the guests moved inside to the intimate dining room, which had once been used for dinner theater. There, amid the tables on the hardwood dance floor, Ralph welcomed Greg to the family. He noted that this was an international event that Marie’s sister, Marie-Paul, had come all the way from France to attend. The Rossums’ relatives, he noted, had flooded in from all over: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Arizona, Utah, California, and Minnesota.
Jerome gave an awkward but heartfelt speech, eliciting laughter as he admitted that marriage was almost a foreign concept to him, so much so that he was shocked when Greg called him one day at his dorm and told him he’d asked Kristin to marry him.
“My brother has never hesitated on this marriage, and I’m just really proud of him,” he said. “I know relationships are a lot of hard work. It takes patience, just a lot of compromise.”
Greg had told him and showed him that “the rewards were all worth it. So, I guess,” he said, pausing to raise his glass, “Cheers.”
Brent Rossum made a short toast, making way for his father to stand up once more to share his feelings of pride about his daughter. He’d felt it while watching her physically conquer the role of the sugar plum fairy to such beautiful music, dancing with a professional in The Nutcracker all those years ago. A few weeks earlier, she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at SDSU. And with her marriage on this glorious sunny day, he said, she’d done it again.
Ralph said he also was proud of his new son-in-law and his expanded family, wishing the couple “a life of love, happiness, health, and success.”
Greg, the only one to take the floor and make a toast without a drink in his hand, introduced his mother and his aunt, then thanked Constance and Ralph for making the day, including the weather, so perfect.
“Kristin is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met,” he said. “She’s incredible in so many ways, in everything she does. She’s a perfectionist. She’s so intelligent. She’s so kind and caring and sharing.”
Greg’s closing words came slowly, his voice thick with emotion. “I just can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Finally, Bertrand, who’d had a bit too much champagne, gave the final touching toast featured on the homemade wedding video.
“Kristin is a beautiful woman inside and out, and I couldn’t think of a better person to have with my brother. I’m so proud to have you as a sister now and to have an extension of our family here in the United States. It’s wonderful.”
Bertrand, turning to Greg, teased his older brother about the deep and sincere feelings he had for Kristin, admitting that when he and Jerome ribbed Greg about the relationship, it was only out of love.
“Sometimes we just think we’re losing you,” he said. “I can only hope that I’m so in love with a girl like you are when I get married, because it’s really beautiful, and I can tell you’re totally infatuated. As much as we give you a hard time about it, we really think it’s beautiful…. I don’t know if you understand how well you complement each other. No one’s perfect individually, but, Greg, you do such a good job of bringing out the best in Kristin, and she does a wonderful job [of doing the same with you]…. May God bless your relationship forever and ever.”
Chapter 6
During the next six months, Greg and Kristin seemed happy. As a wedding gift, Greg’s family paid for them to honeymoon at Whistler-Blackcomb Mountains, a vacation area north of Vancouver. The newlyweds started talking about having children.
“Mom, I’m going off birth control,” Constance recalled Kristin telling her, “and what happens will happen.”
Greg had already come up with a name for the baby if they had a girl: Isabelle. Constance suggested Marie Isabelle, after Greg’s mother.
But the marital bliss didn’t last long.
In January 2000, Kristin started complaining to Constance during their phone conversations and shopping trips that Greg was getting more clingy and controlling, and that she felt like a bird in a cage. Kristin wrote in her diary about one such shopping excursion in La Jolla, where she and Constance engaged in some heart-to-heart “mother-daughter bonding.” She wrote that she never felt very close to her mother, but she was trying to get closer. It was a very emotional afternoon.
One night, when her parents came down to San Diego to visit, Kristin showed up alone, saying she’d left Greg home in bed because he wasn’t feeling well.
“He seemed…not robust,” Constance said, “though he’d never really been robust.”
At one point, Constance said, Greg wondered if he might have chronic fatigue syndrome. However, he never mentioned any such thing to his own family, who thought he was quite healthy.
None of the negative sentiments Kristin confided to Constance showed up in the e-mails she regularly exchanged with Greg. Oftentimes, Greg would make a suggestion and ask her what she wanted to do for lunch, dinner, or the weekend. He didn’t dictate what they were doing. In turn, she would often ask him to make decisions for them.
On January 14, 2000, for example, she told him she’d picked up her transcript from SDSU and was excited to learn she was graduating summa cum laude with distinction in chemistry. She suggested going out for a celebratory beer or renting some movies, but asked him to choose their activities for the evening. She ended with, “Let me know the plans. Love you with all my heart, Wifey.”
It was apparent from the e-mails that Greg liked to spend his spare time with