The Favoured, The Fair and Ms. Vérité Claire

3 Just Desserts

"Whaddya got that's big?" Julia asked, her eyes beginning to glaze.

"My second husband, Emir, was definitely a man for diamonds. He had the biggest stones I'd ever seen!"

She produced a tear-drop necklace, a marquise cluster bracelet and when Julia was vulnerable, blinded her with a thirty-one carat Winston ring.

"He was a top television executive with one of the big broadcasting networks. We got married on a dare. He said, 'I kinda love you, Vee. Let's get married for kicks and when it stops being fun, we'll get divorced.' It was never as though one of us felt we would die without the other, but of all my husbands, I really did love Emir the most.

"Life was an adventure then. He loved boats and had them everywhere. We were always lazing in Portofino, swirling around places like Bali and the Greek Islands. He insisted I tan in only my diamonds.

"Once we were overtaken by sea robbers near the Maldives. They meant business and they would have killed us I'm sure if one of them had not worked on Emir's crew on a trip to Spain. Emir made friends with everyone and this boy hadn't forgotten. So I gave him a thirty-thousand dollar choker and he showed the others my tan line as proof he had choked me to death. Then he pretended to shoot Emir and set us adrift in a dingy while they made off with Sweet Cheeks."

"Who was Sweet Cheeks?"

"The boat. We managed to row to safety on the islands after I'd made a two-piece out of a tattered sail. And after surviving an ordeal like that, what does Emir decide to go and do but visit a set and take a nap in the back of a stunt car they exploded for a television pilot that never even got picked up!" She shrugged, letting her arms collapse and shaking her head. "To this day, peacocks make me want to scream!"

Julia was aghast and her heart sopped up the hints of Vérité's sadness even though it could not fully wring out its own. Vérité pet her head with a gentle smile of reassurance. "Don't look so pitiful darling. Love is rubber, grief is glue. Girls like you and I find ways to bounce back."

"Did you ever want children?"

"I confess I did, but it was not to be. Even if I hadn't been born with these narrow birthing hips, Rudy died, Harry had one testicle, Emir wore those tight European underwear and by the time I married Chauncey, I was in my early forties and nature wouldn't comply.

"Chauncey, as you know, was my last husband. Sometimes you save the best for last, but sometimes they're just next. His real name was Chuck Hankleford. He was...a real sonuvabitch. I still don't know how he tricked me into it. I'd sworn off getting married ever again right after I buried a pinkie and a pair of sunglasses. But Chauncey liked to live. He liked to eat and drink and he laughed a lot. I thought we'd have a good time. Turns out the laughing was just his way of stalling while he came up with more baloney which he was full of. He was a real nasty bastard when you caught him in a lie."

"So it served Minx right."

"You know when she first met him she called him a 'dirty pan swisher'. After a mine he'd invested in erupted in gold she hired an Italian chef to lure him away from me. He was such a glutton by then he was always red in the face and you could hear him breathing from around the corner. I think one of his arteries was technically a sausage when he died."

"What in here is from him?"

"This. These. Those," Vérité said pointing to a number of baubles. "I have an entire collection of shiny apologies. He was a jeweler by trade so what did they mean? Some of these pieces are so beautiful but I have no sentimental attachment to them. I keep them to remember to trust my instincts, that sometimes loneliness is the better option, and from time to time, to remind myself how fantastic I look in blue. Just look at these sapphires!"