January 2021

Listen to me, now.

On the third of January 2021, David Diamond married Ruby Buffer. The event had been delicate enough—faint pink plastic peonies, battery-powered tealights, a pastel bouquet of Styrofoam baby’s breath.

Regardless of the manmade pretties and unwashed “marble” linoleum floor of the refurbished barn which had housed the event, David and Ruby were united in matrimony with a beautiful and flawless set of vows and two mostly shiny plated gold rings.

The event had been a wonderful success. Family members swarmed the reception, where the couple had splurged for an open bar, and the family danced and laughed and had a wonderful night. They told old inside jokes and started new ones meant to last lifetimes.

Anyone who saw Ruby Buffer that night would agree that she had never shown brighter in her life. Her union to David Diamond had had the effect on her that a shiny new quarter has on a five-year-old. Ruby seemed happy. No one would suspect her for anything that was to happen.

Two weeks later on January 17th, David Diamond died tragically in a house fire while Ruby was out for lunch with a friend.

The cause of the fire was never to be discovered. Ruby Diamond wept for her husband—two tears, to be exact—at his funeral, and, when the insurance money from both her house and her late husband’s policy came in the mail, she moved far away from the town, which she had claimed held too many memories for her.

On the fourth of February 2021, Christopher Emerald married Ruby Diamond.