The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

Author:Nancy Richler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Historical
ISBN: 9781443404051
Publisher: St. Martin's
Published: 2012-03-20T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

There was little of monetary value in the stone the woman had brought, Ida Pearl reminded herself as she sat in the darkness of her living room a few days after that visit from Lily, her cup of tea cooling on the table beside her. The market was glutted, first of all—a lot of the refugees had brought them. Every second or third shabby coat seemed to have a diamond sewn into its lining, and those were diamonds that were already cut, polished, fully achieved. Which this stone was not. Even in a good market, its value would lie only in its potential, which at that moment was entirely theoretical. Who knew what flaws might run through its centre? Who could be sure that rough, small stone could become the cut gem that Ida had already begun to see in her mind’s eye, though she tried not to see it, not yet, because that, right there, was the first misstep she could take: to form a preconceived notion and force the stone to conform to it, to cut it in the image of something too hastily imagined, a gem that might be adequate, and even beautiful, but that would not be the realization of the stone’s unique potential. To achieve that uniqueness—and there was no point in proceeding if not for that—she would have to allow the stone to guide her. And it would; she was certain. She had felt that as she first held it. She had felt the life in it even before she brought it up to her eye for a closer look, even as she knew that its presence in her store, in the hand of the imposter who had brought it to her, confirmed the destruction of her family, who had once owned it. And she had known at that moment that she would be the one to release its light.

She was no longer a religious woman, would not even say that she still believed in fate, but that diamond was her destiny, she suddenly was sure. Why else would things have happened as they had? How else could she possibly understand the appearance of that woman with her cousin’s name and her cousin’s diamond, not only in Montreal, but in her own store? Coincidence? No. Destiny, she felt certain, and with that certainty, the seemingly senseless unfolding of her life until then revealed its purpose. The untimely, tragic death of her father, the subsequent plunge into poverty and shame, the cold-hearted expulsion from Chaim’s workshop and home—an expulsion that she now knew had ultimately saved her life—Arthur’s betrayal, the second plunge into poverty and shame, the birth of her daughter, who so often seemed a stranger though it was her own blood that ran through the girl’s veins, the unfolding comprehension of what had happened to her family … Even the imposter no longer seemed just the looting, lying thief that she had first thought but the agent of a deliverance the exact

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