Grissom and Sara returned to the tent just as the second course was being served. Sara headed for the maids' table, seated with Maaike on her left and Honore on her right, while Grissom went not too far away to where Cecilia, Phil, Eavan and a few others were already seated.

"See you later," Grissom said.

"Thanks for the dance," Sara replied, blushing.

"Don't mention it," he squeezed her shoulder affectionately before they parted.

"Sara," Daphne turned her big blue eyes to her once Sara took her seat directly across from her, "who's that charming man you walked in with?"

"Huh?"

"The one in the beard," Maaike said. "Who's he?"

"Already looking for someone new, Maaike?" chirped Elsa.

"Why don't you go shove tampon down throat, you anorexic bitch," Maaike spat.

"I thought you had your eyes on Del, Sara," Lilith smiled. "I thought the pair of you were perfect for each other."

"Del? The cute young lawyer?" Honore glanced at the groomsmen table over the rim of her cocktail glass. Del and fellow groomsman Jack were playing table football and laughing. "Yeah, he's doable."

"For Sara or for husband number three, Honore?" Daphne raised an eyebrow.

"I want to hear more about this man that Sara's with," Elsa's smile crept across her face like kudzu. "Isn't he rather…old for you, Sara? At least by fifteen years. He's gray already."

"I don't see how that's your business," Sara said icily.

"Maybe she like older men," Maaike said defensively. "Like you, Elsa. Isn't gray favorite color? How old is Leo again? Good twenty-five years older? Give or take?"

Elsa turned the same color as her dress but said nothing. Instead she got up and went to the bar. Honore followed her.

"Bitch," Maaike spat. "Both of them, bitch."

Daphne winced. "I'm sorry, Sara, about Elsa. She's a nosy little busybody. Would it come as a surprise that she's a gossip columnist in Palm Beach, Florida?"

"For the Shiny Sheet," Lilith added. "Palm Beach's biggest gossip page. Everybody's business is her business. I knew it when she came to interview Galán about the new season of El Paraíso Perdi while we were in Florida."

"What's so bad about that?"

"We were on vacation!" Lilith pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Just lying on the beach, doing absolutely nothing! She just saunters on up to us—in a skirt and heels, no less—and just starts interviewing my husband! How she tracked us down I'll never know."

"Easy," Maaike said. "She has Lo-Jack."

"So," Daphne said brightly. "Now that Elsa's gone, who's your blue-eyed man?"

"He's not my man," Sara said slowly. "He's my supervisor."

Maaike's face stiffened. "Are you in love with him?"

Sara's heartbeat sped up. "Why would you ask that?"

"You know why."

Of course. Maaike's daughter was the product of an affair with a superior. She was merely looking out for Sara, the way she never did with Lorelei.

"He's handsome, no? Strong looking, looks smart," Maaike continued absentmindedly. "Reminds me of Charles."

Charles. That must have the mysterious college professor that had impregnated Maaike, Lorelei's father. "There's nothing between us," Sara answered too quickly. "We're…old friends."

"Friends, yes," Maaike replied wisely, "but there is something for about him for you. I am thinking that he has the eye love for you."

"Eye love?" asked Sara and Lilith.

"Eye love. When a man is so infatuated with the woman he loves, his eyes can't help but to be following her. My father had the eye love for Mama. Charles had the eye love for me. I can recognize eye love in heartbeat's time."

Sara was sure that she was pinker than the gown she wore. Her ears went hot, as they usually did when she was caught between a rock and a hard place. "He does not," was all she could say in her own defense.

"Whatever you say," Maaike gave a sly smile, perhaps the first smile Sara had ever seen on her face.

"I think he's divine," Daphne said. She leaned in a little and lowered her voice. "Marry a man with blue eyes, Sara. They're noble, full of trust and understanding."

"Noble? Really?" Sara didn't even know anyone who said the word "noble" anymore.

"I've been married to Schaefer for fifteen years," Daphne said in her normal tone, "his eyes are like sapphires in his skull. Where I grew up in India, men with blue eyes were so wonderfully rare, they were considered lucky. All my life, I waited for a man with blue eyes to marry. My experience with blue-eyed men just seemed…I don't know, better than the rest."

"That stupid," Maaike said. Sara was about to agree when Lilith jumped in.

"Maaike, do you have to ruin everything?" said Lilith, narrowing her eyes. She then turned to Daphne. "Galán doesn't have blue eyes, we've been married happily for five years."

"Oh, I'm not saying that you won't be happy with a man who doesn't have blue eyes," Daphne said. "It's just that in my experiences, blue-eyed men were more satisfactory. For example: before Schaefer, I was going with this guy named Richard. He had brown eyes."

"So?" Sara raised an eyebrow.

"Let me finish! I was dating Richard for four years when I found out not only did he have another girlfriend besides me, he had embezzled from my stock account."

"So Richard was an asshole. What did this have to do with eyes?"

"Schaefer is the most attentive man I'd ever known. He was always sweet and sensitive, caring, noble," Daphne emphasized, "and remained faithful to me not only during our courtship but for our entire marriage. He loves our children more than life itself. That man loves me; I know this because his perfection scared me so that I hired a private detective for the first five years of our marriage. Perfect track record."

"So one brown-eyed man ruined it for them all?" Sara unpinned the carnation circlet from her head. It was beginning to itch.

"It wasn't just Richard," Daphne said, very serious now. "In my adult life, I've dated twelve men: four blue-eyed, not counting Schaefer. Those men were gods, Adonis's, saints, every last one of them. Those other eight shitheads? They cheated, they stole, they lied, they hit me. After Richard, I swore I wouldn't date or marry unless a blue-eyed man came along. I met Schaefer a month later at an outdoor concert and the rest is history."

"I still don't get," Maaike said. "What is it about the blue eye? It's just color, you know. It doesn't mean anything."

"It's just the luck of the draw. My mother always told me to marry a man with dark eyes," Lilith countered. "Joseph and Enrique both had dark eyes and so does Galán. Eye color doesn't mean a damn thing, Sara."

"It's like evidence in a case. It can mean everything or nothing. It all depends on how you look at it, I guess," Sara said, beginning to understand what Daphne was saying. Everyone had a talisman of some kind, a lucky star: Daphne's was blue-eyed men.

"It's what I believe," Daphne said, her voice sounding timid. "But Lilith, you've been married to three men all with dark eyes and divorced two of them. I've been married to one for fifteen years with blue. I don't think that's an accident, if you ask me."

Sara never thought twice about the color of someone's eyes revealing what was underneath. But she considered Grissom: he wasn't the type to cheat, steal, lie or hit. A man who danced like he did just didn't do those things.

"You know," Maaike swallowed thickly. "Charles…his eyes were gray."