18
6:47 p.m.
Richard had been sitting in his late father’s study since shortly after eating breakfast with Stuart in the stables and excusing himself from attending the festivities.
He looked through every album of photographs his mother had lovingly collected over the years, at every photo of the men of his family in the frames standing proudly on the shelves, and he laughed and brooded for hours.
Now he held the most recent album Martha had made. As he leafed through the pages, Giulianna smiled at him in many important moments of their lives.
And then she simply disappeared.
In the last photos, of him coming back home, after his last surgery, and him succeeding in mounting Lakeside Devil, Giulianna was absent.
It felt wrong, as if she had died, as if he had killed her.
It made hi
