After dinner Richard asked Aria to come to the study.
Not Damien. Just Aria.
She followed him down the corridor and he held the study door open and she went inside and looked at the shelves and the clock and the desk that Damien had described to her once....the drawer, the ring sitting in it for twenty years.
Richard sat in his chair.
She sat across from him.
He looked at her for a moment.
"He's different," he said. "Since you."
She held his gaze.
"I've known that boy since he was born," Richard said. "I watched him grow up and I watched what his father's death did to him and I watched him build something out of it that was....impressive, and also hard in ways that worried me." He paused. "He closed things off. One by one. People, feelings, anything that could be taken from him. He got very good at not needing things."
She said nothing.
