This story is written in response to Mondays Finish the Story. 

This is a unique flash fiction challenge where we are provided with a new photo each week, and the first sentence of a story. Our challenge is to finish the story using 100-150 words, not including the sentence provided (in bold below). My story follows the picture prompt. Enjoy!

As her mount shifted uneasily under her, she grasped the brim of her old felt Stetson, gazed upwards and remembered Jean Pierre.

She had led the sheltered life and she knew it. Her father, the US Ambassador to France, had made sure she had everything she needed or wanted. Her mother, the CEO of a famous magazine, was never around the mansion.

Jean Pierre, the butler of the household, was her best friend. Because of her family she never had any girlfriends. None was allowed beyond the gates that protected the Ambassador’s residence.  He was her educator and the one who would tell her stories about real people and how they lived.

She hated when her family had to return to their home in Texas. They returned without Jean.

It had now been over a year since her return. Her father, trying to help with her depression, had bought her a Stetson hat to try and help her forget Jean. She wore the hat every day. The family was getting concerned with her obsession.

Every morning she got on the Merry Go-‘Round that her father had purchased for her and wave it over her head in remembrance of her time in France.