Afton Family Portrait Novels & Stories

He takes a seat next to me, while Romano walks around the library searching for something, I’m guessing his drink and my heart accelerates. “Oh, do you remember how fun this day was?!” Agatha exclaims as she shows Stefan a picture of the entire family on a picnic. Everyone is there, both grandparents, Stefan as a kid, his sister, Agatha, Isabella, and Romano with a big smile while holding hands with his wife. They all seem like a normal happy family. “Of course not, I was like 6 at the time,” Stefan replies laughing. Suddenly, an old black and white photo falls from the album into my lap. It shows two children playing on a beach wearing big hats.

The painting watched. The next morning, we gathered in the living room. All of us. For a family portrait. Luca, Eli, Derek, Luke, Damien, Derek's father, Derek's son, Derek's other son, Hope, Grace, Derek Jr., Grace Marie, Baby Hope, and me. The photographer came. He arranged us. He took the picture. We hung it on the wall. Next to the painting. Next to the other photographs. The painting watched. That night, we sat at the table. Eleven people. One table.

My parents sat beside them, completing the picture of a perfect family. Behind them, displayed on the wall, was a massive oil painting. A family portrait. At the bottom, signed in bold strokes: Grayson McKinney.

What was supposed to be a family portrait, was actually a portrait of Ashton. I grabbed the wrong painting.

I believe, that these photos make me dive deeper into the past of the person and they help me get to know them better. I saw photos of him and his parents. It was the first time, I have ever seen his dad. They were very alike. He had his brown eyes, his nose, lips and shape of the face. I mean, that they were like spitting images. The next photo was of him and his grandparents. There I saw Agatha. I have never heard anything about his other grandparents. I guess, they all have passed away. Maybe that’s why, he guarded Agatha like an apple of the eye. On other photo I saw Raf with his siblings. They were hugging each other. And one more photo with James and some woman. She looked like Grace,

Old ones, the kind restaurants like this accumulate over decades, families who had been dining there since before any of us were born, philanthropists, civic figures, a row of faces in oils that had watched forty years of lunches without commenting on any of them. I slowed down without meaning to. A Blackwood portrait, recent enough that the frames were still sharp. I nearly walked past it. I stopped because of the boy. A formal family portrait. In the center stood a young Adrian, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with that same jaw and that same serious look he still wore thirty years later. Beside him stood a man I recognised as his grandfather from photographs I had seen on Margaret’s wall. And b

I'm glad to know that a queen like her is remembered by her people. As I enter the foyer, I notice a ray of sunlight streaming from a covered window's hole in the ceiling towards the wall behind me. I turn to follow it and see that it rests on a large portrait of my family. It’s the only frame that is not covered with white sheets, and just like the hallway, the portrait appears hollow and depressingly gloomy. My eyes shifted to see my father’s astute pose for a second before they moved on to my older twin siblings, who were named Aiden and Lola. They both looked sixteen at the time, and they both resembled my mother.

Catalina asked, but the response she received from Rostam was just a shrugged shoulder before he leaves with a playful smile on his face. *** " Wow, what a beautiful family he has, " Catalina whispered as she looked at the family portrait in front of her. She can see how happy they are especially the couple sitting on a couch while the two kids are standing behind them—a girl and a boy who seemed to be only ten years old.

I told the two of them and started to walk back to the house, leaving the two of them on the beach together. Once I made it into the house, I began to look around and saw pictures hanging on the wall. I stopped in front of a family portrait that I knew was of my family. My parents looked almost the same as they did today in the picture and my mother was holding us as we all sat on the beach together. Lena and I would have only been around one or two in the portrait at the time it was taken.

After searching this place for over an hour for even just a single picture, he finally found it. On the wall, hanging, it was a formal family portrait. The entire Caelthorn family, captured perhaps a year or two before they vanished. They were dressed formally, standing in what looked like the mansion's main hall, when it had still been grand. Jason reached for the photograph, and looked at the picture closer. The first people his eyes laid on, was an older couple standing proudly in the center. The patriarch and matriarch. Beside them were two male kids, Jason only guessed those were the son of the couple, whatever their names was, with their elegant wives. Both men had the same strong feat