Disconcerting: Day 7

Word Count: 42,032

Summary of Events:

Caetline and her friend Eva discussed the Greenwall family's visit to the school to look at horses and speculated as to why Jada's parents had seemed unwilling to commit to buying their daughter a horse. Macaulay was doing some preparatory work for school in his bedroom . . . 

Excerpt of the Day:

His mobile sounded. Macaulay finished the sentence he'd been writing and checked to see who it was from.

It was a link to a GoFundMe page. Macaulay went to the page and saw that it was run by the Aberdeenshire Rescuers and they were looking for £30,000 to buy the horse from the video, which they showed a grainy still from.

From what Macaulay could tell the campaign had been begun about six hours before. To this point it'd raised £100.

Macaulay turned to his desktop and searched just Mr. Douglass-Milligan's surname.

A headline from six hours ago announced why the GoFundMe page was up: Douglass-Milligan Announces Plans to Sell Horse.

Clicking on the headline, Macaulay waited for the page to load and then read. Mr. Douglass-Milligan, in light of the allegations, had decided to sell the horse to turn the spotlight away and get rid of the controversy, according to a statement he'd made exclusively to this particular news outlet.

He was, he said, too old for this controversy — Macaulay found that interesting, seeing as he was pretty sure Mr. Douglass-Milligan was younger than Da — and he wanted to wash his hands of this whole ordeal. He just wanted to be left alone to his private life without attacks by vengeful people for no sensible reason.

Thus, he was selling the horse for £30,000, which was just £5,000 more than he bought the horse for four years before. A link at the bottom of the article directed Macaulay to the website where Mr. Douglass-Milligan had listed the horse.

The horse's name was given as North Sea Mist, and it was listed as a registered Irish Warmblood that was ten years of age. The height was given as fifteen three, and it was identified as a mare.

Accompanying photos showed an elegant mare with a reasonably light grey coat, not so light as to be white yet, but definitely on the lighter side of the grey horse he'd seen when he'd researched Mrs. Douglass-Milligan the other day.

One thing he noticed that was different, however, was that Mrs. Douglass-Milligan's horse had possessed no leg markings, but this mare had socks on her forelegs, as well as a narrow stripe down her forehead.

It was a beautiful horse with good confirmation and the like. Macaulay couldn't compare the lovely looking mare to the horse in the video, considering the graininess of the video, otherwise he would, but the fact that when he'd looked up Mrs. Douglass-Milligan the other day and the horse she'd been indicated and photographed as riding possessed no leg markings and had a German name — or, at least, Macaulay presumed, seeing as he knew luft as a German word element in words such as Luftwaffe and Lufthansa — Macaulay wasn't sure they were the same horse.