Gemotions

The chipped porcelain doll sat on the dusty shelf, its painted eyes seeming to follow Martha. Her grandmother, the woman who’d given her that doll, was gone now. And now, the woman's only living daughter, Martha’s aunt Eleanor, was selling it. For money. Martha's jaw clenched.

She slammed the antique tea cup she was washing down on the drying rack. Eleanor was in the dining room, on the phone, the clinking of china an unwelcome counterpoint to her cheerfully shrill voice. Martha scrubbed at a greasy pan with furious energy.

"Five hundred dollars! For that…thing?" She muttered under her breath, hands trembling. It was obscene. It was *her* doll, in a way. The only thing she had left of her grandmother.