Gemotions

The attic air tasted of dust and forgotten things. Elias had been tasked with clearing out the space, a job that should have taken an afternoon. Now, hours later, sunlight sliced through a gap in the boarded-up window, illuminating the swirling particles that danced in the beam. He’d unearthed moth-eaten shawls, chipped porcelain dolls, and a trunk overflowing with old photographs. But it was a single, yellowed envelope tucked beneath a stack of his mother’s college textbooks that stopped him cold.

His fingers, suddenly clumsy, fumbled with the brittle paper. The handwriting on the front, his mother’s, was unfamiliar, almost shaky. It read, “To the Board of Directors, Resignation.” He swallowed hard, a knot tightening in his throat.

He’d always known his mother was a workaholic, a pillar of strength at the law firm where she'd spent her life. The idea of her, so effortlessly in charge, ever considering quitting... it was a foreign concept, a puzzle he couldn’t immediately solve. He sank down onto an overturned crate, the letter trembling in his hands.