Gemotions

He ran a hand over his tired face, the image of his father’s open casket still vivid in his mind. The house felt empty, too quiet. The funeral felt like the end, the final nail in the coffin of their connection. Sorting through the contents of his childhood home was a slow, painful process. In a shoe box filled with old baseball cards, he found a packet of photographs.

The first showed his father, a grinning, skinny teenager, holding a cigarette. The stories had always been about his father's dedication to sports, how he never even touched the stuff. He flipped through the rest of the photos, each one a slap in the face. His father, in a leather jacket, with a woman who wasn't his mother. The man he thought he knew crumbled with each picture revealed. He sank onto the floor, the world suddenly tilted on a precarious angle.