Gemotions

"I…I don't understand," Mark stammered, his voice thick with unfamiliar emotion. He looked across the sterile, brightly lit waiting room at his mother, who sat across from him. Her face was creased with worry, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture jerky and unfamiliar. The doctor had delivered the news gently, but the impact had been a brutal blow. A brother. A *brother* he’d never known. A shadow of a life he never knew he could have.

He excused himself and fled into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face, trying to clear his head. He looked in the mirror, searching for something, anything, of his father in his own face that was now, suddenly, a map of a deception.