Gemotions

He stared at the photograph, his face a mask of disbelief. His mother, the eternally cheerful woman who insisted on positivity, was glowering at the camera, her arm linked with a man he'd never seen before. The expression on her face was something he'd never witnessed before.

He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his chest, as if a physical blow had been delivered. His mother, the one person he thought he could always count on, had been hiding something. Years of carefully constructed lies, of half-truths, seemed to echo in the sudden silence of the room.

He crumpled the photograph in his hand, then immediately regretted it. He threw it on the floor and turned away, trying to escape the overwhelming sense of…wrongness.