Gemotions

The attic air tasted of dust and forgotten things. Clara slammed the trunk shut, the old wood groaning in protest. She’d been hunting for Christmas decorations, but instead, unearthed a box of her mother’s things. A wave of frustrated heat flushed through her as she found the letter, the paper yellowed and brittle. It was addressed to her father, and the handwriting – so familiar, yet so distant – scratched across the page in furious loops. Why hadn’t she ever sent it?

Clara paced the cramped space, the slant of the roof pressing down on her. The words blurred as she scanned the angry accusations, the hurt she had never known. Her father, the picture of placid calm, now looked different in her memory, like a carefully constructed facade. She crumpled the letter, the paper crackling in the silence, her chest tightening with a knot of resentment she hadn’t realized she was holding.