Gemotions

The email sat in Eleanor’s inbox, glowing with the starkness of a bad dream. A name she didn’t recognize, a subject line she couldn’t decipher, and a gut punch of an attachment – a DNA test result. She clicked it open, fingers trembling so badly she nearly dropped her phone. The words blurred, but the percentages were agonizingly clear. A half-sibling. Someone she’d never known existed.

She reread the email, her throat tightening. The sender, a woman named Sarah, mentioned their shared father. Her father. The man who’d been dead for five years. Eleanor felt a cold sweat prickle her skin. She fumbled for the phone, intending to call her mother, but the number swam before her eyes.

She slumped onto her couch, the silence of her apartment suddenly oppressive. Each breath felt shallow, as though the air had been sucked from the room. She kept staring at the screen, unable to process the words, the implications, the sudden and complete upheaval of everything she thought she knew.