Gemotions

The attic air hung thick with dust motes dancing in the lone sunbeam. Clara had expected cobwebs, maybe a grumpy mouse. She hadn't expected this. A small, leather-bound album lay open on a rickety table, its pages brittle. She flipped through them, her breath catching in her throat with each photograph. Smiling faces, laughing in poses that didn't match the stern, stoic patriarch she'd known as her grandfather. The man in the pictures wasn’t the same.

He was the hero of her family’s lore, a war veteran, a pillar of the community. In these photos, however, he was younger, carefree, draped in the arm of a woman who wasn't her grandmother. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched the album. She slammed it shut, the sound echoing in the silence. Lies. All lies.