Gemotions

The old house felt colder than usual. Sarah shivered, despite the fire crackling in the hearth. She was looking at the box her mother had left behind; photographs mostly. She'd always understood her mother to be reserved, even distant. Her own childhood, she now realised, was filled with a sense of lacking, a void she could never quite put her finger on.

One particular photograph caught her eye: her mother, young and radiant, dancing in a crowded ballroom. Beside her, a man; his expression was pure devotion. She never spoke of any such people, she had always seemed to live alone.

Sarah felt a stab of something she couldn't name: betrayal, maybe? Or was it sadness? The woman in the picture looked so happy, so free. She looked nothing like the mother she'd known. The secret that had been kept from her.