Gemotions

“This is a mistake,” Maya said to the empty room. She reread the test results, her knuckles white as she gripped the laptop. Her biological parents? People she had never even known? The website said they had been found.

She felt a wave of nausea. She had always imagined her parents to be the people who raised her, the only family she knew. She felt a growing sense of isolation, as if the ground beneath her feet was shifting.

She went to the living room, where her mother’s favorite painting hung, a landscape that always brought her comfort. Today, it seemed foreign. She turned and went to the front door, needing air. She stood outside, staring at the street, a place she thought she knew, but now seemed unfamiliar.