Gemotions

The restaurant was too bright, too loud. Eleanor picked at the bread basket, the soft rolls doing nothing to soothe the knot in her stomach. Across the table, her mother chattered about the weather, oblivious to the storm brewing inside her. The discovery was like a sudden, jarring earthquake. Everything she thought she knew about her family was now fractured.

She had agreed to meet her half-sister, Claire, but the anticipation had twisted into something akin to dread. Each time her phone vibrated, she flinched, expecting another message from the newly introduced person. She felt a weight pressing on her chest, a suffocating feeling of incompleteness that she couldn’t shake. She sipped her water slowly, watching the ice melt and distort in the glass.