Gemotions

The attic air hung thick and heavy, dust motes dancing in the single shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom. Amelia shuffled through a box overflowing with forgotten relics. Her shoulders slumped, each movement requiring an effort she barely possessed. The past weeks had been relentless, a constant cycle of demands and obligations.

She sank down onto a dusty trunk, the wood groaning beneath her. Curiosity, a rare visitor these days, pricked at her. It was in the bottom, tucked under moth-eaten shawls, that she found them: photographs.

A woman with fiery red hair and a mischievous glint in her eye stared back at her. The woman in the pictures wasn’t her grandmother, the woman who’d always been portrayed as a gentle, quiet soul. This woman, laughing with a group of friends in front of a speakeasy, was a stranger.