Gemotions

"Is that...?" Chloe trailed off, her voice barely a whisper. She stared at the dog-eared phrasebook on the living room table. It lay open to a section on idioms, the words in a language she hadn’t spoken since she was a child. The language that represented her family, her roots. The language she kept at a distance.

Mark sauntered into the room, beaming. He looked…smug. “Surprise!” he declared, his voice buoyant. He’d clearly been practicing. The words he’d just uttered, in her native tongue, had a forced quality, like he was delivering a line in a play.

She felt a flicker of something close to frustration. He was trying to connect with her heritage, but the way he was doing it felt…wrong. Forced. Inauthentic. She turned away, suddenly consumed by a need for the emptiness of the front porch.