Gemotions

From the kitchen window, Thomas watched the workers on the roof. They moved with a casual confidence he envied. He felt his stomach clench. His own house felt fragile, a shell around the pain he'd been trying to contain.

The news of his layoff had come just a week before the renovations began next door. The house felt too big, the mortgage too heavy. He’d lost his wife only six months before and was now responsible for two young children, and that weight bore down on him.

He was ashamed of the tears that pricked his eyes when he heard his young daughter ask where her mother had gone. Every crash and bang from the construction site amplified the silence in his own home, the echoing emptiness that followed him everywhere.