Gemotions

The attic air hung thick and heavy, dust motes dancing in the single shaft of sunlight slicing through a crack in the boarded-up window. Sarah heaved a sigh, the effort feeling monumental. Her shoulders slumped as she pushed aside a moth-eaten trunk, the wood groaning in protest. She’d promised her grandmother she'd sort through the accumulated clutter, but the task felt utterly impossible.

Inside the trunk, beneath yellowed linens and forgotten trinkets, lay a box of photographs. She pulled it out, her fingers clumsy with fatigue. The first one showed her grandfather, the stoic war veteran, grinning widely, arms slung around two laughing women in flapper dresses. The story always went that he'd been too shy for romance until he met her grandmother.

A headache began to throb behind her eyes. She closed the lid of the trunk, the musty scent of the past swirling around her. It was all a tapestry of half-truths, it seemed.