The Office of Historical Corrections

by Danielle Evans

There was always something they wouldn’t tell everybody, and she wanted to be told, which meant she had to look like a real person to them, like a person whose mother deserved to live, like someone who loved somebody.

There had been signs. Rena had been too far away to see them, her parents maybe too close. Connor had threatened her before, but her sister did not say she was afraid of Connor. The whole week of the wedding, her sister said she was afraid of rain.

All of her adult life people have asked Rena why she goes to such dangerous places, and she has always wanted to ask them where the safe place is. The danger is in chemicals and airports and refugee camps and war zones and regions known for sex tourism. The danger also sometimes took their trash out for them. The danger came over for movie night and bought them a popcorn maker for Christmas. The danger hugged her mother and shook her father’s hand.

She distrusts collective anger; Claire’s anger has always been her own.

Claire turns her phone off and shuts her in-box tab and spends the afternoon watching online videos of singing goats.

It seemed characteristic of the present that everyone, even the worst of us, was practicing being famous.