Someone had to find them. How else would they be here, telling their mundane and anguished story?
Clare held the translucent paper in her hands and bits of it flaked off, vegetal fragments, and she thought, Oh, that’s why they call it onionskin. She was their unlikely curator, reluctant beneficiary.
She brought them up close to her face. They smelled earthy and sweet, like dirt. They were something. Holding them like that, she couldn’t know what: a fragile secret, a story. An explanation.
From the blankness of their vanished years and through their powdery teeth, the dead rose up and made themselves heard.
They lodged inside her like an instruction manual, specific and urgent.
What to do in case of emergency: Run fast. Seek safety.
But the directions didn’t reach far enough into the future. What about when safety was found? When years and danger had passed, and a family, though small, was whole? What then?