Gemotions

The box containing the DNA testing kit lay discarded in the back of the closet, still unopened. It had been there for months. Clara's friends had all raved about the fun they'd had, tracing their family trees, finding long-lost relatives. Clara had feigned interest, smiled politely, and then buried the evidence under a pile of old sweaters.

She was not interested. She was content. Her life, although perhaps predictable to the outside world, was precisely as she wanted it. She refused to disrupt her settled existence by poking around in the past. To her, the past was firmly in the past.

The feeling of wrongness, the persistent niggling doubt that had always haunted her, could be safely ignored, left in the shadows along with the unopened kit. She would not confront it. She’d rather not know. The dust bunnies in the corners of her apartment seemed less threatening.