Some doors close because the people on the other side locked them and called it a formality.
If you made it this far, thank you for being here. Thank you for staying with Karma Unfolded.
Some stories end with someone in handcuffs.
This one ends on a balcony with two plastic chairs and a dinosaur on the railing.
Two months after the party, on a Thursday evening in August, I sat on the balcony of our apartment with Arlo.
The balcony was four feet wide and six feet long. It held two plastic chairs that I bought at a hardware-store clearance sale and a small table made from a milk crate with a board on top.
Arlo had hot chocolate even though it was summer because he liked it, and I had stopped telling him things had to match the season.
Rex was on the railing facing outward, the green plastic catching the last of the evening light.
The superglued tail was still holding.
The apartment was small. The balcony was smaller.
The view was a parking lot and the backside of a laundromat.
Through the laundromat window, I could see someone folding towels under fluorescent light.
Below us, a woman was loading groceries into a hatchback while her daughter carried a gallon of milk with both hands.
Ordinary things. Real things.
The kind of things that happen in a life that nobody steals from because there is nothing to steal except the time, the presents, and the quarter dinosaurs.
Arlo was sitting in his chair with his legs tucked under him and his mug held with both hands.
He was telling me about a book his teacher had recommended, something about a boy who builds a raft, and his voice had that warm, loose quality it gets when he is happy and does not know it.
“Mom,” he said without looking up from his hot chocolate. “Do you think Rex could ride a raft?”
“Rex weighs less than a quarter,” I said. “He could ride a leaf.”
Arlo smiled.
He picked Rex up off the railing and held him over the edge of the milk-crate table like Rex was surveying the parking lot from a cliff.
“Captain Rex,” he said.
Then he put him back on the railing and went back to his hot chocolate.
I did not check my phone.
I did not think about Harper or Donna or the three credit cards or the officers in the driveway or the detective who called my evidence folder the cleanest he had ever seen.
I thought about a yard sale on Maple Street five years ago and a boy who picked up a quarter dinosaur and said, “Mom, this one.”
Nell’s light was on two doors down. I could see the yellow glow through her kitchen window.
She was probably reading. She was probably fine.
She would check on us tomorrow the way she always checked, without being asked and without needing thanks.
The balcony was small.
The evening was warm.
Rex was on the railing.
Arlo was in his chair.
Somewhere across town, Harper was sitting in a house that was emptying itself one person at a time.
Somewhere on Birwood Lane, Donna was looking at a co-signer notice she could not explain away.
But here, on four feet of concrete with two plastic chairs and a milk-crate table, a boy was holding hot chocolate and imagining a dinosaur on a raft.
He did not need a console.
He did not need silver wrapping paper.
He did not need a four-bedroom house, a yard, or a pool.
He had Rex.
He had this balcony.
He had me.