The Crate in the Parking Lot
“Odie doesn’t want Mom to feel bad.
She’s not stupid, she knows Mom’s not going to have a moment of clarity in a banquet hall.
“She wants a verdict.
She wants somebody with authority to say out loud, in front of people, that a thing happened and it was wrong.
“And there’s nowhere to get one.
There’s no court.
There’s no — Dad, there’s not even a neighbor, because we moved in 2014 and nobody from before knows.
There’s literally no institution anywhere that has ever recorded that this happened to us.