118 The Schroeders—Fritz （62）， Rhea （53）， FJ （19）， Ella （9）
120 VACANT
122 VACANT
124 The Harrisons—Timothy （46）， Jane （45）， Adam （16）， Dave （14）
126 The Pontis—Steven （52）， Jill （48）， Marco （20）， Richard （16）
128 The Ottomanellis—Dominick （44）， Linda （44）， Mark （12）， Michael （12）
130 VACANT
132 VACANT
134 VACANT
TOTAL: 34 PEOPLE
From Interviews from the Edge: A Maple Street Story,by Maggie Fitzsimmons, Soma Institute Press, ? 2036
“Charlie was never the same. None of those kids was ever the same. They stopped trusting us. They stopped being kids. Margie and I got divorced. I was mad at her for making the whole Arlo thing about her own childhood. I felt too bad to challenge her so I went along even though I knew it was wrong.
“It was awful, the way they beat him senseless in the middle of the street. I’ve heard them all say in the years since that he had it coming. He didn’t. Everything he said about us was right. It haunts me. Sometimes I feel like that’s what being an adult is all about. Being haunted.” —Sally Walsh, former resident of Maple Street
From “The Lost Children of Maple Street,” by Mark Realmuto, The New Yorker, October 19, 2037
Discovered among Ms. Schroeder’s belongings was a scrapbook she’d apparently kept on Jessica Sherman, the thirteen-year-old girl she’d knocked unconscious at a café in Seattle. Little Jessica woke from the incident within minutes, but family members later connected that kick to the brain aneurysm from which she suffered six months later.
According to her family, Jessica’s aneurysm rendered her permanently disabled. In Facebook posts, her mother, Skylar, announced that she would be the family’s forever child, needing extra care and staying close to home. She was both a blessing and a cross to bear. Her mother reported that while she’d formerly been a calm child, she now suffered wild mood swings and rages.
Rhea Schroeder’s scrapbook ended after two years, when Jessica turned fifteen years old. There’s no evidence that she continued to monitor the child’s progress. Jessica, now forty years old, lives in a group home in Seattle.
The Sherman family sued the University of Washington, Rhea, and the Hungarian Pastry Shop, but because Jessica never went to a doctor after her initial injury, experts couldn’t prove a causal link between the violent incident in the café and her subsequent disability.
As seen in these photos, the likeness between Jessica and Shelly Schroeder is uncanny. They could have been twins. It’s hard not to wonder if Rhea was thinking of little Jessica…
116 Maple Street
Sunday, August 1
“It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you take the train. How are you?” the guy at 7-Eleven asked. His name tag read OSCAR.
“It’s a steaming garbage kind of day,” Arlo answered.
Oscar took an especially long time to make change, counting and recounting the dollars and then the cents, and Arlo understood that he had seen the news. Knew about the accusation. “Happens.”
The ride service that had picked him up from CPS hadn’t been able to stop right on the crescent. The road was still closed. So he’d had it drop him here, where he’d picked up a six-pack of ginger ale for Gertie, an avocado for Larry, a fresh pack of Parliaments for himself, and more milk and cereal—Frosted Flakes—for Julia.
“Huh?” Arlo asked.
“Sometimes you have bad days.”
“Yeah. You have a good one for both of us.”
“I can try.”
Carrying his bag, he walked across the park. It was afternoon on a Sunday. The park was empty. No crickets or cicadas. No chirping birds. Just orange cones, a slab covering the hole, and a lot of bitumen. It mucked his shoes and he walked fast, never pressing down too hard, to keep the suction from stealing them.
The accusations at CPS hadn’t made sense. Three out of the four kids wouldn’t talk to the cops; only their parents had done that. The one who would go on record claimed only that Arlo had repeatedly put his hand on the kid’s knee, which the CPS people had decided was “grooming.” None of these kids’ names was given to Arlo and there was not enough evidence for an arrest or any kind of action at all.
While stuck there, Arlo had called Fred again at his office—water from a dry well. Fred called back from the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Turned out Bethany’s fancy new immunotherapy cancer drug wasn’t going to work. They were out of options. “What’s the trouble?” Fred had asked.