“We had a problem on the block and the cops wouldn’t solve it. So we solved our own problem.” —Dominick Ottomanelli
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody cheered.” —Nikita Kaur
Hempstead Motor Inn
Monday, August 2
They didn’t get back to the motel until late. Gertie felt tired inside. In her bones and her blood. She paid for the room but didn’t take the bags from the car. Just walked with Julia to the room and turned all the locks. At times, she cried. She was too tired to try to hide it.
They sat in their beds of the first hotel room Julia had ever stayed in. Gertie noticed that she didn’t touch anything unless she had to. Probably afraid she’d break the mini fridge or the water glasses and they’d have to pay for them.
“He’s alive. That’s what’s important,” Gertie said. “We all are.”
Julia looked straight ahead. They hadn’t brushed their teeth and wouldn’t. They hadn’t changed into pajamas, and wouldn’t do that, either. These were the kinds of things Arlo kept up. The maintenance things.
There’d been more police at the hospital. She’d told them what had happened. The men—the Pontis and Dominick Ottomanelli and Sai Singh—had already been arraigned and released on bail. They’d doubled down on their accusations against Arlo, now more convinced than ever that he’d sexually harmed every child on Maple Street. Child Protective Services would be back. With the hole getting filled in the morning, they’d lose their last chance at clearing his name. Probably, Arlo would go to jail. Just as likely, Gertie would get charged with attacking Larry. Linda Ottomanelli claimed to have been watching through her window. She told the police that she’d seen Gertie strike her own son and then start screaming about it, as if shocked.
Arlo had suffered a broken cheekbone and jaw. It would have to be wired shut. A liquid diet for the next three months. Also, three broken ribs and a punctured lung. But he’d live, and that was something. After seeing him, they’d visited Larry, who was still sedated.
While Gertie’d been at the hospital, Bianchi had gotten a search warrant for both the Schroeder and the Wilde houses. They’d searched everything, but neither the gun nor the lockbox with the phone in it were found. In the morning, she was expected at Bianchi’s office to talk more. He would probably take her side. He was a reasonable person. But that might not be enough.
For now, she sat in the bed, too tired to move. She’d slept in crappy hotels a lot growing up. Had always hated them. The air-conditioning spewed dry air, and the carpet smelled like cats, and the bedcover was coarse. She’d come full circle. All these years she’d spent, trying to break free from her old life, and here she was again, in a hotel room with a twelve-year-old girl. Hardly a penny to her name.
She got up with a grunt. Walked slow. Pulled back Julia’s sheets. “Move over,” she said. Then she spooned Julia, and Julia clutched back, sighing out the deepest of sighs.
* * *
Late night. Julia waited beside her softly snoring mother. The air-conditioning whined its strange sound. She got up ever so slowly.
She sneaked out. There wasn’t anybody to follow. No annoying little brother, asking what she was doing, holding his Robot Boy. Just the dark, and the street outside, where the only passersby were the kinds of people you see in East New York. White-mouthed junkies and streetwalking women.
She wore her good shoes. It was two miles to Maple Street.
* * *
It got quieter once she returned to the residential neighborhood. Cars didn’t screech as much when they turned. There were more trees. She kept walking, and it got even quieter. You couldn’t hear the insect night song, and you didn’t see possums in the streets or raccoons raiding garbage cans. You didn’t hear squirrels and no tree branches shook overhead.
By the time she got to Maple Street, it was nearly dawn. Because of the brownouts, the grudging streetlamps surrounding the park shone soft yellow. It seemed normal until you got to Sterling Park, where light both absorbed into and reflected against the tar sands, making the whole area glow.
No one was out here, even though they’d agreed to meet. But that was fine. Better, even. She preferred to do this on her own.
She passed her empty house. It looked foreign, like it had never belonged to her. She kept walking, averted her eyes. It felt too haunted. And maybe there’d still be her dad’s blood on the driveway out front.
She crossed the pudding stone periphery of the park. At first it was sticky grass, and then it was just oil. The closer she got, the more she felt that something was out there. Not a person. A thing. The listening thing.