The next one. For this to work, she needed them all. Ella was frozen on the Wildes’ stoop next to Julia. Rhea pointed and shot. A miss. The second was perfect. Straight through Julia’s protective hand, to Ella’s head.
Belly heavy and with a sore back, Gertie ran, placing her body between Julia and Rhea. Rhea charged to intercept her, loping and running on one good leg and one useless one. Panting, like two embattled animals, they deadlocked.
For the first time, Rhea saw Gertie for what she was. She was a woman and a mother and a wife and a mediocre Realtor. She was nervous and damaged and she dressed trashy. She was an ordinary slob, who had never offered salvation. She was a friend. Like the ocean before a tsunami hits, the murk receded and everything became clear.
The Black Hole was just a movie, and a crappy one, at that. Her thesis was slightly above average. Her father had been a drunk, not a saint. The sinkhole in the ground was just a hole. The kind that were happening more and more, all over the country. It was not magic. She was not so special, so extraordinary, as to have birthed it from the weight of her own feelings. Those feelings had not stolen the person she loved most, the only person who had ever seen her and still loved her. The person she’d wanted so much to protect and keep close that she’d crippled her: Shelly Schroeder.
She’d made mistakes and then repeated those mistakes. She’d carried them, imagining that they accrued, an infinitely dense stain on her person. But there was no murk. There was no monster. There was only Rhea Schroeder. The woman who’d murdered almost her entire family.
She’d seen patterns where they didn’t exist and forced their reiteration. Jessica. Shelly. FJ. Ella. Fritz. Arlo. Gertie. Larry. Maple Street. Any one of her actions against these people was unforgivable, and she’d committed all of them.
“Please,” Gertie begged, a sentry in front of her own front stoop.
“Help!” Rhea cried. But there was no changing course now. No possibility for redemption. She’d transgressed a very real event horizon. It engulfed her then. Thick and impossibly heavy, the unbearable wave of murk. It dragged her down and she gave up struggling.
She cocked the trigger. Gertie gasped, her hands protecting her belly while Julia cringed behind her.
Those watching would think that this decision was rooted in mercy, or because she only had one bullet left. She did it because she’d finally figured out how to go back in time and right all the wrongs. How to come out the other side, clean and new and as the loved, and adored, and perfectly special person she’d always wanted to be.
In her mind, Rhea Schroeder was about to enter one of those perfect family photos people send out on Christmas. There was Gretchen, tall and bright. A laser of ambition. There was FJ, cheerful and sweet and searching so hard for some girl to raise on a pedestal and treat like gold. There was Shelly, a smart, pretty pistol who kept them on their toes. There was Ella, Rhea’s Mini-Me; serious and snappy and a little bit mean. There was goofy, successful Fritz, so grateful for this life she’d given him. There was a ghost girl from the Hungarian Pastry Shop, small and innocent, caught half in the picture, moving on with her life. There was her father, white-haired and jolly as Santa, always free to babysit. And in the center was Professor Rhea, devoted to all of them, the loves of her life. These were the Schroeders.
Rhea put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
From Obituaries, The Garden City News, August 3
Maple Street will host a memorial service tomorrow for the Schroeder family at the Dunn and Nally Funeral Home from 9–noon. Those who’d like to send flowers are asked to donate instead to the Maple Street Recovery Fund.
Fritz Henrich Schroeder (62) died yesterday from a gunshot wound outside his home in Garden City. A pillar of the community and longtime resident, he was the vice president of development at BeachCo Laboratories. He was known throughout the neighborhood as a committed father and husband who doted on his children and took them to visit his family in Germany every year. He was also a eucharistic minister at Saint Anne’s Church.
Fritz Henrich Schroeder Jr., “FJ,” (19) also died from a gunshot wound. A popular student and “One of the best attackers the Garden City lacrosse team has ever known,” according to Coach Nolan, FJ was scheduled to attend Hofstra University in the fall on an athletic scholarship. The high school has decided to name the annual lacrosse MVP award after him.
Ella Elizabeth Schroeder (9) also died from a gunshot wound. Ella attended Stewart School, where she excelled at reading and mathematics.
Shelly Wyatt Schroeder (13) was discovered dead at the bottom of the Maple Street sinkhole. Authorities had been searching for her for weeks.
Rhea Munsen Schroeder (53) died yesterday by suicide after shooting her husband, daughter, and son.
They are survived by Gretchen Schroeder (20).
Coverage of the Maple Street tragedy can be found on pages 1–5, 7, 11, 14, 16.