LEWISTON — Kristy Strout and Julie Barnard walked out the front doors of what was once Schemengees Bar & Grille. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun cut through the crisp air to warm the pavement. Kristy’s eyes were rimmed red. Julie looked somber. As they stepped into the sunlight, Kristy began to sob.

“I shouldn’t –” she said as she tried to catch her breath. “I shouldn’t have gone in there.”

Oct. 25, 2023, was the same kind of beautiful fall day, all crimson leaves and pockets of sunshine. The bar was still open then, filled with pool tables. Kristy’s hair was blonde. Her youngest daughter hadn’t yet started high school. Her husband, Arthur “Artie” Strout, was still alive.

That night, 18 people were killed in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting – eight at Just-in-Time Recreation, 10 at Schemengees, including Artie.

Kristy and Julie – Artie’s stepmother – were just two of the many mourners who stopped by the bar last on Oct. 25 to mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting. Brenda Hathaway, whose husband, Maxx, was killed, sat nearby with her two young daughters having a picnic. Leroy Walker, who lost his son Joey, meandered through the parking lot by himself. Besides the weather, nothing was as it had been a year earlier.

Inside, the pool tables were gone, the walls were empty, the carpet had been pulled up. The place is being converted into a warming shelter for homeless people. Kristy hadn’t been inside since before the shooting.

“I started to remember where the pool tables were and like where he was when everything happened,” she said. “And just like, thinking about him lying on that floor.” She began to cry again.

Julie nodded.

“You just picture everybody on the floor,” she said. “And you think about the fear. I mean, God, the fear.”

In the parking lot, 18 sleeping bags and cots were laid out in rows, each with a handmade quilt draped on top. Initials were scrawled in white chalk above the mats: M.H., S.V., A.S. Someone had placed tiny white daisies on each one.

Tyler Barnard, Artie’s brother, brought white roses. He laid one on each mat.

One of Artie’s teenaged nephews, Jacob, stood looking at his uncle’s cot with his grandfather. The quilt was interspersed with rows of colorful stripes, like the rungs of a ladder.

As they walked away, Jacob began hyperventilating. He was hiccuping and crying and his grandfather turned and held him. He walked in a circle, picked up his baby brother, and inhaled deeply. He kept crying.

FAMILY TRADITIONS

The family started the day by setting up a Christmas tree in Artie’s honor. He loved Christmas and was famous for decorating early, usually right around Halloween.

Artie’s father, Arthur Barnard, worked on the tree with singular focus. Usually happy to chat, he said few words that morning that didn’t have to do with the tree.

“I think that’s too many lights, buddy,” he called out to one of his grandkids.

Three of Artie’s siblings, dozens of his nieces and nephews, his kids and wife had crowded into Arthur’s front yard in Topsham.

“We have to start at the top,” Arthur said as he stretched a shimmery strand of tinsel across the tree.

“Let’s make sure these are evenly spaced out,” he instructed. He was handing out ornaments he had made specially made, each in the shape of a ribbon with the name of one of the 18 victims emblazoned across it.

Kristy and her kids jumped in to help sometimes, but mostly stood back. Brianna, 14, wore a tiered baby pink dress. Kristy said Brianna had been dressing up all week.

Logan, 18, stood beside Kristy watching the tree go up. He pulled up a picture on his phone of his dad and showed it to Kristy. In the photo, Artie is smiling from behind a scruffy beard, laugh lines bloom from the corners of his eyes. Logan took the photo about a week before his dad died.

“His face was kind of bushy and still like that at the end,” said Kristy. She paused for a second. “Or did he cut it? Or was it like that?”

“It was like that,” Logan said.

“It’s hard to remember if he had cut his beard or if his beard was still real long. I hated it that long. I like him cut and cleaned,” said Kristy. She talks about her husband in the present tense. “Because when I kiss him I don’t want to kiss his hair, I want to kiss his lips.”

Brianna wandered over while the rest of the extended family hung ornaments.

“Can I go to the car?” Brianna asked.

“Already?” said Kristy.

“It’s comfy in there,” said Brianna, halfway to the parked black SUV.

Kristy shrugged. She had resolved to be gentle with the kids that day.

On the drive over from Auburn, she’d had the radio on. An announcer read the names of all of the victims from the shooting. The car fell silent.

They’d heard that list countless times. Artie’s name bookended by the names of once strangers. Still strangers, technically. Kristy and her kids would never meet them.

The family hadn’t been sleeping well. Kristy’s anxiety has been getting worse. She’s been smoking more than usual and at the beginning of the week she’d started to have panic attacks. They worsened until finally, the night before the anniversary, she slept for a few hours.

“Just out of pure exhaustion,” she told Tyler.

“I woke up probably two or three times last night, too,” said Tyler. “I kept hearing this voice, saying like, ‘Tyler, Tyler.’ It was so creepy. I thought my wife was talking to me.”

“It was probably Artie haunting you,” said Kristy. They laughed.

‘WE DON’T FEEL SO STRONG’

That afternoon, the whole family boarded a bus at the Lewiston Resiliency Center that would take them to the Colisée for the commemoration event. Brianna still wore her pink dress. Kristy carried a blanket for her daughter in case she got cold.

They arrived about an hour and a half before the event began. They took their seats early, golden light filtered into the arena as more buses with more families arrived and the stadium filled. Brianna pulled her blanket over her head.

One speaker after another took to the stage. Elizabeth Seal, whose husband was also killed at Schemengees, spoke about the connections between the victims’ families. A slideshow played with photos of events from the past year. Leaders from the resiliency center talked about how strong the community was, how much good had happened, even in a terrible year. They said they were Lewiston Strong.

Kristy has mixed feelings about that phrase.

Everything is different for her family. They used to have game nights and family dinners. Now, that’s often more than Kristy can manage. She and the kids end up in their own rooms with the doors closed. She’s spent months isolating herself from family and friends. She said her social anxiety is so bad that even having her mom over for a meal can trigger a panic attack.

She has nightmares, she hasn’t gone back to work and she can’t quit smoking. She’s disappointed in herself that she isn’t doing better.

“We’ve gotten through it,” she said. “But to the ones that had to really deal with the pain and trauma of it, it’s still hard for us. We don’t feel so strong.”

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