Citizen Insane - By Karen Cantwell Page 0,38

about the food mess later. We evidently had a much bigger mess to contend with.

She wiped her hands, dabbed her eyes with some fresh tissues, and sat down on the bed to compose herself.

“I’ll be honest with you, Bunny,” I said, trying to maintain composure. “You’ve been acting . . . a little more than strange lately. Then we saw you arguing with Michelle last night and you did threaten to kill her. But now you’ve brought this gun into my house and I’m REALLY not happy about that. I have my daughters to think about. So I’m giving you two minutes to explain yourself, and then we need to figure out how to get that gun out of here. Depending what you tell me, I may call the police to do it for me.”

Despite my threat to call the police, Bunny had calmed down considerably. She nodded, then started her story. “I don’t know what got into me after the PTA meeting.” She sniffed and dabbed her eyes some more. “I was mad, but I didn’t think I was that mad. But when I was talking to Michelle, my whole head felt like it exploded and I had this powerful urge to just scream at her. I even wanted to punch her. I don’t know where it came from. I’ve never been a violent person ever. You know me. I’m a nice person.”

I nodded, but I don’t know why. I didn’t know her well enough to agree or disagree.

“And those awful things just spilled out. So when I got home later, I felt just terrible. Then Michelle called me and said she really needed to talk and was I still mad? I apologized and told her no I wasn’t still mad, and yes, let’s talk. She told me to meet her at Cappuccino Corner. I was almost there when she called me on my cell and said ‘they’ were following her, she was sure of it. She had gone back home and snuck out the back door headed to the little playground in the woods. Did I have a flashlight and could I meet her there?”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know! I had no idea what she was talking about. I was really confused, but she sounded terrified, so I just said I’d come.”

Moms knew about the little playground in the woods. Many of the paths in Rustic Woods led to the delightful park that sat nestled among the trees. It sat next to a stream so kids could swing or slide or look for tadpoles in the water. But it was so deep in the woods that it would be impossible to find at night without illumination.

“Did you have a flashlight?” I asked.

She nodded. “A tiny one I keep on my purse so I can find my keys in the dark. It didn’t help much, but I was able to make my way to the playground.” Her face scrunched all up and she started crying again. “But not in time.” She wept for a good minute before she was calm enough to continue. I was getting worried that the girls would hear her and come to see what was wrong.

“The first shot made me scream. It was just so loud. I’ve never heard anything like it, and then the other two came right after.” She shuddered.

I handed over more tissues. “How far away were you?”

“Not far. I ran about, I don’t know, one hundred feet? Two hundred?” She shook her head. “I’m not good with distances. And there she was on the ground by the slide. She wasn’t making any noise and I was sure she was dead, but I got on the ground and shook her just to see. That’s when she started moaning. I was so relieved. But it didn’t last long. I thought she was dead. I’d run out of my house so fast that I forgot my cell phone, so I got up to run and find a house to tell someone to call 911. That’s when I tripped on something. And I picked it up.” She shook her head.

“The gun?” I asked.

She nodded. “I dropped it, but then realized it had my prints on it, so I picked it up again. I ran with it to my car, terrified that someone would see me with it and think I had killed her. So I drove home and that’s when I called you.”

I was stupefied. If Bunny was telling the truth, Michelle was a living miracle.