She stood up straight then and put the barrel of the gun under her own chin.

This, I had never rehearsed this in my mind. This wasn’t something I ever imagined my way into doing. I took a step forward and slugged Jill in the side of the face. She fell to one knee and the gun went off with a crack so loud that I saw lights flip on in several of those distant houses. I felt the thud of the discharge in my side, as if I’d been holding an M-80 under my arm when it went off. I stood back and pulled the whistle out of my pocket and blew the whistle, over and over. More lights went on. Stefan scrambled for the gun, pushing Jill down and kneeling on her so that she couldn’t move. “What do we do?” he said to me. “We can’t tie her up or anything. What do we do?”

“Use her sweater to tie her up. Tie her hands behind her and tie her to the bench.”

I called the police and reported someone threatening people with a gun. It was clear that we would have to be the ones to guard Jill with the gun. I’d never used a gun in my life; I didn’t know if Stefan had. But they had to be pretty self-explanatory. Stefan handed me the gun, while holding on to Jill’s arm, trying to get her sweater over her head and round her wrists. She thrashed and kicked and leaned over to bite his hand. “You nutcase!” he yelled, and pulled both her arms behind her. Jill jerked her head back and hit Stefan in the mouth. “That does it,” he said. He kneed Jill in the back hard enough to knock the breath out of her and jerked her arms up over her head, tying the sweater around her hands. Then he pulled off his own shirt and tied it around her feet.

We saw flashlights approaching and I realized I hadn’t even noticed it was full dark. We could have been lying here, like Esme said, all alone. As three officers arrived, their own guns drawn, I thought of Esme then, saying, You don’t know her like I do... How right she was. And how wrong. How pitiless. She had known everything, all along, far more than I realized.

“Okay, ma’am,” the officer said to me. “Put the gun down. Now. Step away. Slowly.”

I said, “Gladly. It’s not my gun. I mean, I wasn’t the one with the gun, she was, although yes, technically now I have the gun...” I set the gun on the ground.

“Now turn and face the bench.”

“What? Why me?”

Stefan said, “Mom. He’ll figure it out.” The officer spoke into his radio. “Yes, send him up. We’re just getting started here. Can somebody get some lights?”