Bliss lifted the apple and held it above the pot, letting the extra caramel drizzle off in thick ribbons back into the pan. “I know,” she said. “But I’ve been making Halloween treats for twenty years, and I’m not going to stop because some people are paranoid,” she said. She set the apple down on the wax paper with the others, and stabbed another Fuji with a Popsicle stick. “That’s when the police state wins,” she added.

Pearl had only lived with them a few days. She was a seventeen-year-old runaway who had once Tasered Archie to the point of unconsciousness, but Bliss had always had a soft spot for anyone with an anti-authority streak. It had been more than two months since Pearl had been dragged from their house and murdered. Bliss still wouldn’t talk about it.

Still, you’d have thought with all they had been through that her mother would be a little more concerned about Susan’s welfare. Gretchen Lowell was on the loose. A psycho had snuck in their back door with a machete last summer. Pearl had been murdered.

“I’m going to lay down,” Susan announced huffily.

“Lie down.”

“Whatever.”

“Susan?” her mother said.

Bliss was standing over the caramel pot, an apple in her hand. The Jefferson Starship album hit a scratch and skipped. For the first time, Susan noticed how pale her mother was, the circles under her eyes. She hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since Pearl had died. Bliss looked down and jammed another Popsicle stick into an apple. “What are you doing, sweetie?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” Susan said.

Bliss wiped her hands on a dishrag, came around the counter, put her palms on Susan’s cheeks, and stared deep into her eyes. Her hands smelled like marijuana and caramel and coconut-scented lotion. Susan didn’t like where this was going. “You have all these story ideas,” Bliss said gently. “These book concepts. You can live here, rent-free. But you have to do something.”

A thread of panic pulled tight in Susan’s stomach. “I freelance,” she protested.

Bliss smoothed Susan’s hair. “You haven’t written anything in two months,” she pointed out.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Susan said, voice rising. “Did I mention that I was kidnapped?”

“You can’t wait for life to fall into place, sweetie,” Bliss said, squeezing Susan’s head between her hands. “Don’t worry about the direction. Just move.”

Susan stammered, not knowing how to respond. This was all she needed, new age wisdom from her mother. This was a woman whose pubic hair was currently waxed in the shape of a pot leaf and who had once woken up to find a tattoo of Salvador Dalí’s mustache on her hip with no memory of how it had gotten there. “Just move? Did you see that on a bumper sticker?” Susan asked.