“We have to cover it up,” she said. “Quick, before Horace and Murphy wake up.”

“But this is amazing, Mom,” I said. “I didn’t know you could paint.”

“I can’t paint,” she said. “Not anymore. Now help me.”

We took what was left of the white and covered over everything as best we could.

I told Murphy about it later, and she could hardly believe me.

“That’s insane,” she said. “I’ve never seen her so much as doodle on a napkin before.”

“I know,” I said. “And Murphy, it was good. I mean really good.”

“Why does all this worry me so much?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but it worries me too.”

See, none of this made any sense if you knew our mother.

Mom was a badass, a chain-smoker who had never attended school a day in her life but could fix a flat and clean a gun with equal precision. She was gruff and rude and a total genius. Mom had homeschooled us since we were kids. She taught us basic self-defense as toddlers, and she trained Murphy in Brazilian jiujitsu until Murphy accidentally broke Mom’s arm in the sixth grade while performing a particularly vicious reversal. I have never seen our mother prouder. She even had Murphy sign the cast first in her shaky looping scrawl.

I guess maybe all the weirdness started when Mom married our stepdad, Horace, about a year back. Yeah, that was definitely the first time I started to worry about her.

Because Horace was a hard man. Six-foot-seven, 250 pounds of unsmiling cruelty. I would watch him smoke cigarettes while he did dumbbell lifts in the garage, his mostly bald head shimmering, his one last lock of hair dangling down his forehead in a swoosh. We called it “the unicorn” when he wasn’t around. That was because if we had mocked his desperate hairstyle in front of him, he would have thrown us down the stairs. Not that Horace ever actually laid a hand on us. He never needed to.

For example, one night three months before he married Mom, Murphy stayed out well into the night doing god knows what with god knows who, and she did not return until three A.M., exactly six hours after her curfew.

Did Horace scream at her? No.

Did Horace whip her? No.

Did Horace ground her? No.

Did Horace take Murphy’s 1967 Fender Telecaster and hurl it through her window, shattering glass onto the driveway, the two-story drop snapping the neck of the twelve-hundred-dollar vintage instrument into pieces?

Yes, that’s exactly what Horace did. As our mother watched on, curiously silent.

As if in awe.

So marrying Horace was Mom’s first out-of-character act. We never thought she would get married, never even considered it. At first—for six months or so—she was happier than I’d ever seen her before. I mean, Mom positively giggled walking around arm in arm with the asshole, and that was a welcome sight. I don’t know if you can understand this, but when you’ve seen your mom bounce from guy to guy your whole life, always disappointed, always somehow let down that yet another fellow couldn’t measure up, it’s a real joy to see her with someone she actually likes, someone she seems to respect. And he was good to her—he really was, at first. Things seemed like they were going to be okay. We even sold our janky old bungalow and bought a newer, nicer (but way more boring) two-story borderline McMansion, because that’s what Horace wanted, and we all moved in together. But each day, as Mom became less and less recognizable as the strong, brilliant, estimable single mother who had raised us, Murphy and I became more and more worried. Mom blew us off, saying she wasn’t feeling well and she had a headache and could we please leave her alone. We pleaded our case to Horace, who told us—and I quote—to “mind your own fucking goddamn business.”