Liars and Fools (20 page)

“Look.” He sighed. “Can you…could you please stop crying? We have to talk.”

I took a few more shuddering gasps, nodding and trying to stop. “Mom always used cornmeal,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Cornmeal. Under the pizza. To make it slide more easily.” I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and sniffed. “She said it worked like tiny ball bearings.”

“Huh.” Dad shook his head. “How'd you feel about ordering takeout?”

“I don't care.”

“Toast and beans?”

“Fine.” I wasn't hungry. “Dad, I'm sorry you were worried. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“Didn't you?” He looked at me thoughtfully.

“I didn't! Honest. I didn't even think about that part.” I sat down, elbows on the kitchen table, and rested my chin on my folded hands. “I didn't even mean to go. I just went to see
Eliza J
because…just because. But when I saw the Sold sign, I needed to sail her again. One last time.” I wanted him to understand. “I guess I had to say goodbye.”

Dad came and sat down across from me. His eyes were red and puffy, and I wondered if he'd been crying.

I had only seen my father cry twice. The first time was when I was eight and my grandma—his mom— died. He'd cried at her funeral. I remembered looking up at him and seeing his cheeks streaked with tears and feeling like I was standing on an elevator that was going down really fast.

Dad didn't cry when we heard that the boat Mom was crewing on had been found, all broken up on the reef, but when the life raft was discovered floating empty, he'd sat down on my bed. “I don't think we should hold out hope any longer,” he'd said. And then, finally, he'd cried.

Up until that day, during those weeks when Mom was missing, I hadn't been too worried. I'd been sure she would show up sooner or later. It was Dad crying that convinced me that she wouldn't ever be coming home.

“Dad.” I hoped I wasn't going to start crying again. “I am really, really sorry I scared you.”

He shook his head and didn't answer right away. I wondered if he was thinking of Mom.
Safer at sea
in a good boat than out on the highway in a car.
That's what she always said.

“It was a stupid thing to do, Fiona. Dangerous and stupid and unbelievably inconsiderate. You could have fallen overboard, you could have drowned, you… do you even have any idea what you put us all through?” His voice shook slightly.

“I didn't think,” I said. “It just sort of happened.”

“I've been trying all afternoon to figure out what to say to you. To make you understand.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “But honestly, I'm not sure that there is much more to say about it.”

“Are you going to ground me? Or something?”

“Do you think that would be helpful?”

“No. But you said we had to talk, so…” I looked up at him. “What did you want to talk about then?”

“Kathy.” He reached across the table and put his hands over mine. “Kathy and me.”

My heart thudded. “You aren't…she isn't going to move in here? Is she?”

Dad looked startled. “No. We're nowhere near that kind of a decision. I'm not even sure we ever will be.”

“You're not?”

“Honey, it hasn't been that long. We're just getting to know each other.”

I frowned. “So why all the business about me and her needing to get to know each other? Why force Caitlin and me to hang out?”

“Well…” He raked his fingers through his hair. “That was a mistake, perhaps. I wanted you to feel included, I suppose. I didn't want you to think that me seeing someone would mean I wasn't going to be there for you.”

“I didn't
want
to be included. I still don't. Kathy and Caitlin aren't family.”

“No,” Dad agreed. “Not now. Maybe not ever. But who knows what the future holds?”

“Not Kathy,” I said.

“Fiona.” Dad banged a fist on the table. “
This
is what I want to talk about. The constant smart remarks. The rudeness.”

I opened my mouth to object, but he kept talking. “I am quite aware that no one will ever replace your mother. Okay? No one will ever take her place for me either.” He looked down at his hands and touched the gold band he wore on his ring finger. “But life has to go on. I am going to be spending time with Kathy, and I'd like you to treat both of us with respect.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I just…don't get mad again, but doesn't it bother you? The psychic thing? That she believes stuff that isn't…can't…be true?”

He shook his head. “What about you and Abby? You believe different things.”

“Like what?”

“She's a Christian, right? She believes in Jesus and goes to church and all that. And to that Christian camp every summer.”

Abby had gone to summer camp for as long as I'd known her, but all the stories she told me were about which boy she had a crush on, or how late the girls in her cabin stayed up talking, or—most often—what they ate. “I guess. We never talk about that stuff.”

“Well, you and Kathy don't have to discuss her beliefs either.”

It felt different to me, but I couldn't explain why.

Dad answered as if I had spoken aloud. “The only difference is that Kathy's beliefs are more unusual. That's it. The only difference. Spiritualism is a religion, you know. It may not be the most conventional belief system, but it's been around for an awfully long time.”

Maybe he was right. Either way, there wasn't much I could do about it.

“Fiona?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think we have cornmeal? Maybe I should try again.”

My stomach grumbled. Maybe I was hungry after all. “Probably,” I said, pushing my chair back and getting to my feet. “I'll help you look.”

twenty-five

Abby was still angry when I saw her at school on Monday. She gave me a narrow-eyed glare, dropped her backpack in her locker and slammed the door shut. I stood there, waiting.

“What?” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I said quickly. “I am so sorry, Abby.”

She wasn't going to let me off that easily. “About what, exactly?”

“Everything. I've been a jerk.”

“Yeah.” She looked at me. “You have.”

“I'm sorry about what I said at the fair. And that I didn't tell you about Nicole. I know I should have. I mean…I just…”

“Didn't want me feeling bad for Kathy,” Abby said. “I know.”

I shook my head. “Stop reading my mind,” I told her, taken aback but half laughing.

She shrugged. “It was kind of obvious.”

“Only to you,” I said. Someday Abby would be a great psychologist. I didn't doubt it for a second. “Are you still mad?”

She didn't answer right away. I bit my lip anxiously. “Abby, I know I've been awful. I've just felt so rotten inside and it kept sort of oozing out.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” She sighed. “Saturday night, after the psychic fair, I was so mad at you. I was imagining all these things I wanted to say to you, about how self-centered you were being and how I'd had enough of it. But yesterday when we got back from church and Joni was in our driveway freaking out because you were missing…” She shook her head. “Don't do anything like that again, okay? I was really worried.”

“That I'd drown?”

“No, stupid. Well, maybe a bit, but I know you can sail. Mostly I was worried you'd be grounded for life.” She punched my arm lightly. “Then I'd be stuck hanging out with people who aren't you. And that would suck. I mean, total tedium.”

Life at home seemed to settle a little over the next couple of weeks. Nothing dramatic: Kathy still visited, Caitlin still hung around, and Dad and I still argued. It felt a bit better though. It was sort of like the way the waves gradually subside after a storm: you can't see them getting smaller, but after a while you notice that the wind has dropped and the motion has changed and the boat isn't getting tossed around like it was before. You realize you don't feel sick anymore and that you might even be hungry.

I started writing in my memory book. Little things mostly, but dozens of them. Pages and pages. Things Mom said to me, times we spent together. Special things. Ordinary things. Things I wanted to remember. Sometimes writing made me feel sad, but mostly it felt like I finally had somewhere safe to put all those thoughts and memories and feelings, and somehow that helped.

Finally it was the day of the science fair. Dad drove Abby and me to school so we could get our display set up in the gym before our first class.

Abby bounced up and down on her toes. “Our project is
awesome
,” she said. “It looks way better than anyone else's.”

I looked around the room. Dozens of tables were set up in rows, and half of them were covered with displays in various stages of completion. “You're always so competitive,” I said.

“No, I'm not. I just like to have the best one, that's all.” Abby was putting the finishing touch on our project, sprinkling little gold stars on the black cloth that covered our table. She stepped back from it, studying it for a moment before looking up at me, laughing. “Okay, I guess that could be called competitive. But it's not like I don't want other people to do well.”

“Generous of you.” A girl a couple of tables over from us was trying to balance three huge sheets of impossibly flimsy blue cardboard on her table, and I tossed her a roll of duct tape. Our own display was made from three sturdy sheets of plywood: I'd even used Mom's tools to screw proper hinges onto the boards. Abby had covered the bare wood with black paper, and our research was presented in neatly typed sheets and graphs. Across the top of the display, green and purple letters read:
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA :
FACT OR FICTION?

Except for the title, it almost looked like something from the psychic fair.

I shoved my hands in my pocket and touched metal. The key to
Eliza J
's padlock. I wasn't planning on taking off on the boat again, but I kept it with me all the time. Just in case.

Mrs. Moskin came by and asked us a bunch of questions about our research and our experiments. Abby answered most of them better than I did, but I didn't do too badly.

“So one last question. Just out of curiosity, not for marks.” The Mouse looked right at me, her small eyes bright. “I see from reading your conclusion that your research and experiments supported your hypothesis that psychic phenomena do not exist. Was that what you were hoping to find? Or were you hoping to be surprised?”

I had set out to prove Kathy wrong; to show she was a fraud. But more than anything, I'd wanted to believe that I could someday talk to my mom again. “Both,” I said at last. “A little bit of both.”

Mrs. Moskin nodded, and her voice was warm. “Thank you, Fiona. I've always felt rather that way about it myself.” She smiled and walked off.

“Well,” Abby said, “if I was psychic, I'd predict an A in our immediate future.”

“Kathy already predicted that, remember?”

“Ha ha.” Abby grinned at me. “So how are things going with her?”

I made a face. “She's okay, I guess, but I'd still rather she wasn't around.”

“Is she around a lot?”

“Mmm. Yeah. But she and Dad have been doing their own thing more. They're not dragging me and Caitlin into it as much, so that's something.”

“Caitlin is going to have some serious issues. I hope Kathy's putting some money aside for therapy for her. Imagine having a mom who talked to your dead sister all the time.”

Even though I didn't think Kathy's conversations with Nicole were real, there was a part of me that envied her. Sometimes I thought if I could just talk to Mom for five minutes, maybe she could tell me how to cope without her. “Caitlin's not so bad, actually,” I admitted. “We've started talking a bit. She's smarter than she looks.”

Abby gave an exaggerated gasp of shock. “Wait a minute. Did I hear that right? Are you sticking up for Caitlin?”

“Cut it out, Abby. I'm just saying…”

“I know. I'm just giving you a hard time. So does Caitlin believe the same stuff as her mom?”

“I guess so. She sort of has to, doesn't she? For now, anyway.” I looked at Abby. “What about you? Do you believe it?”

Abby shrugged. “At first I was kind of convinced by what Kathy said about Gran, but the more I thought about it, the less convinced I was. So now I don't know. I guess I mostly don't believe it, but I don't completely disbelieve it either. It's like—what did you say Tom and your dad were? Agnostic?”

“Yeah.” That reminded me of something. “Hey, you know what Dad said?”

“What?”

“He said that Kathy being psychic was the same as you being Christian.”

“Um, hardly!” Abby looked startled. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“No, no.” I rushed to explain. “Not that you and Kathy believe the same things. I think his point was more that you and I don't share the same religious views but we get along fine. So in his mind, I should be able to accept Kathy's beliefs and get along with her too.”

She shrugged. “Well, I'm not that religious.”

“But you go to that Christian camp and you go to church every week.”

“Duh. My parents would flip if I didn't. Anyway, camp's fun.” She looked thoughtful. “It's true though. I guess I do believe in God, and you don't.”

“And it doesn't matter.”

“No,” Abby agreed. “It doesn't matter.” She grinned at me. “You're stuck with me, Fiona. Sorry about that.”

I grinned back. “I have to put up with you. You're the best therapist I've ever had.”

“Aren't I the only one?”

“Uh, yeah. That explains it,” I said, and Abby elbowed me in the ribs. Hard.