“Shock,” he said gruffly. “Go on home. She’ll be fine.”
Joni clutched my arm as we walked to the car, her grip uncomfortably tight. Tears were streaking her cheeks, and she kept shaking her head.
“I’m really sorry I scared you,” I said.
“Just get in the car.” Joni opened the passenger door. “And please don’t ever do anything like that again.”
I stuck my hand in the pocket of the oversized sweats and felt the cool metal of Eliza J ’s key. I wasn’t sure why I had kept it, but at the last minute, I hadn’t wanted to leave it behind.
We were halfway to Joni’s house, the heater in her car blasting warm air at my face and feet, when something suddenly struck me. “Joni? The man on the powerboat? You called him Mike.”
“What about him?”
“Is that short for Michael?”
She looked at me oddly. “I imagine so.”
I started to laugh.
“You’re hysterical,” Joni said, shaking her head. “It’s the cold.”
Kathy had seen the name Michael. He could be from your past or future, she’d told me. And now someone called Michael had more or less saved my life. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
twenty-two
Joni’s house was warm and smelled of baking, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Joni loaned me two thick sweaters and made me wear them both, one on top of the other. Tom padded into the kitchen in his housecoat and made us all mugs of hot chocolate. Joni piled cookies onto a plate. When I was snuggled up on the couch with a comforter and the refilled hot-water bottle, she sat down beside me.
“How are you feeling?” she asked. “You’re still shivering.”
I looked at her face, lined with worry and puffy-eyed from crying, and the craziness of what I had done hit me all over again. “Joni? I was sure I could do it. I really was. But I was so cold, and it got so windy.” I hugged myself, trying to stop the shaking. “I was scared. Really scared.”
“You did the right thing, calling for help.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but my chin was trembling, and I felt like I might start to cry again myself. “I thought I might die,” I choked out. “I called Mom, you know? To tell me what to do. To help me.”
“Oh, Fiona.” Joni’s face creased with pain.
“And she didn’t answer.” I sniffed and wiped my eyes on a fold of the comforter.
“No. She couldn’t. She’s gone, Fiona. I wish she wasn’t, but—”
I cut her off. “I met Kathy before. I mean, before she knew who I was. She did a reading for me downtown, in a store. With Abby. And she said…she told me she had this vision about Mom.”
All Joni said was, “Really,” but her eyes hardened, and I could tell she was working hard to hold back her feelings.
“At first I thought she might be for real. I thought maybe I could talk to Mom again.” A tear escaped and traced a warm line down to my upper lip. I brushed it off and tasted salt.
Joni leaned toward me. “Does your father know about this?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell him. But it doesn’t matter, because now I know for sure she’s a liar. If Mom could really communicate with anyone, she would have helped me out there today. There was no way she’d talk to Kathy but ignore me shouting for help.”
“I don’t know what to say, Fiona. I don’t believe in any of this psychic stuff, you know that.”
“It’s confusing.” I twisted a fold of comforter between my fingers. “I mean, I know she’s lying, but then she’ll get something right. Like she said someone called Michael might be important. And that guy who came and got me on his boat was called Mike.”
Joni shrugged. “It’s a very common name. I guess if someone makes enough predictions, sooner or later some of them will come true.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Something else occurred to me. “And besides, Kathy couldn’t find me, could she? Her psychic powers couldn’t tell you where I was.”
Joni shook her head. “She was certain you were at Abby’s, actually, so I drove over there. They were just getting back from church. Abby was the one who guessed you’d be at the marina.”
Ha. “That should prove it to Dad, then,” I said. “That should convince him Kathy’s a fake.”
Joni looked horrified. “Fiona! Please tell me that isn’t why you did this.”
“No, I never even thought of it. But it’d be worth freezing solid if it meant Dad would forget about Kathy.”
“Oh, Fiona. Do you really hate her so much?”
I squirmed. “I thought you were on my side.”
“There are no sides here, honey.” Joni took a careful sip from her mug. “I love you, that’s all. And your dad loves you. We all want you to be happy.”
Across the room, Tom sat down in his old rocking chair. “Of course we do,” he said.
“How am I supposed to be happy about Dad dating a professional liar?” I asked.
Joni gave a helpless shrug and looked at Tom.
“Are you warming up?” he asked.
“My hands are tingling.” I held them out to show him how red they were.
Tom winced. “Can’t believe you went out there without decent clothes. Still shivering?”
“Not so much.” I still couldn’t imagine ever being warm again, but the shivers that had been shaking my whole body seemed to have subsided at last.
“Hungry?”
I realized I was. “Starving.”
He grinned at me and got to his feet. “Scrambled eggs special deluxe, made by your talented and terribly handsome personal chef?”
I looked at Tom standing there in his ratty housecoat, with his round belly and his hair sticking up in all directions, and I had to laugh. “Yes, please,” I said. Dragging the comforter along with me, I followed him into the kitchen.
twenty-three
Tom cracked two eggs into a silver bowl and whisked them with a fork: clickety-clickety-click. He cleared his throat. “Listen, chickie. This business about you hating Kathy. You know what happened, right? To her older daughter and her husband?”
I narrowed my eyes, hoping he wasn’t going to try to make me feel sorry for her. “She told me. But that doesn’t make it okay for her to lie.”
Tom rinsed a mushroom under the tap, put it on a wooden chopping board and started slicing it. “I just wondered if it might make a difference if you could see her as someone who has found a way of coping with a terrible loss.” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Someone who needed to believe something a little unusual to make her reality more bearable.”
Joni sat down on the stool beside mine. “I think Tom’s right, Fiona. Your dad told me that Kathy is absolutely convinced that she can communicate with people who’ve died.”
“Poor Caitlin,” Tom said.
I’d expected him to say poor Kathy. “Losing her dad and her sister, you mean?”
“Well, that must have been an awful thing to go through, of course. Unimaginably awful.” Tom opened the fridge door and stuck his head halfway inside, still talking. “But on top of that, now she has to grow up in the shadow of a perfect older sister. A ghost sister that her mom talks to all the time.” He pulled his head out and made a face. “You’ve got to wonder what that’s like.”
I hadn’t thought much about any of this from Caitlin’s point of view. Dad had tried to point out that Caitlin had her own grief to deal with, but I hadn’t wanted to hear it. “I haven’t been very nice to Caitlin,” I confessed.
“Not too late to start.” Tom plonked a block of cheddar on the counter and sliced off a few thin ribbons of cheese. “You can’t go too far wrong by being kind.”
I wondered how I’d cope if Dad pretended that he could still talk with Mom. It seemed to me that Caitlin was one more reason Kathy shouldn’t make up things that weren’t true. How was she supposed to deal with losing her dad and sister if her own mother pretended they weren’t really gone?
“Even if
Kathy does believe it all, she’s still a liar,” I said. “She’s lying to herself.”
“Oh, we all lie to ourselves.” Joni put her mug down and leaned closer to me. “I think you might be lying to yourself a little bit if you think your anger is just about Kathy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look how angry your dad was today. Do you think that was all about what you did?”
Her words didn’t make sense to me. I felt like my brain was full of fog. “What else would it be about?”
Joni’s voice was slow, patient. “Well, he seemed pretty angry with your mom too. Don’t you think? People often feel angry when someone dies. Angry that the person isn’t around anymore. Angry that they have to keep going without them.”
I nodded, but the fog inside my brain felt thicker than ever. So thick, I could barely hear what she was saying, let alone make sense of it.
“Maybe you’re a bit angry about that too,” Joni said.
“It isn’t fair for us to be mad at Mom. She didn’t mean to die!” But in the back of my mind, all the things I’d been trying not to think were getting louder and more insistent. Dad yelling at her: The least you can do is take along the technology to communicate. A satellite phone, maybe. And the conversation I overheard at the marina. That self-righteous woman shaking her head, saying, Jennifer wrote her own ticket.
“No. But we aren’t always rational in how we feel.”
I watched Tom pour the eggs into the hot pan. My eyes started to prickle, and I pulled the comforter more tightly around my shoulders. “Dad wanted her to take more precautions,” I whispered. “Safety equipment, stuff like that. So that rescue boats could find her if there was a problem. And I took her side. I said he didn’t know anything about sailing.”
“Well, he doesn’t.” Joni studied my face. “Honey, you aren’t blaming yourself, are you?”
I blinked back tears. “I don’t know. Sort of.”
“Well, don’t. Your mother was an adult and an experienced sailor. She made her own decisions.” Joni shook her head. “Besides, she had flares and a life raft. It wasn’t that rescuers couldn’t find her. People reported the location of the flares. It was just that it was so rough, and they were so far from anywhere. By the time people could respond, it was too late.”
I nodded. “If I’d asked her not to go…”
“You really think she’d have listened?” Joni raised her eyebrows.
“Your father asked her not to go plenty of times,” Tom reminded me. He scraped the mess of eggs off the bottom of the pan with a plastic spatula, flipping it over like a pancake. “Jennifer always did what she wanted to do.”
“I know. I just miss her, that’s all.” I felt empty and tired. “And I can’t stand that no one talks about her anymore. Dad doesn’t. Even you don’t, Joni.”
“Oh, honey. I suppose we all worry about you. We don’t want to upset you.” She looked at Tom. “Right?”
He cleared his throat. “Right.”
“I don’t want to forget her,” I whispered.
“You won’t forget her,” Joni said.
I didn’t say anything for a minute. My head was full of words, but I couldn’t speak. Mostly what I was thinking was that she was wrong. When I was on Eliza J, Mom seemed close, but the rest of the time, she didn’t. I was already forgetting stuff. It was getting harder and harder to picture her face, and even though it had only been a year, my memories of her were starting to get that stories-and-snapshots feeling—shrinking, and becoming sort of disconnected and distant. Sometimes I thought it was because I conjured them up too often, playing and replaying scenes in my head. I wondered if a memory could get worn out.
“Voilà,” Tom said, sliding a steaming plate of eggs in front of me. “Scrambled eggs special deluxe.”
I stared down at the eggs for a few seconds and watched them blur.
“Fiona? What are you thinking?” Joni tilted her head, trying to see my face.
“I’m scared I’ll forget.” I looked at Joni through the haze of tears. “Not completely. You know. Just, like, some things.”
She balanced her mug on the giant stack of magazines on the kitchen counter. “I want to show you something. Just a minute, okay?” She left the room, throwing an anxious glance back over her shoulder. “Eat those eggs, okay?”
“Eat up,” Tom agreed. “Come on. Get something warm inside you.”
I took a bite of hot cheesy eggs. And another and another. I was starving. I’d wolfed down the whole plateful by the time Joni came back.
She put a photo album down in front of me on the kitchen counter. “It’s something I’ve been putting together. Just for myself, I guess, though I imagined I’d give it to you someday.”
I stared at the album. Dark blue cover with a cutaway circle in the center and my mom’s face looking out at me. An old photo, one from before I was born, with Mom looking right at the camera, smiling, or maybe even laughing, mouth slightly open, chin lifted and head tilted back in that way she had. I ran my fingers lightly across the dark blue cover.
“You can…” Joni gestured at the book. “If you want to look at it.”
I nodded and opened the cover, expecting to see another picture. Instead, I saw Joni’s big loopy handwriting.
To Jennifer, who will always be my Little Sister.
I remember you coming home from the hospital, so much smaller than I expected. Mom let me choose your middle name: Michelle, after the Beatles’ song. I used to dance around the house with you in my arms, singing it to you. I remember helping you learn to walk: holding your hands around and around the kitchen table, you insisting on more, more, more, and screaming in frustration as your white socks slipped on the linoleum.I was sixteen; you were just past your first birthday, but even as a baby, you were determined to do things your own way.
I swallowed hard. “You wrote that?” I flipped ahead. Pages and pages…
Joni’s face was several shades pinker than usual. “I know it isn’t brilliant writing, but it wasn’t meant for people to read. It’s a memory book.”
“Wow. This is all about Mom?”
“My little sister,” Joni said. “I can’t believe how much I miss her. Every day.” Her eyes were wet, the wrinkles around them shining with tears, but she smiled at me. “I won’t forget her, you know.”
I realized that I hadn’t actually thought that much about what Mom’s death had meant to Joni. She’d always been there for me to lean on, but she must have felt almost as bad as I did. “She was amazing, wasn’t she?” I said.
“The best.”
Tom cleared his throat again. “Look, I’ve been sitting over here telling myself to stay out of this, to mind my own business.”
“Sounds like good advice,” Joni said, her voice suddenly sharp. “Maybe you should take it.”
I looked at him curiously. Tom doesn’t speak seriously all that often, and he hates conflict, but Joni sounded almost angry. She sounded as if she knew what he was going to say before he even said it.
Tom dropped the frying pan into the sink and turned to face us. He pointed at Joni’s memory book. “It’s just…oh, come on, Joni. I know you loved her, but Jennifer drove you crazy when she was alive. You’re saying you don’t want to forget her, but honestly? Sometimes I think you already have.”
I listened, torn between wanting to put my hands over my ears—la la la la I can’t hear you—and wanting him to say more. To talk about Mom and make her feel real again.
Joni stood up. “Tom. Stop it.”
He turned toward me. “I loved your mom. You know that, right?”
I nodded.
“Jennifer was probably the most energetic, fun, passionate person I have ever met. You know how people talk about trying to live in the moment? Well, she did that. Life was one long series of great moments for her.” He shrugged. “And she was also one of the most selfish, stubborn people I’ve known.”
“Tom! How can you say that?” Joni’s face flushed
an angry mottled red, and she glared at him furiously.
He glared right back. “I don’t think you’re doing Fiona any favors by putting Jennifer on a pedestal. You know what she was like.”
There was a long silence. Finally Tom turned away from Joni and looked at me. “I don’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I loved your mom. But you know what? She wasn’t perfect.”
I couldn’t force a single word past the lump in my throat, but I nodded to let him know it was okay. I understood. Maybe I should be angry like Joni was, but it was weird: what I felt was more like relief. We’d been reducing Mom to a cardboard cutout of herself. And Mom was anything but a cardboard cutout. “I know,” I managed at last. “She could be pretty set on getting what she wanted.”
Joni slammed her memory book shut and looked at me like I was the worst kind of traitor. Shaking her head, she stalked out of the room, clutching the book to her chest.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “It’s me she’s mad at, not you. She’ll get over it.”
I watched the empty doorway. I couldn’t remember Joni ever walking out on me before. “I overheard Dad say something one time, before Mom left. He said he’d had enough.” I looked up at Tom. “Do you think that they were going to get divorced?”
Tom shook his head. “People say things when they’re upset.”
“They fought a lot.”
“Like cats and dogs. But they stayed together, didn’t they? Anyway, there’s not much point in speculating. I’d put that thought right out of your head, if you can.”
“Okay.” Obviously Tom couldn’t know for sure, but his words still made me feel better. I wanted to believe that my parents would have worked it out.
“Truth is,” he said, “Jennifer was the baby of the family and spoiled rotten by her parents and by Joni. She was a bit too used to getting her own way. Used to drive Joni crazy sometimes.”
I remembered Mom shouting at my dad: All I’m trying to do is live my life the way I want to. To follow my dreams. I bit my lip. “Tom? Isn’t it a good thing to try to live the way you want? To not let anyone get in the way of your dreams?”
Liars and Fools Page 14