Liars and Fools Read Online Free

selling her. I stood, staring at the sign for a long moment, barely able to breathe. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t sell Eliza J .
    â€œYou okay, kid?” a man’s voice asked.
    I spun around. It was the old guy who owned the blue-hulled powerboat in the next slip. “Fine,” I said. My voice didn’t come out right; it sounded tinny and hollow, like it was echoing inside my skull.
    He nodded. “Beautiful boat.”
    â€œYes. She is.” My eyes were suddenly stinging, and everything blurred. I turned and walked away, opening my eyes wide. If I blinked, the tears would spill out, and I was scared they might never stop.
    Before Mom died, I hardly ever cried. Once when I was tying up Eliza J , a gust had pushed the boat away from the dock and the rope had torn a layer of skin from my palms. Some of our boat neighbors— including the old guy who had just spoken to me, as well as all the others who now nod to me and look away—made a huge fuss. Mom squeezed my shoulder. Fiona never cries, she said. She grinned at me. Next time, let go of the rope.
    I sat on the couch, half-watching TV while I waited for Dad to get home. With every minute that passed, my anger got hotter and harder and more solid inside me. I knew Mom wasn’t coming back, but that didn’t give Dad the right to get rid of the things that were most precious to her. All the things I wanted to say to him were rushing through my head, all the angry words crammed together in broken sentences and unfinished thoughts. He was going to be upset that I’d gone to the marina, but too bad. I couldn’t believe he’d put Mom’s boat up for sale without even telling me. What if I’d gone down there one day and the boat was gone? My stomach was starting to hurt like it did right after Mom disappeared.
    Finally I heard Dad’s key in the lock. The front door opened and closed. I could hear him taking off his shoes and hanging up his coat.
    â€œHi there, Fiona. How was your day?” Dad walked through the living room and right past me without looking up. He started sifting through a pile of mail that the cleaner had left stacked on the kitchen counter.
    I wanted to hit him or throw something across the room. “Not so good,” I said.
    â€œUh-huh.” He ripped open one envelope. “Bills, bills…”
    He wasn’t even pretending to listen. He obviously didn’t care how my day was. “Why bother asking?” I said.
    â€œHuh?” He looked up. “What’s that?”
    â€œNothing.” I turned off the TV , stood up and headed upstairs. I don’t think Dad even noticed.
    I was probably the only kid in my school who had no phone and no computer in her room. Mom had always said technology was bad for relationships. Personally, I couldn’t see how making communication more difficult was supposed to help my friendships. Anyway, Dad had both a computer and a phone in his own room now. It made enforcing Mom’s rule with me seem a bit hypocritical.
    Mom had been opposed to technology on boats too. She was a purist, she’d said. She’d believed in doing things the traditional way—roller-furling systems were for fat and lazy weekend sailors who couldn’t be bothered to leave the comfort of their cockpits to adjust the sails; radar was just one more thing to break down; GPS navigation systems and other high-tech gadgets were bad, bad, bad. In her words, these things were destroying the closeness of the relationship between sailor and sea.
    It was one of the things she and Dad used to fight about. Bad enough that you take off to the South Pacific or the Caribbean for weeks at a time, Dad had complained. I’d been sitting at the top of the stairs, crouched on the landing and straining to hear every word. The least you can do is take along the technology to communicate. A satellite phone, maybe. Tell me, how would a satellite phone interfere