The Chicken Sisters(100)

“You have to tell me,” she said. She couldn’t do this without knowing what Mae was thinking. Mae smiled triumphantly, but before she could answer, Sabrina came around from the back of the house.

“There you two are,” she said, and she didn’t look pleased. “Nancy keeps telling me you’re going to clear this whole recipe question up, Amanda, and if that’s the case, let’s get it rolling.”

Amanda took a deep breath. Pretend it never happened. Pretend the cameras aren’t there, maybe, forget about everything else. Just focus on the really big piece of this: Mimi never hated Frannie. Frannie never feuded with Mimi. Even with Sabrina standing there impatiently, Amanda took a minute to look from the small shadow of Mimi’s up at the house, thinking about the woman who had built this, who had somehow pulled together what must have been a huge sum to help her sister, who had wanted, above everything else, to make sure that her little sister, too, could take care of herself.

Impulsively, she turned and hugged Mae, hard, and then, ignoring Sabrina and her trailing cameras, walked briskly toward the patio where Nancy had gathered Barbara, Andy, Gus, and Frankie and where Jay sat, too, looking amused by Aida, who had pulled up a chair close to his. Barbara looked tired and a little more blank than usual, and Amanda saw the changes in her that her accustomed eyes had been missing, but there was no time to think about that now. Frankie and Gus each had a can of Coke in their hand and streaks of dirt and dust across their faces.

Amanda held up the letter in one hand, carefully, and waved her other arm, gathering them in.

“Okay, everybody. I have something—an announcement, I guess—just something you have to see. So, you know Andy realized the Mimi’s and Frannie’s chicken was the same when he tasted it at the chef competition. And he and Mae thought I stole the recipe.” She saw Mae lean over and whisper something in her mother’s ear and remembered—Mae hadn’t told Barbara about the recipe, or any of the rest of it. Well, she had started, and the cameras were very much rolling. She would just have to go on, and they’d clear it all up later. “But they were wrong, and it turns out we were all wrong. The chicken is the same because the recipes are the same, and they’ve always been the same, because Mimi gave her recipe to Frannie when Frannie started her own business.”

Barbara stood up abruptly, and Aida moved too, with surprising speed, to her niece’s side. Amanda walked over to her mother, holding the letter so that she could see it too, but there was something she had to say first.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. Her mother might not know that she had told Food Wars about the house yet, but there was still plenty to apologize for. “I didn’t mean it, Mom. Mae— I was mad at Mae. I’m sorry. And now—” She glanced up at her mother’s face and thought she saw an opening there. “Just listen.” Carefully, she showed them all the recipe on the front of the paper and described the way Gus had finally shown Nancy where it was hidden. Then she read from the back, leaving nothing out.

Frannie, I wish you much luck with Frannie’s. I do not think your man will be up to the job but I wish you much luck with him as well. Do not worry about the loan yet and do not tell him. This money and Frannie’s are yours. Like all men he will want to run things but he is easily fooled. I think that it is best I leave you to it for a while, as he and I will not agree.



—Mimi

And then the final line, in that different hand:

Owe Mimi $1,400, October 29, 1889



Barbara reached for the paper, and after a glance at Nancy, Amanda gave it to her. Barbara turned it gently in her hands. “You’re right,” she said simply. “That’s Mimi’s writing. That’s our recipe. Your recipe.”

She looked up at Amanda, then at Nancy, and gave her head a little shake before she went on. “And, I guess, an IOU.”

“Which we’re going to make good,” said Nancy, and Amanda rushed in.

“We have to figure out how, Mom, but we know she died before she could pay it back. Or we think she did. And we know—” Amanda stopped. She didn’t want to say it in front of the cameras, or really at all, but they knew at least some of the Pogociellos would have known, or could have guessed. There was good reason to be angry, but no one left to be angry with, or at least that was what Amanda hoped. She watched as her mother read the note again, and then held it, staring down as though if she looked for long enough, the scrap of paper would offer even more answers. But this one, her mother had to decide for herself. After a long, tense silence, Barbara spoke.

“It wasn’t Frannie,” she pronounced. “That’s what matters. It wasn’t Frannie, and it wasn’t you, either.” She handed the paper to Mae, walked over to Nancy, and stuck out her hand. When Nancy took it, Barbara pulled the other woman into an embrace. Amanda’s eyes met Barbara’s over Nancy’s shoulder, and although no words were exchanged, Amanda felt a lightening of a load she had been carrying for so long that she was barely aware of it anymore.

When her mother and mother-in-law broke apart, they were both laughing, and Amanda nearly clapped. Nancy might not have told them about the loan right away, but Amanda knew she would have, even if Nancy had doubted herself. It was time for her mother to see who Nancy really was and why Amanda loved her—and maybe why there was room for both Barbara and Nancy in Amanda’s life.