The Chicken Sisters(35)

“He seems like a nice guy,” Mae said to her mother as she followed her to a pair of armchairs. The guy she would have wanted for Kenneth, once she had realized, almost before she had been old enough to have the thought, that Kenneth was not for her.

“He is. Good to have Kenneth back in town, too.” Her mother pointed to the chair across from hers, which she took a little stiffly. “Sit. He’ll be a minute. Kenneth’s father has been sick. Alzheimer’s. You know all this?”

Mae shook her head. She didn’t need to pretend with Barbara, who never wondered why other people did things.

“Well, he’s helping his mom, and he sees a lot of his sister and her family, too. Nice.”

Mae’s sense of connection disappeared. She knew where this was going. For so long, her mother had supported her choices, but lately Barbara had begun to ask just how long Mae intended to stay in New York—as though the city were temporary, a brief extension of college. It rankled. “Mom,” she started, and Barbara held up her hand.

“Just stop,” she said. “It wasn’t about you. That’s what he’s doing, is all. You’re here to help with these Food Wars people, and that will be good, because I didn’t even realize when I called how much they would be into every little thing, and it’s hard to keep the kitchen going with them underfoot and asking questions. Nancy’s got Amanda to take care of all that. So you deal with them for me, and I’ll be happy.”

Great. Now Mae, who admittedly wasn’t here wholly out of the goodness of her heart, felt guilty. Trust her mother to put a pin straight into Mae’s weak spot, and get in a shot at Amanda besides. Never mind that there were excellent reasons that neither of Barbara’s daughters were coming around for Sunday dinner every week. She parried. “Where were you last night, then, if it’s hard to keep going with them around? You left Andy kind of underwater. I mean, I did turn up, but I had the kids. I wasn’t much help.”

“So you met Andy,” her mother said. “He’s an excellent cook. I’ve been really happy to have him. Food’s just as good as it always was.”

Mae didn’t say anything to that. The food was just as good as it had always been, the chicken so exactly the same that it had almost made her cry, the fries better. Andy was a good cook. An asshole, but a good cook. That had not been her question. “Right, but where were you?”

Barbara looked up toward the back an instant before Patrick returned, Kenneth trailing behind him. She might have heard them coming, but Mae suspected that her mother, always a private person, was intentionally avoiding what should have been an easy question. There wasn’t time to push her on it, though. Mae braced herself for Kenneth’s approach. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Amanda’s reserved greeting had shaken her, and Barbara wasn’t much better. It wasn’t that she’d expected a parade, exactly. But neither was she quite prepared to be treated as though she’d either never been gone or never been here in the first place. She didn’t know what to expect from Kenneth, but she knew she didn’t deserve much.

But both men were smiling, welcoming. Patrick seemed delighted to be engineering the reunion, and Kenneth, coming up with his arm around his husband’s shoulders, was clearly enjoying the other man’s excitement.

“Mae,” Kenneth said, and reached down and pulled her out of her chair as though no time had passed at all. “Mae-my-Mae, how very, very nice to see you.”

Mae hugged him, too, as hard as she had her mother. This was a Kenneth she had never known, at ease with himself and his surroundings. A Kenneth who, she could see at a glance, could afford to let the years he and Mae had gone without talking be water under the bridge, even though it had been he who had tried, a few times, to reach out and she who had ignored him, unable to allow any piece of Merinac to intrude into her new life.

“You too,” she said, looking into his eyes and meaning it. When Kenneth walked into the room, something inside Mae clicked into place, and standing between him and Barbara, meeting Patrick—she was home, and the only thing missing was Jay, reaching out to shake Kenneth’s and Patrick’s hands, matching Kenneth’s smile.

Kenneth might be enjoying himself, but with the thought of Jay, Mae felt her confidence ebbing away. She let go of Kenneth’s arms, noting his expensively, intentionally crumpled linen green gingham shirt. Eyeing the room, she observed that the Inn had been renovated with no expense spared—and no bank would have bet on this, which meant the money came from somewhere else. Mae had a sudden suspicion that it wouldn’t take more than a single Google search to tell her exactly how Kenneth had spent the last decade and a half, or where his newfound ease and wealth came from. She was ashamed not to have done it already. She should have known about the Inn, about Kenneth, and if she hadn’t been so determined to keep Merinac and everything that came with it in the past that she had swiped away its every possible appearance in her present, she would have.

“We have hours of catching up to do,” said Kenneth, “but I know your mother, and her patience for a trip down memory lane is limited. Plus, you guys have a big day ahead. So let’s just pretend we already know everything and get on with it, shall we?”

“Facebook has ruined reunions,” said Patrick sadly. “I, for one, want to hear both of you tell each other your entire life stories since high school. But”—he glanced at Barbara—“you’re right. Not now. So, what can we do to help make your Food Wars a success, ladies? Besides fuel you with superb coffee, which you will be sure to tell the camera came from the 1908 Standard?”