The Chicken Sisters(50)

Mae nodded. Kenneth had been lucky with his parents. He’d had a hard time in high school, but not at home. Never at home. And his parents had been there for Mae, too, when she’d let them, which hadn’t been often. His mom had let Mae use their washer-dryer as if it was her own, and as if needing to borrow something like that was as normal as asking for a cup of sugar, while Kenneth’s dad used to carry her laundry basket out to her beat-up car. It was hard to imagine his dad not remembering all that, and she could see why he would want to be here, but the whole picture still didn’t add up.

“Right, but you’re not just here for—the time being. For whatever happens. You guys are here here. All in.” She gestured around. “This is not a California design lab. It’s not even a Kansas design lab. It’s a bed-and-breakfast and it’s in Merinac and I don’t get it. It’s not what you worked for, right? Is it what Patrick wanted? Are you going to do something else, later?” She knew, now, that Kenneth had been the most sought-after branding and interface creator in San Francisco, still talked about and with plenty of opportunity to go back to. For him to be here, brewing coffee on Main Street, was just a waste.

Kenneth shook his head. “No, it’s not for Patrick. Not just for Patrick. Look, we did Silicon Valley. We moved fast; we broke things. It was kind of great, and I kind of loved it, and I kind of didn’t. I’m good here.”

“For now, sure. But this isn’t what you wanted. Or what your mom wanted for you, either. Or your dad.” She watched Kenneth’s face carefully, not wanting to go too far, but he just sat there, seeming totally at ease. “This is just not where you were supposed to end up.”

He stuck a finger in his latte, pulling out some foam to lick off, then jutting out his lower lip in a very familiar gesture that meant he was reluctant to disagree, but he was going to do it anyway.

“I was different there,” he said. “I’m different here, too, but here I’m different from other people. There I was different from me.”

“Profound,” said Mae in a voice that meant she thought he was just blowing air out of his ass, and Kenneth stood, grabbing her now-empty cup.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “There’s just something about being in a place where what matters most is right in front of you. And look—here you are. If you didn’t care about this place, if you didn’t see something worth saving in Mimi’s, in something that’s been around longer than either of us, you’d just let it go.” He gave her a quick glance. “Honestly, I figured you probably would.”

Mae flushed. There it was, all he was going to say, probably, about the way she had left not just Merinac but him. And now he was giving her too much credit, damn him. Saving Mimi’s was not why she was here. She started to say something, but what would she say? Instead, she followed him to the counter, where he set their dishes in a tub, then glanced at his watch, a solid, fat anachronism of a thing. “This place is going to be jammed in a few minutes. I’ll let Patrick take over, walk you back to Mimi’s, maybe say hi to your mom.”

Mae accepted this in silence, smiling at Patrick as he came out from the back room, relieved when he didn’t press for conversation. As they left the Inn she looked sideways at Kenneth. She’d done her morning’s work with satisfaction, but the thought of watching other people take its measure didn’t feel as good as she thought it would, and especially not now. “You’re going to be surprised,” she said.

“By what?”

“I painted Mimi’s.”

Kenneth stopped short, then picked up his pace. “No way. That place hasn’t been painted in— Oh no, Mae. You didn’t.” As Mimi’s came into view, Kenneth gasped. “You painted over Amanda’s sign!” He looked like she’d destroyed an icon of their childhood, and maybe she had. “And it looks like crap! Mae, you didn’t even do a good job. It’s bleeding through.”

He was right. When she’d left it this morning, the sun hadn’t been fully up, and the wet paint had erased all traces of the painted chicken underneath it. Now, though, the original painting appeared in shadow form. Kenneth picked up the can of paint she’d used. “This paint is never going to cover that, Mae. You’ll need something oil-based, and it won’t dry fast enough. And why would you do it anyway? Amanda’s sign was great. Everyone loved it.”

It did look awful. Half-done at best and shoddy at worst. Seeing what she had done through Kenneth’s eyes—and seeing that she hadn’t even done it right—made Mae feel defensive. She took the bucket of paint from him angrily, as though it were his fault it hadn’t worked. “I can’t just put another coat on it?”

“It won’t look any better. It’s just not the right kind of paint, Mae. Why didn’t you ask someone?”

Because anyone she’d asked would have said not to paint over the sign, of course. Kenneth didn’t know how much Amanda deserved to be erased from the face of Mimi’s at this point. Nobody did. Mae could try to explain, maybe—but no one else would get why this made sense.

Had seemed to make sense.

And now it looked awful. She didn’t want Amanda’s sign. Amanda’s sign didn’t belong there anymore. But how could she have messed things up so badly? Tears came to her eyes. “I just didn’t.” She felt like a belligerent teenager with no way to excuse her bad behavior. “It’s done now, though. And you’re right; it looks like crap. What am I going to do?”