The Chicken Sisters(53)

Her chicken sign, the one she had painted freehand at fifteen and that had been there, gently peeling, ever since, was gone. The little building was freshly painted in the same old barn red, and someone—Kenneth!—was painting the word “Mimi’s” on a new sign, a white one, leaning against the bench in front.

Amanda wanted to be somewhere else. Now. She would gun the car and drive right out of here and never come back. No, she would swerve right into the building and drive right through it.

Instead, without realizing it, she had taken her foot off the gas. As the car slowed down, Kenneth looked up, and then she did speed up, pressing down the pedal until the sluggish little car shot forward. She kept going past the Inn, where she would never stop again, past Main Street and toward Frannie’s. She drove angrily, jerking the car around the turns, her thoughts churning. That must have been Mae’s doing, although her mom and Andy had to know about it.

And that was what Mae meant, last night, when she gave Amanda that last look, the one that so clearly said, I’ll get you for this.

The sign had been there for so long. It was just the Mimi’s sign now; no one ever even thought about who drew it. And it was one of her first best chickens, a chicken Amanda loved. She had been thinking of Mimi when she drew her, and it had come out in the bird, a certain spirit of determination. It was the first time she’d really been able to see the personality she was imagining come out in a drawing, and it had sent her in pursuit of more chickens to draw. And now the original, the matriarch, was gone.

That chicken was a piece of Amanda, and her sister just wiped it away, just like that.

Damn Mae, with her whole bossy you’re supposed to stay out of Mimi’s and her Ooh, let’s have kale and organic chicken like we’re in Brooklyn thing that Sabrina had described on the way home last night, trying to make Amanda laugh. And she had laughed, because Merinac wasn’t a kale town, and Mae would never be able to get that much organic chicken around here even if she tried. Nobody could spend that kind of money on getting certified, with the ridiculous hoops you had to go through, all set up by the big companies so none of the little farms could manage it. Mae had better not even ask John Calvin Caswell about organic chicken. She’d just piss him off. He’d taken over for his dad almost fifteen years ago, when his parents left for Florida, but his family had been supplying chicken to both Frannie’s and Mimi’s for long before that. The chickens were happy, healthy, and fat right up until the day when they suddenly weren’t. Any suggestion that organic was somehow better would just piss him off.

It would really piss him off.

And when John Calvin was pissed off—Amanda had a sudden memory of him in school, standing frozen and angry when Tom Parker, who had gone to school with them all since they were three but who turned into a real jerk once he made the football team, sniffed the air around John Calvin and declared that suddenly, everything smelled like chicken shit. John Calvin just stood there, staring at Tom while Tom and his friends laughed, making a big deal of holding their noses. And while nobody saw who’d keyed Tom’s Trans Am on both sides in the school parking lot before the end of the day, everybody could guess.

Amanda pulled into the Frannie’s lot without caffeine but with an idea. A brilliant idea. Sabrina, holding a coffee, damn her, was just getting out of her little convertible. Amanda didn’t even bother to park, just pulled next to Sabrina and rolled down the passenger window.

“Hey,” she said. “Want to see something funny?”

Sabrina cocked her head to one side, then slipped into the passenger seat. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. Well, first to Starbucks. Then you’ll see.”





MAE





Mae swung Barbara’s old truck onto the gravel of Mimi’s parking lot and hit the brakes. She was out almost before she slammed it into park, running across the lot, calling frantically for Barbara.

“Mom! Mom!” Her mother appeared in the doorway of Mimi’s, followed by Andy, Madison, and Ryder. Ryder ran to Mae, and she picked him up, but her attention was on her mother. “John Calvin won’t sell me his chicken.” Had refused to talk to her, actually. Had come to the door, shaken his head at her, closed it, and walked away. Mae was still shaking with fury. Who just locked the door in someone’s face, especially someone they’d known since they were kids? And then let her stand out there banging and calling?

They had a deal, a long-standing deal, that on Fridays and Wednesdays Mimi’s picked up fresh chicken if they needed it. Today’s order was supposed to be bigger than usual, and Mae had gone to pick it up so she could see the Caswell place again. The chicken might not be organic, but it was fresh and free-range and local, raised by the same family in the same way for generations, and that was a great story to tell.

Her mother took off her cooking apron and handed it to Andy. “I knew I should have gone over there. What the hell did you say, Mae?”

Mae glanced at Madison, who was looking deeply interested, and Barbara gave her a look that said “hell” didn’t count as swearing. Mae was too upset to argue. “Nothing! He wouldn’t even let me in the door. I swear, Mom, I never got close enough to talk to anyone. I wasn’t even taking pictures. I wasn’t doing anything.” She had thought about taking pictures, but it was dicey, live chickens in this context. People got upset.