The Chicken Sisters(64)

It was pretty good, really. Maybe less crispy than Mimi’s. Not as flavorful, of course; this was chicken that came with a frozen biscuit and a side of “just slap it on the plate and get on with it,” but it was okay. She’d eat it. She watched as the judges huddled over the chicken, an assistant offering them paper and pencils. Sabrina gestured to a cameraperson to come in close over that scene, then stopped to confer with Rideaux and the assistant as the chefs waited, Cary Catlin turning over the chicken on the Mimi’s platter while her husband gazed, apparently bored, into the distance.

Andy took one bite of his wing, and then, his eyes growing large, another, before he dropped his piece into his napkin and grabbed Mae’s arm. “Wait,” he said, looking confused. “Wait. Do you taste that?”

Mae detached his greasy hand from her sleeve and hissed at him. “Don’t react to their chicken. They’re filming us.”

“But this is so weird,” Andy said. “Don’t you taste it?”

“We’ll talk about this outside,” Mae said, glancing at Sabrina, who was turning back toward them. “Just stop.”

Sabrina came back, the camera following, and gestured broadly. “We’ll ask the restaurateurs to go, so the chefs can start evaluating,” she said. “No listening at the door!”

Mae, with a firm glance at Andy, began to walk out, taking another bite of her chicken as she went. She didn’t taste anything weird at all.

Andy, though, could barely contain himself. Ignoring the cameras and Mae’s glare, he stepped forward, right in front of the judges, took two more pieces of Frannie’s chicken, and wrapped them in a napkin to take with him. Sabrina watched him, her curiosity apparent, then turned away as one of the assistants touched her arm.

A blast of unseasonable early-summer heat met them as Andy shouldered the Inn door open. Once they were outside, Amanda and Nancy immediately headed for the Inn’s parking lot, but Andy grabbed Mae’s arm again and pulled her out onto the sidewalk.

“Did you taste their chicken?”

“It just tastes like fried chicken to me,” Mae said. “Maybe not as good as ours, but it’s just chicken. Sabrina totally noticed you making a big deal out of it, too.”

“Not as good as ours? It’s exactly as good as ours. It is ours. It’s the same. You can’t taste that? They fry it differently—it’s deep-fried, not batch-fried—but other than that, it’s the same. It’s exactly the same chicken.”

Even in the hot sun, a tingle ran over Mae’s skin as she took that in. “The same? How could it be the same? Andy, that’s ridiculous.”

“No, seriously, it’s the same. Mae, I tried every fried chicken in the state getting ready for this job. I played with the heat of the oil, the oil blend, everything but the seasoning, to get Mimi’s chicken just right, and I asked every chef who would talk to me to tell me what they did and why. I know you think you know fried chicken, but you only know Mimi’s fried chicken. I know fried chicken—and this is Mimi’s fried chicken.”

“But how could it be? Did you eat from the wrong platter? Or maybe they got switched?”

“No, it’s theirs. It’s fried differently. It’s the seasoning that’s the same. And the thing is, Mae, it wasn’t the same before. I ate there before I took the job with your mother. A handful of times. And the chicken wasn’t like this. It wasn’t even always the same from one day to the next. Once I swear it had dill in it. I mean, it was always cooked the same, but the seasoning wasn’t the same.”

They stood there, on asphalt so hot Mae could feel it through her shoes, staring at the chicken leg in Andy’s hand. Mae felt pieces falling into place in her mind, and at the same time a rising sense of anger and disbelief. “She took the recipe,” Mae said. “Or probably she took a picture of it. It was down on the counter when Amanda was in the kitchen. I remember you putting it back up the next day and saying something about Mimi hiding things from you.”

Andy shook his head. “No way.”

“It’s the only way. She hasn’t been inside Mimi’s since the day after Frank’s funeral, and she sure as hell didn’t take it then and wait all this time to use it. We told you: my mother doesn’t let Amanda into Mimi’s. You knew it, too. Until you let your dick overrule your brain.”

Andy turned red. “It wasn’t like that.”

Mae was furious, mostly with Amanda, but Andy was here in front of her, and without him, this never would have happened. “It was like that. It was absolutely like that. It was a stupid guy letting a smart woman use him.” Smart woman was not a phrase she had expected to use about Amanda, who had always just seemed to let the winds of chance dump her wherever. But apparently her little sister had had plans for Andy all along.

“How would she know I’d let her—”

Mae just looked at Andy. Because men were predictable, maybe? Because if they thought they had you, they’d head for the nearest flat surface without a second thought? She rolled her eyes.

He looked away and shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I guess it was that.” All the excitement had gone out of him. He probably needed a minute, but Mae didn’t have time to let him process the crushing news that maybe he wasn’t as irresistible as he’d thought.