The Chicken Sisters(65)

“She stole our recipe!” Mae said, “What are we going to do? Can we prove it? Can we test it?”

Before Andy could answer, they both heard the click of heels running up the sidewalk. Sabrina was coming, as fast as her shoes would let her. As their eyes met, she called out to them. “What is it? There was something about the chicken. What’s up?”

Andy put a warning hand on Mae’s arm, but Mae was too upset to wait. “Amanda stole our recipe! Their chicken—it didn’t used to be the same, and now it is. Andy noticed it first, but he’s right. It’s Mimi’s seasoning on their chicken.”

Sabrina stopped short. “No way.” She pulled out her phone. “Say that again, Mae. Tell me again.”

Andy waved his hand in front of the phone’s camera. “Maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe this isn’t a good idea, Mae. We should talk about it. Talk to Amanda.”

There was no good explanation for this, though. None. For Amanda to give Nancy that recipe, to betray Mimi and Barbara and Mae and her entire family, she had to hate them. Not just Mae. All of them. A week ago, Mae would have confessed she didn’t really care about Mimi’s. She wanted it to thrive, sure, but it didn’t mean much to her. After these few days back, though, after cleaning it up, after her night behind the stove, the family restaurant felt like more a part of her than she had ever realized. She could even see how the rhythm of the cooking line was her rhythm, had fed her need to have only what was necessary to the job at hand and her desire to keep things moving. That order was what Mae was looking for, as she cleaned and organized her way through life. She wanted every space to live up to the simple utility of Mimi’s kitchen. Because that simplicity was beautiful. Mae had always wanted to share what made Mimi’s special with people who didn’t get enough authenticity in their lives.

And Amanda wanted to take all that away. Whether her plan was to shut down Mimi’s, or beat them, or just steal what made Mimi’s special, Mae didn’t know, and she didn’t care. What mattered was that she stand up for a place she finally realized she loved.

Mae looked right into Sabrina’s camera. “When we tasted Frannie’s chicken this morning, we were surprised—because it’s our recipe. It’s the same chicken. You can’t copy what makes Mimi’s magical just by duplicating some seasoning, especially not if you’re just going to throw it on a plate with a bunch of stuff you don’t even care about—but it’s just so wrong to try. My sister must have taken the recipe.” She wasn’t going to say how. Let Sabrina put all that together if she wanted to.

Sabrina turned to Andy. “I could tell by your expression when you tasted the chicken that you were shocked. What did you think had happened?”

Mae crossed her arms. Come through with it, Andy. She hoped his chef’s pride outweighed anything else. After what seemed like a minute, he looked at the camera.

“I could tell it was the same,” he said. “For a minute, I thought I’d mixed up the plates—that I was eating my chicken. Our chicken. But it’s fried differently. We just use the deep fryer for the fries; we cook the chicken in cast iron, and you can taste and usually see the difference. But the seasoning—I’d know it anywhere. And when I ate at Frannie’s a few months ago, before I took the job with Mimi’s, it was different. And now it’s the same.”

Sabrina turned off her camera and shoved the phone into her pocket. “This is incredible,” she said. “We’ve never had anyone actually steal a recipe before. And Amanda, of all people!” She laughed. “I admit it, Mae, I thought you were the ruthless one. And you’re a natural for television, of course. The camera loves you. But I figured if anyone would do something crazy to win this, it would be you, not Amanda.” She shook her head. “Well, as my mother used to say, you’re never safe from being surprised until you’re dead.”

“But what do we do?” Mae asked.

Sabrina was already turning around to head for the parking lot, practically skipping. “We confront Amanda, of course.”

Confront Amanda. Amanda, with the perfect makeup and the great hair and, apparently, a mind full of schemes so hidden from Mae that it was almost as if Mae had never known her sister at all. She looked at Andy. “What if you’re wrong?” she asked.

“I would really like to be wrong, actually,” he said. “But I’m not.”





AMANDA





As she got out of her car, Amanda was already stripping off her Frannie’s shirt, which was soaked in sweat both from anxiety and from the ride home in an un-air-conditioned car thoroughly heated by the sun. The morning had basically sucked, although the chicken was fine and Nancy was fine and she hadn’t actively done anything—else—to make a fool of herself. Mae looked like a tiny, adorable Dorothy, in a blue cotton print blouse with a flared skirt, bonus annoying because Amanda knew her sister hated The Wizard of Oz with a passion only someone who has grown up in Kansas and then tried to leave it behind could achieve. Next to her, Amanda felt, and surely looked, like a hulking, sweaty mess as she went through the motions of “sharing” their specialty with the three chefs.

Other than what was necessary for the taping, Nancy still hadn’t said much to Amanda. She hadn’t been unfriendly, exactly, just so wrapped up in the chicken and the show that Amanda had not felt able to push for absolution as much as she wanted to, and now she was stuck feeling like everything was still wrong but unable to point to anything she could fix.