The Chicken Sisters(67)
“I don’t lie!” Mae knew that. She knew this couldn’t be true. Andy’s dark eyes met hers as she spoke, and before he looked away Amanda thought she saw a hurt and betrayal that mirrored her own feelings. What right did he have to feel that way? Looking at him, at Sabrina, Amanda could see that they really believed she had done this, and while Amanda didn’t know how Mae had pulled it off, she knew there wasn’t anyone else who would stand up for her. She had put her whole world in the hands of something that was now spiraling wildly out of control and threatening to take everything she had with it. She had to show them that she wasn’t the one who was hiding something—and there was only one thing she could say.
“You’re the one who lies, Mae. You say anything you have to— Your whole life is a lie! It’s all a sham, all this Mae Moore the organizer, Mae Moore ‘I can help you clean it up and live a beautiful life.’ You can’t help anybody! You can’t even help Mom, and if anybody ever needed help, it’s her, and you just leave her alone in her filth and her hoarding and don’t ever lift a finger.”
And Barbara didn’t lift a finger either. She would just let Mae ruin Amanda and Nancy if that’s what Mae wanted, and Nancy was too nice to stop them. There was nobody to protect Frannie’s except Amanda, and if everyone just knew, knew what she and Barbara were really like, they would never believe anything Mae or Barbara said, not about this, not about anything.
Mae hadn’t moved. Amanda could tell by the look on her sister’s face that she’d thought she was safe, that this was the one thing Amanda would never tell the world, but Amanda was done with pretending. She spun to face Sabrina. “Go look,” she said. “Go look at my mom’s house and just see. See if you can believe anything they say. They’re hiding things, both of them, all of them. Andy, too.” She shot an angry look at him, but he was still staring at the ground. He had to know about the house. Everybody in town knew. And everybody ought to know.
“Mom’s house doesn’t have anything to do with the recipe,” Mae said. “It’s totally”—she looked at Sabrina—“it’s beside the point. It’s the way she likes it. It’s nothing to do with Mimi’s, or me.”
The camera was on Mae now.
“Is that true, Mae?” Sabrina’s tone was interested, intrigued. “Your mother is a hoarder? And you’ve never tried to help?”
“I— This doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” said Mae. “I’m not even going to talk about it. It’s ridiculous.”
“No, you saying I took Mimi’s recipe is ridiculous.” Amanda was ready to talk, now that the cameras had turned. “This is just truth, Mae. You don’t want it to be true. You don’t want anybody to know it. But it’s true.”
Mae reached out to grab Amanda’s arm, but Amanda yanked away. She didn’t want to hear it; she was done. She turned, ready to go into the house and lock them all outside and away, and then she slowed. Damn it.
Frankie was in there, and just about the only thing that could make this worse was—
Frankie opened the screen door just as Amanda reached it. “Mom, what’s up?”
That. Amanda frantically rearranged everything about herself, her face, her arms, what she was going to say next. Anything to get Frankie out of this.
“Everything went great this morning, Frankie,” Amanda said, stepping up close to her and holding out an arm as if she could herd her daughter back into the house. “They’re just— We’re just recapping. Only people who were there, though.” If Frankie would go inside she could use this as an excuse, follow her in, end this now.
But Frankie stood her ground. Worse, Amanda could tell by the look on Frankie’s face that her daughter saw this as an opportunity. Sure enough, Frankie put her hands on her own hips and stepped down onto the step next to Amanda, staring at her aunt and suddenly also resembling her. “I can’t believe you made a big deal out of the frozen biscuits, Aunt Mae. You know everybody freezes biscuit dough anyway, and we get them from a really good place, these two women outside Kansas City. They’re fresh and they’re homemade and they’re delicious. So it’s no big deal, and you made those chefs come freak my mom out about it.” She spoke loudly, and as she did, she looked around, appearing satisfied with the impression she was making. Then she seemed to run out of steam. “And I don’t think that was very nice.”
In spite of everything, Amanda felt a burst of pride in Frankie. That couldn’t have been easy. She didn’t have time to admire her daughter now, though. She needed to get Frankie back in the house before anyone said another word.
“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “All’s fair in love and Food Wars, right? Mae and I will work it out.” She shot her sister a look that was supposed to say, Please, just leave my kid out of this. Couldn’t Mae just give her that?
Apparently not.
“I guess what I would say to that,” Mae said slowly, “is that in general, if you don’t want people to know you’re doing something, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Frankie shrugged. “We’ll tell people where they come from, then. But I still don’t think you should have told everyone like that. On TV. That wasn’t fair.”
Amanda waited for Mae to start in on all the things Amanda shouldn’t have done, but Mae just stood there, probably planning her next attack. Amanda needed to move fast. “Let’s go inside, Frankie. They were just leaving.” She opened the door wide and gestured. Frankie looked from Mae to Andy to the camera, as if expecting more of a reaction, but other than Sabrina, madly tapping away at her phone just out of view of the camera, everyone else was still, Mae staring at the ground, Andy glancing at Amanda, then quickly looking away. In that moment, Amanda hated them all so fiercely that she wanted to go over and kick them both in the shins, kick and kick and kick until they took it all back and then kick some more. Instead, she spoke softly, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice. “Come on,” she said again to her daughter, more urgently. “Everybody needs a break.”