The Chicken Sisters(71)
“She would never, Mae. And no. She’s been helping that woman who has the new tattoo shop, over in Bradford. I dropped her off this morning.”
Andy hit a fist against the cabinet, shaking the entire kitchen, making even the pans hanging above the counter rattle and keep rattling, longer than they should have, jangling with all the energy in the tiny building. “They can’t just go into your house,” he said, and Mae spoke over him, glad to have an outlet for her own anger.
“It doesn’t even matter; it’s out there, however they got it. People have seen it. People will see it. And it’s not just Patches, Mom. The flour. Do you use that to make the pies? Are you still working in there?” The dog, yes. But the restaurant. If she was cooking for Mimi’s in that kitchen, and people knew it—
“That’s an old bag. Of course I keep all the supplies for Mimi’s safe, Mae. I’m just as careful as I ever was. I can’t believe you’d even think that. I didn’t make the pies this week anyway. Patrick did.” Barbara was calming down, her anger carrying her past her tears.
Mae shook her head. The lines her mother somehow drew around her mess, around her problem, had always amazed her, and Barbara’s outrage that anyone would think she might carry that filth out into the world could sometimes be almost funny, but not now. Even the image of Aunt Aida in a tattoo parlor wasn’t helping. The puppies were not the problem. Even the pies were not the problem, although it helped that Patrick had baked this week. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said. “It’s what everybody else thinks. What are we going to do?”
“Call Sabrina and tell her I take good care of Patches and that none of this has anything to do with Mimi’s. None of it.”
That, at least, was a call Mae was spoiling to make.
AMANDA
Nancy picked Gus and Frankie up for the night at Frannie’s early, pulling into the driveway while Amanda, who had decided that hard work was the only thing to quiet her churning brain, was in her front yard, hacking away at the overgrown grass and weeds around her front steps with the vague idea of planting annuals and making it all look better, but mostly just to sweat and have something to curse out. Her small flock of chickens kept getting in the way, delighted by the soil she was flipping over, and more than once she’d nearly taken one out with the shovel, which just felt like exactly the kind of day she was having, especially now that she was frantically showering and realizing that the sweaty Frannie’s shirt from this morning was still the cleanest one she had.
She was done with Food Wars. This had all been a terrible idea, and the best thing she could do now would be to just put her head down and ignore it. She didn’t know what she would do when Nancy found out that Sabrina thought they had stolen the Mimi’s recipe, or that she had told Sabrina to go look at Barbara’s house. Amanda was just going to—go. And do her job. And she was never going to try to make anything happen ever again.
When she finally got to Frannie’s, she found Gus and Frankie standing outside the door, very clearly waiting for her. She didn’t want to talk to them, or anyone. They would know she didn’t take the recipe—they would believe Nancy, if not her—but how would they feel when they knew why she’d been in Mimi’s in the first place? Did they know? From the looks on their faces, she could tell something was wrong.
“Mom,” Gus said, pressing his phone into her hand, “you need to watch this.”
Frankie was between her and the door. “Someone told Food Wars about Grandma Barbara’s house. It’s on Facebook.”
So it wasn’t Mae accusing her of stealing the recipe, then. Her relief came and went in an instant. The house was on Facebook? But Barbara would never let them into the house.
She looked down at the phone in her hand. It was a video, already playing. She saw a mouse skittering out of the bottom of a bag of flour, and then the video restarted, focused on Patches, who must have had the puppies, then pulling back to show the mess around her, which wasn’t that bad, considering. It had been worse. It pulled back further, showing the kitchen—okay, that was bad.
Is this what you want when you go grab some fried chicken? Turns out someone in this Food War has more than a little problem. Can über-organizer Mae Moore clean up anyone’s act, especially when the mess hits close to home? Find out on tomorrow’s mini webisode of Season Four, Round Three of GHTV’s Food Wars.
Scrolling down, she saw that people had guessed it was Barbara—of course they had; everyone in town would know it—and boggled at all the comments about the food and the pies and the puppies.
“How did they know?” Frankie demanded. “It’s none of their business.”
Amanda knew the answer to that, of course, but how did they get into the house? Barbara would barricade the doors before she would let them film in there. She read the words again. Can über-organizer Mae Moore clean up anyone’s act? Was there any chance Mae had decided to turn this to her advantage and try to get Food Wars to film her cleaning? Because everyone knew that was what Mae wanted most—for the whole world to know she had her life under control and could handle everyone else’s besides.
She looked more carefully at the post, scrutinizing it for signs of her sister’s handiwork, knowing in her heart that there was no way Mae would reveal her mother’s shame like that, both for her own sake—Mae had said all along that the one thing they didn’t want Food Wars to do was see the house—and, if Amanda was honest, for Barbara’s. In all those years of Mae fighting Barbara, trying to clean the place up, trying to change her, Amanda had never seen Mae allow anyone else to criticize her. At the faintest suggestion from a teacher or another parent that Barbara could do better, no matter how much Mae might secretly agree, she instantly rose to Barbara’s defense. Mae’s loyalty to Barbara never faltered.