The Chicken Sisters(84)

“Your mother is cleaning this up”—he looked around, back into the sliding door, through the kitchen windows, at the boxes and bags and piles at his feet—“for the dogs.”

“For the dogs, yes.” Mae kept her face straight but let her eyes speak to his, and Jay laughed, and suddenly Mae could laugh, too. This was what she had been missing, someone to share this with, someone to see what was funny on top of tragic and push her to see it, too.

Jay set Ryder down on a table someone had carried out, and Madison tugged at her father. “I want to show you the puppies,” she said. “I’m getting the girl one, she has spots but she is mostly white like snow and I’m calling her Elsa.”

Ryder stomped, causing the table, which was none too stable, to wobble. He grabbed at Jay, who scooped Ryder up and held him. “No,” he said, pushing his hands on his father’s chest and struggling to get down. “Boy ones. Blackie and Spotty and Potato Chip. I’m having five.” He, too, took his father’s hand and started pulling him.

Would Jay know she’d never say yes to a dog at all and certainly not without his agreeing to it? He seemed unworried by this unplanned addition to his household, but Mae was far from ready to relax. Jay got what she was saying about Barbara, but could he see how much she wanted him to get her as well?

Jay, too, didn’t seem ready to walk away from this moment, but between the cameras and the kids, they were fully stymied. “Hang on,” he said again to Ryder and Madison, and although neither let go of his hands, they did lessen their tugging. As if Mae had conjured her, Jessa emerged from the front of the house.

“Want to go with Jessa, guys?” Mae suggested. “Maybe get the puppies ready to see Daddy?”

Madison looked scornfully at her mother. “You can’t pick them up. Only touch them. Okay, Daddy? Gentle touch.”

Jessa held out her hands. “But we can go make sure Patches is taking good care of them,” she said. Neither Madison nor Ryder budged, and Jessa caught Mae’s eye. Mae shrugged. They could all recognize kids who weren’t going to be persuaded, and there was no point in causing a scene—well, more of a scene. The echo of her shouted fight with Amanda, witnessed by Jessa and Jay and everyone in the known universe, lingered. Enough scenes, then. “Okay, Daddy will go with you. But can I give him a hug first? I missed Daddy, too.”

Did Jay believe her? She still didn’t know why he had appeared, or how much of a chance he was willing to give her. She stepped in close to him, close enough to smell him, and hugged him with her entire body, ignoring the cameras, letting her hips melt toward his. His lips were on her ear, but he didn’t say anything, although he did hold her, briefly, before letting her go and bending down to Madison so that she could not see his face.

“So, this is your town.” His eyes were still on his daughter’s head, and again Mae couldn’t read him. But there was only one answer.

“This is my town.”

“And that’s Mimi’s.” He pointed at the old building, freshly painted but still unprepossessing, and like the house, Mae saw it with new and disappointed eyes.

“That’s Mimi’s. And Amanda works at Frannie’s, the other one. She has ever since she married Frank, before we met. That’s part of why this makes a good Food War. You know, sisters. Fighting.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He let Madison and Ryder begin to pull him away.

“Wait—” she said. But she wasn’t sure what to ask him, what she wanted from him now, how to say even part of what needed to be said with the cameras rolling. “What do you, um, want to do after you see the puppies? I mean, obviously I’ll be here for a while.”

Jay looked back at the house, looked it up and down, then turned to Mae as the kids tugged at him. She wanted a smile, a nod, anything, so badly. “It looks like you could use another set of hands,” he said, and she clung to the little streak of hope in those words. “I’ll hang out with the kids for a bit, and then I’ll come help.”

Help. She had never wanted his help more, but that wasn’t really the problem, and Mae knew it. The problem was that she had never before asked for his help at all.

“I’d like that,” she said softly, then more loudly as he kept walking away. “Please. Thank you.”

Jay took a few steps more forward before he turned and looked over his shoulder again. “And then we’ll talk,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing or meeting Mae’s gaze.

“Yeah,” she said, holding herself very still, trying to show him that she was open to whatever he could give. “Then we’ll talk.”





AMANDA





Snuffling wildly, Amanda walked with what she hoped looked like determination toward the path down to the river, bringing up the edge of her T-shirt to wipe her face and blow her nose. Gross, maybe, but there was no one to see, and as she came up to the fallen giant that had been her and Mae’s secret tree when they were kids, she thought of the argument she and Mae had had just a few days earlier, when they were still speaking, before everything started to go so far wrong.

Maybe the tree didn’t make a noise. Maybe nothing ever made a noise. Maybe nobody ever heard anything unless it was broadcast to the entire world, which meant that Amanda’s whole life now amounted to about an hour of bad behavior and the failed one-night stand she didn’t have with the only guy she’d even thought about since Frank, a guy who now thought she was not just needy and desperate but a liar and a thief as well.