The Chicken Sisters(85)

As she stood there, breathing heavily and pressing her fist into her lips, she heard footsteps behind her, and Nancy’s voice, calling.

“Amanda? Are you out here?”

Small trees and tall weeds had grown over the path in the years since it had been in regular use, and Amanda turned to see Nancy holding a particularly prickly growth out of her way, then releasing it behind her. She looked wildly out of place, her neatly pressed slacks and buttoned blouse far more mussed by pushing her tiny frame through the weeds than they had been by anything Barbara’s house had to offer. Amanda’s own clothes, she realized, were speckled with the seeds and burrs that clung to anything they touched, and one arm was scratched. She’d come through the brush without even noticing.

“What is wrong with you? What was that?” Nancy was breathing heavily, but her fierce energy did not appear to be depleted. She put her hands on her hips, staring intently at Amanda.

“You said it yourself,” Amanda said. “You don’t know what to say to me. I’ve gone too far. I’ve ruined everything.”

“Amanda—” Nancy shook her head and stood there, looking at her, and Amanda looked back, her tears coming again. Nancy held her arms open, and Amanda, after a minute, took the two steps toward her mother-in-law, the best mother she had ever had, and fell into them, crying.

Nancy held her, patting, stroking her hair. “I was angry last night. I’m still angry. Maybe I don’t know what to say. But it doesn’t matter. I’m still here. And we will figure this out. But you have to back down, honey. You want to win. I get it. But you’ve gone way overboard. It’s not worth destroying your relationship with your mother and your sister.”

“What relationship? Mae’s ruined everything. All that stuff she says—I didn’t do any of it!” It was a relief to say it, even if no one would ever believe her after everything she actually had done.

“This isn’t about Mae,” Nancy said firmly. “Stop—” She held up a hand as Amanda started to protest. “This isn’t who you are, Amanda. Mae’s not your problem.”

Furious, Amanda twisted away and kicked up the dirt and dust on the path. “Of course she is! Ever since she got here it’s been all about Mae. It’s the goddamn Mae show. And then—all she does is wave a hand, and the whole town shows up to clean Mom’s house.”

Nancy touched Amanda’s arm and gently turned her back around. “That was me, not Mae,” she said. “I called Kenneth and Patrick last night and asked them to post something asking for help. For your mother. And for me. And for you. It wasn’t Mae at all. But if you’re looking for someone to blame here, that producer is the one pushing your buttons. And you’re giving her exactly what she wants, every time.”

“I know she is,” Amanda said, more quietly. Nancy’s refusal to respond to her anger in kind always forced her to moderate, and Nancy’s refusal to enter into the Food Wars–fueled renewal of the old feud should have helped make Amanda more reasonable. But she really did not want to be reasonable. “I mean, I see that now. I’m not dumb. But Mae—Mae—she—”

“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” said a familiar voice. Picking her way even more carefully through the unfamiliar foliage, Sabrina stepped over a fallen branch and was suddenly standing next to Amanda. “I’ve got something you need to see, Jan Brady.”

Nancy put an arm around Amanda again. “There’s your pusher, Amanda. That’s who you’re reacting to. Not Mae.” She looked straight at Sabrina. “I hope you’re happy.”

Sabrina, wholly unchastened, grinned. “I’m always happy. Here you go, Amanda. This did not go as planned, not one bit. Which is exactly why you need to see it.” She held her phone out to Amanda. “Press play.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “I seriously don’t care, Sabrina,” she said. There was absolutely nothing to do with Food Wars that she wanted. Not now. Maybe not ever, and the sight of Sabrina, perfectly made up, dark hair all neatly in place, smiling all the way up to her ridiculously big brown eyes, just made Amanda want to bite someone. And Sabrina obviously was part of the problem. Not as big a part as Mae, but still.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll care. Watch.”

Amanda reluctantly took the device, which had a hot pink cover with “gorgeous” written in flowing gold script across the back. Mary Laura’s face appeared first on the screen. “No way,” she said, and the clip cut to Gwennie, who said, “Huh?” Faces flashed quickly by, all shaking their heads or scoffing at something: Patrick, Tony Russell, his wife, every single waitress from Frannie’s. Mary Laura returned, frowning, and you could hear Sabrina’s voice saying, “The chef at Mimi’s says Amanda stole their recipe to use to win Food Wars.”

In the video, Mary Laura answered her angrily. “There is no way Amanda would do something like that. Mae, maybe. You sure you didn’t make a mistake?”

Then Kenneth: “There’s no way she’d take Mimi’s recipe. This is a girl who once found the answers to a biology test on the teacher’s desk and made me drive her to the teacher’s house so she could give them to her and explain.”

Even Zeus, the dishwasher at Mimi’s, who had a child in Frankie’s class. He looked intently at the camera. “You better be careful. That’s a serious thing to say. She would never do a thing like that. She’s a real good person, Amanda.”