The Chicken Sisters(94)

Jay smiled. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I thought that’s what you really wanted. To be on TV. To co-host Sparkling, have your own show.”

“Yeah,” said Mae. Their eyes met, and she leaned forward and kissed him, quickly. This was what she really wanted, and she needed to make sure he knew it. She turned and started the climb up from the riverbank in earnest this time. “So did I. But I was wrong.”





AMANDA





Amanda had envisioned a dozen ways this could go, each worse than the last, almost before they were out of the driveway.

Maybe this was the wrong call. It would be easier, probably, to send Nancy and Gus to Sabrina with the recipe. Sabrina wouldn’t worry about the loan business, might not even want to turn the paper over if they did it right. It’s a family recipe, they’re similar, oh well, case closed. Food Wars would zoom to a close and they could just deal with this afterward. After a winner had been declared. When Frannie’s had some money, or Mimi’s needed money less. Amanda had given up on predicting how Food Wars would bestow its largess, especially after Nancy pointed out that whoever got this windfall would be paying taxes out the wazoo.

But Mae. Telling Mae would complicate things. Amanda didn’t know what would happen, and she didn’t like the feeling. Maybe she was just as much of a control freak as Mae, except her way of controlling things was to try to keep anything from happening at all.

Well, she wasn’t going to live that way anymore. She was blowing things up.

Still. She contemplated a big announcement and what might come after. Barbara shouting at Nancy the way Amanda and Mae had shouted at each other. Gus listening while Barbara abused his father and grandfather. People questioning whether Nancy, or even Amanda, might have known this all along, no one giving it a chance, explanations turning into excuses, and all fuel for the Food Wars flames. She needed help managing this, and there was only one person to get it from.

“Wait,” she said, and this time she did lean forward from the back seat, putting her head between Nancy and Gus. “We need to figure out a way for me to just tell Mae first.”

Nancy and Gus saw her logic immediately, but all of them struggled with how to make it happen. Amanda finally went with the simplest thing she could think of. They should look for Mae and try to distract Sabrina if they saw her, while Amanda— “What?” Gus demanded. “Hides behind the car and tries to ambush Aunt Mae?”

“Something like that,” she said. “Just try, okay? You get out, send Mae this way, and keep the cameras over there.”

They had no backup plan, and Amanda felt more than a little foolish as they carefully parked with the driver’s side of Nancy’s two-door facing the building and she crawled into the front seat, keeping her head below the windows, then slipped out the passenger side and dropped to the ground while Gus ostentatiously tried to make it appear that he was the only one getting out of the car.

“I guess Mom will come later, right, Grandma?” he said loudly. “She’s probably—uh—changing her clothes.” Amanda, from the ground, whacked him on the ankle.

“Too much,” she hissed. “Just go.”

There was no one in sight as they walked toward the house, but Amanda kept down behind the car just the same—and there was Mae, climbing up the bank from the river.

With Jay behind her. Shit. Oh, well.

“Mae,” she called softly, then again. “Mae.” Mae stopped, looking around, and Jay stopped behind her.

“Over here,” Amanda said, feeling ridiculous. “But pretend you don’t see me. Just—walk this way.”

They strolled over, and Jay, who appeared to be taking this about as seriously as Gus was, gazed up at a nearby telephone pole, pointed at nothing, and whispered, while staring resolutely in the opposite direction, “Nice to see you, Amanda. It’s been too long.”

Amanda couldn’t play. “Yeah. Mae, I need to talk to you.” She had to convince her sister that this mattered enough to hide from the cameras Mae loved. “I have the Frannie’s recipe, and you have to see it, Mae. Mimi wrote it.”

“What?” Mae was looking straight down at Amanda. Anyone would know something was up. But if anyone was there, wouldn’t they have already come over to see what Jay was pretending to stare at up on the telephone lines?

“You just have to see,” Amanda said. “But can we try— Can I show you without Sabrina? And then we can show her. It’s not a secret. It’s just that I think you should see it before Mom.” They’d conspired together so many times, to deceive their mother, to protect her, even occasionally to surprise her. “Please, Mae.”

Mae took Jay’s hand and began walking away, and just as Amanda was about to call out to her again, Mae spoke. “Oh, gosh,” she said. She was a much worse actress than Amanda would have supposed. “I think I dropped my—phone. I dropped my phone, Jay. I’ll just go back and look for it. You go on. And maybe”—Mae surveyed the distance between Amanda and anywhere where she couldn’t be seen from Barbara’s—“maybe you should move Nancy’s car for her? It’s really in the way, right there. Of the delivery trucks.” She met Amanda’s eyes and flicked hers toward Mimi’s. She was right, too—it was the only place they could get to without risking someone from Food Wars walking out of Barbara’s, seeing Amanda, and descending on them both.