The Chicken Sisters(95)

“Just put it over by Mimi’s,” Mae said. “That’s probably where I left my phone, too.”

Mae walked off toward the opening in the fence that led to the Mimi’s patio, and Jay approached the car, then turned back. “Keys will be in it,” Mae called without turning around. “That’s how we do it here.”

Jay got in and started the car, rolling down the passenger-side window. “I’m guessing you’re supposed to use the car for cover while I drive over there,” he said. “Lots of intrigue in this town.”

Amanda, now that things were going her way, could afford a smile. “More than you’d think, even without Food Wars,” she said. She had always liked Jay, as far as she knew him. He’d never been the snotty New Yorker she had expected.

Amanda slipped through the gap in the fence and straightened up as soon as she knew she would be out of sight. Mae was waiting. Without explanation, Amanda handed her the recipe, back in its protective wrapping, faceup.

“This was at Frannie’s,” she said. “It’s a long story, but it’s been hidden, and Nancy didn’t know where until yesterday when Gus showed her. But that’s really not what’s important.”

Mae gasped, just as Amanda had known she would. “Then they stole it,” she said. “Does it really matter when? They stole this, Amanda.”

Amanda shook her head. “Turn it over.”

Mae silently read the back while Amanda sat down at a picnic table and waited. Mae stared down at the words for a long time before she looked at Amanda.

“They owe us,” she said.

“I know,” said Amanda. “Mary Cat was right all along.”

“And wrong,” Mae replied. “Because Frannie died, right? Frannie died, and it was her husband—”

“I think so,” Amanda said. “I mean, it’s hard to know exactly”—she spoke quickly, so that Mae would know she wasn’t defending the Pogociellos—“we can’t be a hundred percent sure, but that’s what I think. What Nancy thinks, too. That they never paid her back, and they knew it, or at least, the first ones knew it.” But the whole story needed to be out there. “Daddy Frank, my father-in-law, Frank—they’d seen this, though. Daddy Frank showed it to Gus when Gus was little. So they might have known. Probably knew. Or they should have guessed.”

“They damn well should have,” said Mae angrily, and Amanda couldn’t blame her. “So the feud—it wasn’t Mimi and Frannie. It was Mimi and Frannie’s, once Frannie was gone.” Mae handed the paper back to Amanda and sat down on the bench across from her.

“If Frannie had lived,” Amanda said, and then stopped. Mae could see it as well as she could. If Frannie had lived, they probably wouldn’t be sitting here hiding from the Food Wars cameras.

They sat there for a moment, both looking at the ground. Frannie and Mimi hadn’t been feuding. Or maybe they had, some of the time. Maybe Mimi was jealous of Frannie for having “her man” to help, even if it didn’t sound like Mimi liked him much, and even if it seemed like Mimi might have been right. Or maybe Frannie wanted some of Mimi’s independence.

It was hard not to want what your sister had.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Mae finally said. Amanda looked up. An apology? An apology would be nice—she was about to offer one herself, but Mae could go first for a change. But Mae didn’t look like she was apologizing. She looked like she was crying, and not just the teary eyes that had come over Amanda, too, when she thought about how things could be different. Big, gulpy sobs that made Amanda, almost without realizing she was doing it, shift quickly from her bench to Mae’s and put both arms around her sister.

She knew before Mae said another word that apologies weren’t what was on Mae’s mind.





MAE





Damn it, she hadn’t meant to cry. It wasn’t that bad, at least it probably wasn’t, but with Jay, too, and the whole thing. She snuffled, swallowed, wiped her arm across her face, probably leaving it gruesomely striped with dust, then took the wad of tissues Amanda had pulled out of her jeans pocket, blew her nose gratefully, and shook her head, willing the tears away.

It felt good having her there, her physical presence solid and oddly reassuring. Mae was tired of feeling as if Amanda was on the other side of some wall. Maybe that wall could be gone now. If Mimi and Frannie could still be friends, if Mimi could help Frannie—she reached out to take her sister’s hand. There was no softening what she had to say, but she hoped Amanda could see that she hadn’t set out to dump this on her in the middle of everything.

Mae took a deep breath, turned toward Amanda, and blurted it out. “Mom’s doctor told her she may have the symptoms of early Parkinson’s disease.” Part of Mae was still holding out for a talk with the doctor, despite an hour on Google last night, carefully limited to only the most optimistic-sounding sites, that had mostly convinced her the doctor was right.

Amanda’s eyes locked on to Mae’s, and in that instant Mae got her sister back, but maybe not the sister she’d been holding in her head all these years, because while Mae saw a flash of fear in Amanda’s eyes, the next thing she saw was a steel that matched her own. If Mae hadn’t known it before, she knew it now—Amanda had plenty of the famous Moore fire in her. She’d just been hiding it for a long time.