The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,105

exactly the same as she had always been. Mae just needed to get the last word, and fine, she could have it.

It was absolutely time to get out of here. Amanda pushed past Nancy and ran down the steps, holding back tears. Frankie grabbed at her, but she shook her head. “Just give me a minute, please, honey.” Her feet knew where to go; she had run this way so many times. She turned—for God’s sake, why was there actually a crowd watching this madness—and ran into a lanky man holding Mae’s kids, with straight black hair just like Ryder’s, staring at Amanda like he knew her as she headed for the familiar old path, for the tree that wasn’t there, for anywhere but here. She had to get away, and sit, and just think, away from the cameras and everything else.

About three steps later it clicked. Jay. That was Jay. And Mae had just announced that she was staying in Kansas. Not that Amanda cared anymore, but maybe things weren’t so perfect for Mae after all.

MAE

Jay?

Unexpectedly, her first reaction was a rush of the same excitement that would shoot through her whenever she saw him back in their first months of dating, when the only thing she could think of was her amazement that they had found each other and that she was somehow making this work. Today, that joy was immediately quenched by dread. What was he doing here, in the yard full of three decades of hoarded trash and junk?

Sabrina was pointing to him, and one camera followed her finger while the other stayed on Mae, its gaze, like Jay’s, holding her frozen. How could she possibly explain any of this—the house, the way she’d just shoved Amanda across the porch like some battling real housewife, the announcement she’d just shouted at her sister—with Sabrina and her Food Wars cameras hanging on every word? Jay would just shut the cameras down, but her mother needed this Food Wars win for Mimi’s so much more than Mae had realized. Mae had to carry this off, and Jay had to go along with her. Did he even know this was her mother’s house? How on earth did he get here?

From behind her, Mae heard the thud of Aida’s cane. “You girls need to quit fighting and get back to work,” her great-aunt called as she came through the front door. “Your mother—” She stopped short as she found herself on what amounted to a stage, and the hand that wasn’t holding the cane floated up to touch her hair as she straightened and smiled. Aida knew how to play her part; that was for certain.

And Mae would play hers. Forget the fight with Amanda, pretend that never happened, cut, new scene. Mae rushed down the stairs and threw her arms around Jay, so tall, so thin—was he even thinner than when she’d left him? It was both exactly what she wanted to do and the scariest thing she had ever done, because what if he pulled away? What if he just held her off coldly, looking around at the mess, then recoiled and walked off? “Please, just listen,” she breathed in his ear, smelling the peppermint shampoo he favored and feeling the soft bristle of that spot right in front of his ear that he never quite got shaved right. She kissed him, really meaning it, and felt him respond, lips on hers, arms softening around her just a little, then straighten. It was incredibly good to feel him in her arms again, but as he began to pull away, she felt an icy panic in her throat. If she let him react to any of what had just happened, this might be her last shot at that feeling.

Mae knew exactly what she wanted now. She wanted Jay to throw himself in with her like Patrick had with Kenneth, to take this on and dig in and make it work. But she didn’t have any right to expect it of him, or even ask, at least not until she let Jay see the house and the place that had made her. And she was going to have to do that in front of the trailing cameras, which he would hate, and after she’d just shouted an ultimatum right in his face, exactly the way she would have least wanted him to hear her plans. I’m here, and I’m staying . . . But she had plans, and they were