The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,108

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.

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