The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,113

to say, Nancy was off, briskly striding over the broken-up asphalt toward the restaurant where, in Amanda’s mind, she reigned. Amanda followed Nancy to the kitchen, saying hey to the cooks at the break table and to staff straightening up at the boss’s appearance, trying to look like they hadn’t been slacking off during the usual lull between lunch and the early-bird crowd.

Nancy marched past, through the empty kitchen toward the back wall and the old built-in cabinets, only about ten inches deep, that lined it. She opened the one that was filled with extra containers of salt and various spices and emptied a shelf at eye level, then slid her fingers behind the thin light blue painted panel behind it and pulled.

The panel came off in her hands, and from behind it, Nancy took out what looked like a card wrapped in plastic and handed it to Amanda.

It was a half sheet of lined paper, old, covered in a flowing, spidery script that gave Amanda a shock of recognition. The yellowing cellophane crackled in her hands as she took it.

Fill a large cake pan with flour up to your first knuckle, then salt well. Add pepper until mixture is well spotted, then add three large pinches nutmeg, one pinch mace, pepper again. Dredge chicken in plain flour, buttermilk, spiced flour, before frying in a good quantity of boiling lard.

The paper was oil-spotted and worn; in another hand someone had written Crisco underneath the recipe, and another, mace!!! There were measurements at the bottom, too; 3 tbsp nutmeg 1 tbsp mace to 6 c flour, ¼ c salt, 3 tbsp pepper. But it was the original writing that transfixed Amanda. Nancy thought this was going to convince Mae that she hadn’t stolen the Mimi’s recipe, but it was more likely to do the opposite. How could they have this at Frannie’s? And what was she going to do now?

Because what she was holding was Mimi’s original recipe, in her handwriting, the same as the one that hung in the Mimi’s kitchen, only scribbled on and worn and without the frame. The same, but different.

Nancy took the recipe from her hands, turned it over, and handed it back to her. “It’s okay. I know. But there’s no way you could have been responsible for this. Read the back.”

Before she could, Amanda heard running footsteps outside the kitchen. Gus burst through the swinging doors and stared at them, as though he hadn’t expected to find them there, then at the paper in Nancy’s hand. He spoke quickly, as if he was a little out of breath.

“I was—I was just coming to find you, Grandma, to get the recipe. I guess—Mom told you?”

Nancy nodded. He turned to Amanda. “We didn’t know what Mae said, Mom. Or I would have shown you yesterday.”

Amanda looked from Gus to Nancy. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“I didn’t know the recipe was here,” Nancy said. “Gus did.”

Gus smiled, a little sadly. “Grandpa showed it to me. Ages ago.”

“But now—” Nancy tapped the paper in Amanda’s hands. “Read the back. Gus hasn’t seen that, either.”

Amanda slowly turned over the page and read aloud.

Frannie, I wish you much luck with Frannie’s. I do not think your man will be up to the job but I wish you much luck with him as well. Do not worry about the loan yet and do not tell him. This money and Frannie’s are yours. Like all men he will want to run things but he is easily fooled. I think that it is best I leave you to it for a while, as he and I will not agree.

—Mimi

And underneath it, in a different hand,

Owe Mimi $1,400, October 29, 1889

There wasn’t any more, but now Amanda knew for certain that the writing was Mimi’s. And she knew something else now, too. Something that changed everything, that was impossible, but was the only answer.

“Mimi loaned Frannie money,” Amanda said slowly. “She wasn’t mad. And Frannie—she died, you know. Before Mimi.”

“Mimi gave Frannie the recipe,” Nancy said. “And you can show that to Sabrina, and that’s it. You’re off the hook.”

Amanda stood, turning the paper over in her hands. Nothing about this made sense. “But why would it change? Why did our chicken suddenly taste like Mimi’s when it didn’t before?”

“Because I didn’t have it,” Nancy said. “When Frank—my Frank—died, there was a big mason jar of just the spices, all mixed. I didn’t know what was in it. I just guessed