The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,120

you interested?”

No apology, of course. No attempt at justifying the turnaround, and Mae wasn’t meant to ask for one, either. She should jump at this, a chance to join the cast of an established show and make a bigger name for herself.

Mae didn’t even have to look at Jay this time. “Oh, that’s really nice to hear, Lolly. But I have other plans going forward.” She smiled to herself. Let Lolly think those “other plans” involved the Food Channel. That must be why they’d rushed this call. That Facebook Live must be getting really good numbers. But what Lolly didn’t see, and maybe Sabrina didn’t see either, was that it was good because it was real, and because Mae had known it, and known she wasn’t hurting anyone, or exposing anything except a deeper part of herself. It wasn’t something she could take on the road, and she wasn’t going to pretend that it was. She was done pretending.

But she didn’t mind letting Lolly sweat a little. Lolly started to answer, to argue, probably, or persuade, but Mae cut her off. “Listen, Lolly, I’m in the middle of something. I have to go, but you take care, okay? And give my best to Christine and Meghan. Talk soon.” With that, Mae tapped the red button at the bottom of the screen and tucked the phone in her pocket. Then, unable to contain herself, she beamed up at Jay.

“I must have been really good,” she said cheerfully, then started up the trail. Jay reached out and caught her.

“You were good,” he said. “You’re a natural. Are you really saying no to them? Or is that just part of the game?”

“Really no,” Mae said. “I’m sick of all of this; it’s anything but real. Maybe someday. If I had something to say.” She could see it still, true. Sharing a message of authenticity with a new audience . . . but not like that. A bubble of relief rolled up inside her. Like champagne bubbles. Maybe—even without knowing exactly what they were toasting—they needed some champagne. And a family pack of baseball gloves. She looked at Jay again, then hesitated. Was she reading him wrong? “But wait— Should I have asked you? I thought—”

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