The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,121
just tell Mae first.”
Nancy and Gus saw her logic immediately, but all of them struggled with how to make it happen. Amanda finally went with the simplest thing she could think of. They should look for Mae and try to distract Sabrina if they saw her, while Amanda— “What?” Gus demanded. “Hides behind the car and tries to ambush Aunt Mae?”
“Something like that,” she said. “Just try, okay? You get out, send Mae this way, and keep the cameras over there.”
They had no backup plan, and Amanda felt more than a little foolish as they carefully parked with the driver’s side of Nancy’s two-door facing the building and she crawled into the front seat, keeping her head below the windows, then slipped out the passenger side and dropped to the ground while Gus ostentatiously tried to make it appear that he was the only one getting out of the car.
“I guess Mom will come later, right, Grandma?” he said loudly. “She’s probably—uh—changing her clothes.” Amanda, from the ground, whacked him on the ankle.
“Too much,” she hissed. “Just go.”
There was no one in sight as they walked toward the house, but Amanda kept down behind the car just the same—and there was Mae, climbing up the bank from the river.
With Jay behind her. Shit. Oh, well.
“Mae,” she called softly, then again. “Mae.” Mae stopped, looking around, and Jay stopped behind her.
“Over here,” Amanda said, feeling ridiculous. “But pretend you don’t see me. Just—walk this way.”
They strolled over, and Jay, who appeared to be taking this about as seriously as Gus was, gazed up at a nearby telephone pole, pointed at nothing, and whispered, while staring resolutely in the opposite direction, “Nice to see you, Amanda. It’s been too long.”
Amanda couldn’t play. “Yeah. Mae, I need to talk to you.” She had to convince her sister that this mattered enough to hide from the cameras Mae loved. “I have the Frannie’s recipe, and you have to see it, Mae. Mimi wrote it.”
“What?” Mae was looking straight down at Amanda. Anyone would know something was up. But if anyone was there, wouldn’t they have already come over to see what Jay was pretending to stare at up on the telephone lines?
“You just have to see,” Amanda said. “But can we try— Can I show you without Sabrina? And then we can show her. It’s not a secret. It’s just that I think you should see it before Mom.” They’d conspired together so many times, to deceive their mother, to protect her, even occasionally to surprise her. “Please, Mae.”
Mae took Jay’s hand and began walking away, and just as Amanda was about to call out to her again, Mae spoke. “Oh, gosh,” she said. She was a much worse actress than Amanda would have supposed. “I think I dropped my—phone. I dropped my phone, Jay. I’ll just go back and look for it. You go on. And maybe”—Mae surveyed the distance between Amanda and anywhere where she couldn’t be seen from Barbara’s—“maybe you should move Nancy’s car for her? It’s really in the way, right there. Of the delivery trucks.” She met Amanda’s eyes and flicked hers toward Mimi’s. She was right, too—it was the only place they could get to without risking someone from Food Wars walking out of Barbara’s, seeing Amanda, and descending on them both.
“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.”