The Chicken Sisters - K.J. Dell'Antonia Page 0,125

was being annoying. Just annoying enough, maybe. “Why is it so hard for us to figure out what we actually want?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Amanda stopped to consider. She gazed up at the roof of the porch above them, tilting her head back to look at the wall with the ghost of her sign still visible behind them. “Maybe because we never saw anybody want anything that worked out? Maybe because everything we ever wanted turned to trash the minute it came into the house?” Amanda tried to laugh, but Mae could see she meant what she was saying. “Maybe because everything we want dies or basically goes up in smoke? Or no, that’s just me. And what do you mean, anyway? You always get what you want, Mae. Always.”

Mae looked to see if Amanda was starting up their fight again, but no. She was just—saying something she thought was true. Something Mae had thought was true, too, up until just now.

“I get what I go after,” she said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean I go after what I want. I go after—the opposite of Mom. Just like you, I guess. Frannie’s, Nancy, Frank’s whole family—they were not this. For me, it was school, New York, organizing, being famous for being neat and clean”—oh God, it really was funny—“the opposite of our whole life, right? And in the end we’re both still just being pushed around by Mom’s mess.”

Amanda sighed. “What are we going to do? About Mom, I mean.”

“I don’t know. I know it’s big, but I don’t want it to be big. I think—it’s going to take both of us to deal with it.” And that was exactly what she wasn’t ready to talk about right now. She rushed on. “But first, we really have to figure out about Frannie’s—the recipe!” Mae got up and scurried back through Mimi’s, returning with the recipe in her hand. “Not something we want to lose.”

“Yeah,” said Amanda. “I kind of wanted to, though. At first. Just for a minute. I hate that Frank must have known.”

Mae did, too. But Frank was gone, and there was no point in worrying about that. “He just did what his parents did, you know? It’s one or the other. You go along with them, or you run like hell.”

“What his dad did,” Amanda said firmly. “Nancy didn’t know. And she’s trying to help now. With Mom’s house.”

All of the other ways in which their mom was going to need help soon sat heavy between them. Mae hoped her sister was right about Nancy. She’d like to have a Nancy to lean on.

“I guess I’m going to come home,” she said, and Amanda sat up straight and turned to her.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Mae said. She understood why Amanda looked surprised, but wasn’t that exactly what they had just been talking about? “For a while, anyway. I can still write a new book if I can sell one. I can help Mom, but it will be good for me, too. I feel like, if everybody knows you, you can’t be all, Well, I don’t have any idea what I want to do with my life but at least my silverware drawer is perfect.”

“Sure you can,” said Amanda. “You just described half the parents of kids in Frankie’s class.”

Damn it, Amanda wasn’t supposed to argue with her—wasn’t this Mae telling Amanda that maybe she was right all along? “But you stayed. You’re part of the town. You get to know everybody who makes your coffee and your kids got to be little here where everyone knows who they are, and you don’t have to be always working so hard to make things happen. You can just live.”

“That’s the problem,” Amanda said. “That’s why I wrote Food Wars in the first place—nothing ever does happen. You just get up and do things, and every day is the same until it isn’t, and then you’re old and your kids are gone and you’re still the hostess in a chicken restaurant. It’s exactly what you always used to say. Which you should still be sorry for, as long as we’re apologizing, because you were really mean about Frank, and about Gus. But even though I loved Frank—” Amanda paused and gulped, and Mae eyed her apprehensively, but she wasn’t crying, even if she looked like she might be about to. Instead, she looked out at Main Street, ran her tongue over her lips, and went on. “Even though I loved him