But if we’re smart, we can manage the story they tell.” She handed Amanda a sheet of paper. “Here,” she said, “I made some talking points. Just, good things we can say about each other, right? I’ve got some too. Just so it’s clear we’re all besties, right?” Amanda glanced down at the page as Mae slammed the back of the car shut. Shared history. All family. Keep the challenges in the kitchen. Mae must have clicked the lock button on her key fob, because the car gave a light honk, which made Amanda snicker silently as she shoved the paper in her bag. Nobody locked their cars in Merinac. Mae had no idea where she was any more.
“Come on, walk with me. We have to figure this out.” Mae headed toward the little wooded area that stretched behind Mimi’s and the house, and Amanda reluctantly fell in beside her. The story didn’t need managing, and she didn’t need Mae’s help.
“We don’t need to figure anything out, Mae. Food Wars wants a rivalry, and we have that. All we have to do is what we usually do. I don’t even know why you’re here, to be honest.”
“Because Mom wants me here.” Mae gave Amanda a smug look. “And she’s not doing this without me, so if you want to do it at all, you’re stuck with me.”
For a nickel, Amanda would just end the whole thing right now. “Maybe I don’t want to do it anymore,” she said. But she did, and Mae, who knew it, turned and bounced off toward the trees without even so much as looking behind her. How could Mae always be so certain that she had everything under control, that other people would fall in with her plans? It was even more annoying when she was right.
“Listen,” Mae was saying, and Amanda had to hurry to catch up so that she could hear her. “I get it. Frannie’s is big and Mimi’s is little, and you expect to win, and you probably will. And you need me to help Mom keep Mimi’s in the running, and I will. But we want to keep them out of Mom’s house, right? And out of our family lives. We don’t want them poking around, asking your kids how they feel about their dad’s death, stuff like that. If we hand them the story, they’re not looking for a story. So we’re, like, three very independent women who need our own things, but we respect each other. Like sports. We keep the competition on the field; off the field, we’re fine.” She glanced up at Amanda, possibly to see how her sister was taking this rewriting of history.
Amanda kept pace with Mae on the familiar walk down to the railroad tracks, long out of use, and then to the river, entering into the conversation in spite of herself. “Have you run this brilliant plan by Mom yet? She’ll love respecting me as an independent businesswoman.”
Mae let that go. “They’ll focus on you and me if we let them,” she said. “And we can pull it off, Amanda. We’re adults. We can be—cordial. No, warm. And I was thinking—”
Amanda, who was uncomfortably aware that she had already blown this plan of Mae’s out of the water, tuned in at that phrase. “I was thinking,” from Mae meant that something mattered enough to her that she was at least trying to present it in a way that was palatable to the other person. It meant that somewhere in her plans, Mae had run across something she couldn’t just make happen on her own. Amanda eyed her sister cautiously. Mae went on without looking at her.
“I was just thinking that while I’m here, maybe I could help organize your kitchen. That could be, like, a friendly scene we do together. They’d love that.”
What the fuck? “Hell no, Mae, you’re not messing with my kitchen. You haven’t been in my kitchen in six years! What makes you think it needs organizing? My kitchen is fine.” It was, too. Or if it wasn’t, it was how Amanda wanted it. She wasn’t Barbara. Her mess was just a mess; she could clean it up in an hour if she wanted to, and the last thing she needed was Mae’s help. If Amanda had her way, Mae wouldn’t even come near the little house—and especially not with her own agenda. “Why would they even want that? The personal stuff is not what they’re after, Mae. Haven’t