know, encouraging people to come out. I should have been doing it all day.”
Andy laughed. “Kenneth and Patrick have been blasting about this nonstop. We’re going to have more than we can handle tonight,” he said. “Hope you brought your A game.”
He’d been getting in little digs about her long absence all day, but somehow it didn’t bother her. With a pleasant sense of confidence, Mae took her place next to him in front of the big stove, where they had agreed she would start the night. He’d been prepping for an hour, but still, she ran her own accustomed check on every burner, the knobs as familiar as her own hands. It had been a long time since she had run the kitchen at Mimi’s, but frying chicken, for her, was like riding a bicycle. She was totally at home in this kitchen, just as the women in her family had always been. Signs of them were everywhere, from the cast-iron pans seasoned from long use to Mimi’s original recipe, burned into her brain but still framed and hung on the wall behind the prep counter. She had this.
“Oh, I’m always at the top of my game,” she said cheerfully. “Clean living, that’s what does it.”
Andy gave her a sharp look. Mae, who had her suspicions about how an obviously smart and extremely well-trained chef had ended up at her mother’s chicken shack, met his gaze squarely. She’d been aware since she arrived that he thought she was a lightweight, and while she didn’t care much—it was always easy to manage someone who’d underestimated you—she had no intention of letting him push her around tonight. “Plus, you’ve got my back, right?” She smiled. “We both want to knock it out of the park.”
Just as Mae finished speaking, Barbara, dressed in fresh slacks and a short-sleeve blouse and looking bare without her usual covering smock, walked in. “Knock it out of the park,” Barbara echoed, too loudly. Mae and Andy gaped at her. “What?” Barbara asked. “That’s the point, right? Whatever it takes.” Barbara took her apron down from the wall and wrapped it around herself, murmuring. “Whatever it takes,” she repeated softly.
Andy’s eyes met Mae’s again, this time sharing their surprise at Barbara’s oddly phrased vehemence, but there wasn’t time to talk about it. Customers were arriving; Angelique was beginning to call orders into the pass-through. The night had begun.
Mae had carefully mapped out the evening to give herself the most camera time. When Sabrina arrived, about an hour later, it was Mae who explained the kitchen, the frying process, the ways it had changed over the years. Leaving Andy at the stove, she led the camera behind the counter and then out front, talking about the pictures and the history, giving Barbara just the lead-ins she needed to contribute but helping her to keep off center stage.
The place was packed with locals as well as out-of-towners, but Mae, who had learned something from her encounter with Kenneth, was—after half an hour on Facebook—ready.
“Great to see you again,” she said warmly to one old classmate, not thrown off by the change in gender. Heck, Merinac’s apparent acceptance of the shift from Jeff to Julia gave her hope for humanity.
“You look just the same,” she squealed to another, ignoring gray hair and two decades of sun damage, especially as Crystal Kennedy, who now taught the Catholic Sunday school she, Amanda, and Mae had all attended, embraced Julia enthusiastically before ordering three of the night’s special, all with chocolate cream pie. Kenneth and Patrick came by, and with Kenneth leaning on the counter, picking at the plate of drumsticks Barbara made just for him, it was as if she’d never left Merinac at all. She still belonged in this town.
* * *
×
The night was a triumph, even after Sabrina shifted her attention back to Frannie’s. Mae, freed from the need to perform, took over from Andy and started catching her mother’s orders and sliding the plates through the pass. As she watched each batch of chicken or French fries, waiting for the split-second shift in color and scent that told her when to flip them or shake the basket, she lost track of time completely, hearing only her mother’s voice as she called the orders and moving with the rhythm demanded by the craft, surrounded by the familiar sounds and the savory smells of Mimi’s kitchen in action. It only needed Amanda on the other side of the window alongside Barbara