said, and then, because she didn’t want to talk about that anymore: “or at least I’ll still have my stupid haircut.”
“I like the stupid haircut,” he said, and then he touched the back of her neck again, and it had been so long since anyone looked at her that way, or touched her that way, and something just felt right, there in Mimi’s, exactly where nothing had felt right for a long, long time.
And if he hadn’t touched the back of her neck again . . .
That would be such a good memory if it weren’t for Mae and everything that came next. And if it didn’t make her feel so sick inside, like she had betrayed everyone she loved, and if she didn’t know how little she deserved to have any man return her interest, since she’d already proved with Frank, back when they were fighting so hard over the life she had wanted so badly, that she didn’t know her own mind or heart. And if the whole idea of running away from Mae, and Andy, in front of Sabrina didn’t make her feel like erasing herself from the entire planet.
She needed coffee from Patrick, who would be blessedly unaware of her humiliation at Mae’s hands. And one of his glorious, lightly glazed brown butter scones.
Which was a great plan, except that before she could get the coffee, before she could even park at the Inn, she had to drive by Mimi’s, and while she was driving by Mimi’s, she saw that the work of erasing her from the planet had already begun.
Her chicken sign, the one she had painted freehand at fifteen and that had been there, gently peeling, ever since, was gone. The little building was freshly painted in the same old barn red, and someone—Kenneth!—was painting the word “Mimi’s” on a new sign, a white one, leaning against the bench in front.
Amanda wanted to be somewhere else. Now. She would gun the car and drive right out of here and never come back. No, she would swerve right into the building and drive right through it.
Instead, without realizing it, she had taken her foot off the gas. As the car slowed down, Kenneth looked up, and then she did speed up, pressing down the pedal until the sluggish little car shot forward. She kept going past the Inn, where she would never stop again, past Main Street and toward Frannie’s. She drove angrily, jerking the car around the turns, her thoughts churning. That must have been Mae’s doing, although her mom and Andy had to know about it.
And that was what Mae meant, last night, when she gave Amanda that last look, the one that so clearly said, I’ll get you for this.
The sign had been there for so long. It was just the Mimi’s sign now; no one ever even thought about who drew it. And it was one of her first best chickens, a chicken Amanda loved. She had been thinking of Mimi when she drew her, and it had come out in the bird, a certain spirit of determination. It was the first time she’d really been able to see the personality she was imagining come out in a drawing, and it had sent her in pursuit of more chickens to draw. And now the original, the matriarch, was gone.
That chicken was a piece of Amanda, and her sister just wiped it away, just like that.
Damn Mae, with her whole bossy you’re supposed to stay out of Mimi’s and her Ooh, let’s have kale and organic chicken like we’re in Brooklyn thing that Sabrina had described on the way home last night, trying to make Amanda laugh. And she had laughed, because Merinac wasn’t a kale town, and Mae would never be able to get that much organic chicken around here even if she tried. Nobody could spend that kind of money on getting certified, with the ridiculous hoops you had to go through, all set up by the big companies so none of the little farms could manage it. Mae had better not even ask John Calvin Caswell about organic chicken. She’d just piss him off. He’d taken over for his dad almost fifteen years ago, when his parents left for Florida, but his family had been supplying chicken to both Frannie’s and Mimi’s for long before that. The chickens were happy, healthy, and fat right up until the day when they suddenly weren’t. Any suggestion that organic was somehow better