interested, intrigued. “Your mother is a hoarder? And you’ve never tried to help?”
“I— This doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” said Mae. “I’m not even going to talk about it. It’s ridiculous.”
“No, you saying I took Mimi’s recipe is ridiculous.” Amanda was ready to talk, now that the cameras had turned. “This is just truth, Mae. You don’t want it to be true. You don’t want anybody to know it. But it’s true.”
Mae reached out to grab Amanda’s arm, but Amanda yanked away. She didn’t want to hear it; she was done. She turned, ready to go into the house and lock them all outside and away, and then she slowed. Damn it.
Frankie was in there, and just about the only thing that could make this worse was—
Frankie opened the screen door just as Amanda reached it. “Mom, what’s up?”
That. Amanda frantically rearranged everything about herself, her face, her arms, what she was going to say next. Anything to get Frankie out of this.
“Everything went great this morning, Frankie,” Amanda said, stepping up close to her and holding out an arm as if she could herd her daughter back into the house. “They’re just— We’re just recapping. Only people who were there, though.” If Frankie would go inside she could use this as an excuse, follow her in, end this now.
But Frankie stood her ground. Worse, Amanda could tell by the look on Frankie’s face that her daughter saw this as an opportunity. Sure enough, Frankie put her hands on her own hips and stepped down onto the step next to Amanda, staring at her aunt and suddenly also resembling her. “I can’t believe you made a big deal out of the frozen biscuits, Aunt Mae. You know everybody freezes biscuit dough anyway, and we get them from a really good place, these two women outside Kansas City. They’re fresh and they’re homemade and they’re delicious. So it’s no big deal, and you made those chefs come freak my mom out about it.” She spoke loudly, and as she did, she looked around, appearing satisfied with the impression she was making. Then she seemed to run out of steam. “And I don’t think that was very nice.”
In spite of everything, Amanda felt a burst of pride in Frankie. That couldn’t have been easy. She didn’t have time to admire her daughter now, though. She needed to get Frankie back in the house before anyone said another word.
“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “All’s fair in love and Food Wars, right? Mae and I will work it out.” She shot her sister a look that was supposed to say, Please, just leave my kid out of this. Couldn’t Mae just give her that?
Apparently not.
“I guess what I would say to that,” Mae said slowly, “is that in general, if you don’t want people to know you’re doing something, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Frankie shrugged. “We’ll tell people where they come from, then. But I still don’t think you should have told everyone like that. On TV. That wasn’t fair.”
Amanda waited for Mae to start in on all the things Amanda shouldn’t have done, but Mae just stood there, probably planning her next attack. Amanda needed to move fast. “Let’s go inside, Frankie. They were just leaving.” She opened the door wide and gestured. Frankie looked from Mae to Andy to the camera, as if expecting more of a reaction, but other than Sabrina, madly tapping away at her phone just out of view of the camera, everyone else was still, Mae staring at the ground, Andy glancing at Amanda, then quickly looking away. In that moment, Amanda hated them all so fiercely that she wanted to go over and kick them both in the shins, kick and kick and kick until they took it all back and then kick some more. Instead, she spoke softly, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice. “Come on,” she said again to her daughter, more urgently. “Everybody needs a break.”
Leaving them all behind, Amanda ushered Frankie into the house and shut the door.
MAE
It took just long enough for Mae to feel safe before Sabrina made her move.
After Amanda’s announcement, a mostly quiet Sabrina, apparently lost in thought, returned Andy to Mimi’s and dropped Mae at the park where she was meeting Barbara and the kids. Mae was still conducting a one-sided argument with the Food Wars host as they pulled up at the curb. Her mother’s house had nothing to do with Mimi’s, or