knew that was what Mae wanted most—for the whole world to know she had her life under control and could handle everyone else’s besides.
She looked more carefully at the post, scrutinizing it for signs of her sister’s handiwork, knowing in her heart that there was no way Mae would reveal her mother’s shame like that, both for her own sake—Mae had said all along that the one thing they didn’t want Food Wars to do was see the house—and, if Amanda was honest, for Barbara’s. In all those years of Mae fighting Barbara, trying to clean the place up, trying to change her, Amanda had never seen Mae allow anyone else to criticize her. At the faintest suggestion from a teacher or another parent that Barbara could do better, no matter how much Mae might secretly agree, she instantly rose to Barbara’s defense. Mae’s loyalty to Barbara never faltered.
But she had no loyalty to Amanda at all. Amanda would never have told Sabrina about the house if Mae hadn’t betrayed her already, making up this stupid story about the recipe and putting Amanda right in the middle of it. Barbara probably knew what Mae had done, or if she didn’t, she would soon enough, and she wouldn’t care. Her mother always thought the sun shone out of Mae’s ass.
They didn’t deserve anything from Amanda. And was this even really that bad? Mae could help Barbara clean it up. And Mae should help Barbara clean it up. All these years, it had just been Amanda, going in every so often to try to deal with the worst of it, to make sure that her mother wasn’t eating anything that could kill her, that she still had a chance of getting out if the house caught fire, with Barbara scolding her to just leave things alone. Not even wanting her there. Amanda should have left her alone a long time ago.
It was Mae’s turn. Nothing that bad could happen now. She and Mae weren’t little girls to be taken away. They were grown-ups. Barbara was a grown-up. It was time she faced her own mess.
Amanda turned to Frankie. Mae’s apt words from earlier came to her mind. “I guess I would say that if you don’t want people to know you’re doing something, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Frankie looked at her mother, and her eyes widened. “You told, didn’t you?”
Gus stared at Amanda. “Wait, you told?”
Slowly, Amanda nodded.
“But they’re going to take Patches away,” Frankie said. “She loves Patches. Mom, I can’t believe you let them do this!”
“I didn’t ‘let’ them do anything. I don’t have any idea how they got into the house. But the mess—they needed to know. Don’t you guys want to win?” Amanda asked. “I mean, this is real. Her house really looks like that. She really does make the pies there.” And her famous lemonade cake with sprinkles, for every one of Gus’s and Frankie’s birthdays, and most of Amanda’s. And the chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that sold out first every time one of the kids’ clubs had a bake sale. But that didn’t excuse her horrific mess of a house. “It’s not fair to have people judging Mimi’s against Frannie’s if they don’t know that.” Amanda felt a swell of righteousness. If they could tell lies about her, why shouldn’t she tell the truth about them?
“But you had to know she would find a way to get in,” Gus said angrily. “They film everything. They’re everywhere.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to.” They didn’t know why, not yet, but Amanda couldn’t bear to tell them. “They were saying stuff about Nancy and me, okay? And it wasn’t even true. This is.” She pushed past them, knowing that once she was inside, she’d be able to count on her kids not wanting to fight in front of the cameras. They’d know eventually. Everyone would know everything eventually. But for now, couldn’t she just go serve some people some fucking fried chicken?
She should have known she couldn’t. As she seated customers and moved back and forth through the dining room, she felt an increasing sense of being watched. In spite of Nancy’s long-standing rules about phones for staff on the floor, she saw them being passed from hand to hand, huddled around, and then shoved out of sight when she or Nancy appeared. Pinky Heckard made a joke about avoiding the “mouse-dukey pies” at Mimi’s. She’d gone to school with Pinky. He ate erasers—that was how he