got his nickname. Pinky’s mother pressed Amanda’s hand, as if in sympathy. “Your poor mother,” she said. “At least she can get some help, but this must be hard.” No one mentioned the recipe. No one seemed to know about the chicken. But it had to be coming.
Mary Laura made her way out of the bar in a lull to lean on Amanda’s hostess station, eyeing her, keeping a lookout for the cameras. “God, girl,” she said. “Was that you? Or did Mae or Barbara let something slip?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Amanda said. “I was defending Frannie’s and it just came out. I didn’t think people would go after the dog. I didn’t know they’d really film it.”
Like Sabrina, Mary Laura rolled her eyes. “You didn’t know?” She snorted. “Of course you knew. But nobody would blame you for getting a little revenge, after all those years in that house. Won’t hurt her to have to clean it up. Still, you brought a fox into the hen coop; that’s for sure. But there were too many hens in here, right? We needed some stirring up.”
Amanda ignored Mary Laura’s claim that she knew what she was doing. She hadn’t intended any of this. “That’s an awful analogy, though,” Amanda said. “No one needs to get eaten.”
“You sure?” Mary Laura was heading back to the bar, leaving a drink for Amanda behind her. She liked to get in the last word. “I have to say, I don’t really see a way out of this that leaves every chicken standing.”
Amanda deeply regretted showing her friend any part of her chicken-centric Carrie adaptation, even if Mary Laura had loved it. If there had been fewer people waiting to eat, Amanda would have thrown the seating chart at her. She endured a few more snide comments about Mimi’s, and then, just as the night’s rush was really beginning, she saw Nancy, pinned in the corner by Sabrina and two cameras. She appeared to be arguing fiercely with Sabrina, although Amanda couldn’t hear what she was saying over the noise of the crowded bar. As she watched, Nancy looked up, and as their eyes met, Nancy pushed roughly past Sabrina and walked toward her.
This was it. Sabrina must have asked her about the recipe and told her why she was asking. Of course Nancy would be angry. Angry that Amanda would expose them to this, that she had put them in the position of having to defend themselves when there was no easy defense, no recipe they could point to and say, “Look, this is ours.” She had made the very thing that was a virtue about Frannie’s into a problem, and she’d done it—this was the worst part—by betraying Frank, and their marriage, and her only real family.
Nancy reached her, trailed by cameras. She turned and addressed the camerawoman, rather than Sabrina, who was standing right there. “I would like to have a word with Amanda,” she said. “Alone.”
The woman behind the camera didn’t answer. Instead, Sabrina smiled. “Can’t do it right now, Nancy. You and Amanda are kind of at the center of things tonight, and I can’t let you two out of my sight.”
Nancy put her hands on her hips; Amanda could see that she was struggling to control herself. “I would think you could let us have a small private word.”
Sabrina shook her head. “Nope. Not tonight.”
“Fine.” Nancy dropped her arms, then took off the small radio she wore so that the kitchen could buzz her at any time and handed it to Amanda. “I am going home,” she said. “This has gone too far, and I am through.” She turned to Sabrina. “No amount of money is worth this.”
Nancy walked out the door, leaving Amanda staring after her, and the cameras staring at Amanda. Could she just—leave? Didn’t they have to stay? And could they say things like that—things about Food Wars itself? Then, as if Nancy had passed her anger to her daughter-in-law along with the radio, Amanda found herself speaking more directly to Sabrina than she had to anyone in days. Or maybe years.
“You know it’s all a lie,” Amanda said. “You must know. They must know—Rideaux, Cary. And I don’t know how you got into my mom’s house, but even if she let you in, you know she had no clue what would happen. Putting it out there, on the Internet—you know that’s wrong. It’s not what I meant for you to do. None of this is what