My Best Friend Took My Wedding, So I Fed the Whole Town novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Mother's Box

The ribbon on the box had been tied by my mother's hand.

I knew it by the knot, the double loop she used on my braids every morning of my childhood.

I sat down on the floor of the loft with the tin in my lap.

Lasse lowered himself beside me, his shoulder against mine, and did not say anything.

The lid stuck.

I pried it up with my thumbnail.

Inside were about sixty index cards, soft with age, the corners brown with butter.

They were in my mother's handwriting, small and upright, in blue ink.

Pickled herring.

Rommegrot.

Krumkake, with a spatter of batter across the date.

Fattigmann.

Ingrid Fjeld, 1991.

I read the titles with my thumb, one at a time, and every one of them made my throat close a little tighter.

I had not heard her voice in eight years.

I could hear it now in how she had written "Don't rush this" under the rommegrot.

"Take your time," Lasse said.

"I am."

Near the back of the box there was a card with a corner torn.

The card said LEFSE at the top, and underneath, in the same blue ink: Potatoes riced hot, not cold. A spoonful of cream. Never knead. Chill overnight. Roll thin enough to read the newspaper through. On the back, underlined: Never trust one bowl.

Under the recipe she had written a line I had never seen.

For B. L., who asked. Please don't enter this at the fair, it is for supper.

In the margin beside it, in a hand that was not my mother's, someone had added two letters in green pencil.

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