Your Love Came Late, I Chose Another novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Recipe Cards

I read the cease-and-desist in the truck with my hands shaking.

Twelve pages.

Words like "proprietary" and "developed in the course of employment" and "irreparable harm."

"Irreparable harm," I said. "To a cookie."

Ronan drove with one wrist on the wheel.

"Do you have anything in writing? Dated? Before you worked there?"

"I have my grandmother."

"Your grandmother can't testify, honey."

The "honey" slipped out of him.

He heard it the same second I did and stared very hard at the road.

I let it go.

I thought about it for three blocks.

"Wait," I said. "Her tin."

"Her what?"

"Her recipe tin. It's in one of my boxes."

Back at the inn I tore open every box in the spare room.

Clothes. Cookbooks. Knife roll.

At the bottom of the last box, wrapped in a dish towel, was a dented red tin with a rooster on the lid.

I sat down on the floor and opened it.

The smell came up first.

Vanilla and paper and the cedar drawer she'd kept it in.

Then the cards, a few hundred of them, soft as cloth at the edges.

Her handwriting. Big loops, everything slanted hard to the right.

I found it two-thirds of the way back.

SEVEN LAYER COCONUT. Christmas 1979.

Under the title, in smaller letters: "Toast the coconut. Press it on heavy at the bottom so the edge won't crack. Salt and lemon zest in the frosting, don't skip it, Noelle."

Under that, in pencil, in a kid's wobbly capitals, a second note.

I HELPED. NOELLE AGE 8.

I put my hand over my mouth.

Ronan was sitting on the top step outside my open door, not quite in the room.

"Found it?"

I held up the card.

He came in and crouched beside me and read it.

He read it twice.

"Christmas 1979," he said quietly. "Kearney Coffee House opened in 2004."

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