The last page of her cookbook.

Dear you,

My mother wrote in the margins of everything. Shopping lists, phone numbers, the backs of receipts. I used to find it untidy.

When I took her cookbook home, I expected recipes. On the last page, underneath a recipe for lemon cake, she had written the dates of every time I had made it with her. There were eleven. I remembered three.

I baked it last Sunday. The middle sank, as hers always did. I ate a slice over the sink, got out a pen, and added another date.