Sign the Back
Bev Larson held up the proof copy like a baby at a baptism.
“Joyce, this rhubarb cake alone is worth the price!”
Everybody at the September circle meeting turned to look. Twelve women around two folding tables pushed together in the basement of Trinity Lutheran. Coffee in the big brown urn. A plate of lemon bars going around. The radiator ticking in the corner.
Joyce sat at the end of the table with her hands folded on her purse. She smiled and looked down at the tablecloth like a bride who’d just been told she looked beautiful.
“Oh, Bev,” she said. “It’s nothing. Just some old family recipes.”
Bev passed the book down the table. It went hand to hand. Ardis Thorson. Phyllis Engstrom. Little Karen Bjork, who is seventy-six but still called Little Karen because her mother was Big Karen. Everybody flipped a few pages and made little noises.
“Oh, look, caramel rolls.”
“Joyce, you’ve been holding out on us.”
“I didn’t know you could bake like this.”
Then the book came to me.
It was spiral bound, with a clear plastic cover and a cardstock front printed in orange and brown. A drawing of a pumpkin and some wheat. Across the top, in fancy letters:
HARVEST TABLE
Favorite Recipes from Joyce Halvorsen’s Kitchen
Trinity Lutheran Fall Bazaar — $15
I opened it to the page Bev had folded down.
Rhubarb Cake.
My rhubarb cake.
My mother’s, really. I’ve been making it since 1979.
I didn’t say anything. I want you to know that.
I just turned the pages while the coffee went around.
Scalloped Corn. — Joyce Halvorsen.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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