She pressed it into my hands the summer I turned seventeen. 'For when you have your own place,' she said.
I never opened it. It sat between a stack of unreturned borrowed books from the church library.
Then the group chat went quiet. Cousins, aunts, uncles — the whole thread just stopped after the fight over the duplex.
We were supposed to all meet at the rained-out softball game that weekend. Nobody rescheduled.
Last week I pulled out the cookbook. The pages were dog-eared at all my favorite dishes.
In the margins, her handwriting: 'Add extra nutmeg for Marcus.' 'Don't tell anyone, but margarine works fine.'
She'd been talking to me through these pages the whole time. The group chat went silent, but this never did.
I made her chicken soup last night. I followed every note she left.