I didn’t need a calendar to know exactly when the trouble started. It was the Tuesday after the spring cleaning, when the new pastor’s wife, Brenda, decided she was the queen of the fellowship hall. My tablet buzzed at 6:14 in the morning with a Facebook alert from the church group. There it was. A crisp photo of the new church cookbook. Page forty-one. Sunshine Potato Salad. My recipe. The one that took the blue ribbon at the county fair back in 1988, when my knees were still good and my first husband, Dale, was still alive to help me carry the coolers.

It was my recipe, but it had Brenda’s name stamped right at the top. She’d spent the whole women’s retreat hovering near my elbow like a vulture, asking about the dressing, asking about the mustard, asking why my potato salad didn’t turn brown after sitting out for three hours. I’d given her a few vague hints. I’m not a mean woman, usually. But I didn’t give her the secret. The secret is never written down because it’s not just about the ingredients. It’s about the temperature of the water when you boil them and the exact second you fold the dressing in.

I just stared at the screen and sipped my coffee. My second husband, Arthur, passed three years ago, and since then, I’ve had a lot of time to sit on my porch and think about how the world works.

People like Brenda think they can just walk in and claim the best parts of our history because they have a fancy title. She figured she could take my life’s little joy and make it hers. I didn’t get angry. Anger is a waste of good energy. I just felt a cold sort of clarity.

I remember when I first perfected that salad. It was the summer Dale got sick. We were broke, and I didn’t have much to offer for the church potluck, so I made the biggest bowl I could with what was in the pantry. That salad became a staple. It was the one thing that always disappeared, no matter how much I made. It wasn’t just potatoes and mayo. It was a piece of my survival. And here was Brenda, trying to rewrite the history of my kitchen in a book that would sit on everyone’s counter.

The picnic was held on the first Saturday of July. The humidity was thick enough to chew on, the kind that makes your hair go flat and your spirit wilt. I arrived early. I had my own bowl, covered in a clean linen towel, nestled in a bed of crushed ice inside a cooler. I watched Brenda walk in, looking like she’d just stepped out of a catalog, carrying her bowl with a smug little smile. She placed it right in the center of the table. I walked up a moment later and placed mine on the left.