At My Best Friend’s Cookbook Launch, I Found My Mother’s Recipe Written As Her Family Memory

PART 8

I did not send the email to Ellen immediately.

I called Jo.

“Did you answer this?”

“I wrote ‘recipe is fine.’”

“Nothing about the story?”

“No.”

“Did you think I had approved the larger arrangement?”

“Yes.”

I wrote that down even though I would remember it forever.

Then I called Ruth and asked whether Ellen had said anything similar to her.

Ruth searched her email while we were on the phone.

“Not exactly. She said the contributor framework had been settled with you and the library.”

“Settled how?”

“She did not say.”

The library had settled nothing.

Steven confirmed there was no agreement, license, or project amendment beyond our original community permissions.

Again, that did not automatically tell me what legal rights anyone had over a recipe or remembered anecdote.

It told me something simpler.

Ellen had been telling different people that other people had already agreed.

I opened my project archive and built a timeline.

June — Harbor House attends supper event.

July — contributor-based proposal with names.

August — Harbor House asks about stronger authorial frame.

September — Ellen submits revised single-author concept.

October — Ellen tells me publisher is “exploring a book inspired by the supper series”; asks for high-resolution recipe scans for “proposal visuals.”

November — Ellen asks Ruth whether cabbage recipe can be adapted; says individual pieces may be condensed.

January — tells Ruth I prefer collective acknowledgment.

February — tells Jo I signed off on shared source material.

March — asks Denise for permission to use “anything helpful”; Denise agrees.

April — manuscript closes.

September — publication.

I stared at October.

High-resolution scans for proposal visuals.

I had sent them.

I searched the email.

My reply:

Sure. Use these for the proposal mock-up only, please. If the book goes forward, we will need to circle back with contributors about actual use.

Ellen:

Absolutely. This is just to show the press what the project looked like.

That message was the plant I had not known I was planting.

Not because it proved every later use was forbidden.

Because it proved Ellen knew, at the proposal stage, that I expected another permissions conversation.

She never had one with me.

At work the next morning, I found another version file in the shared folder.

The folder had been copied to the library drive when the supper project ended. Ellen no longer had edit access, but the old version history remained with the files we had created together.

A document titled BOOK CONCEPT — V2 contained a short note at the top:

Potential structure if Harbor House prefers single author: Ellen narrative + community recipes woven as source/inspiration. Need to confirm attribution/permissions individually if pursued.

The note was in Ellen’s own initials.

EW.

I sat perfectly still.

People change their minds.

People forget notes.

People rationalize after opportunities become real.

But the note removed one defense I had been quietly giving her.

She had understood the need to circle back.

Then, somewhere between proposal and manuscript, asking everyone became inconvenient.

The problem had not begun with confusion.

Confusion came later, after the choice.

I emailed Nina.

I have found a project version note from before contract stating that individual attribution/permissions would need confirmation if a single-author structure was pursued. I also have contributor emails in which Ellen represented that I or the library had already approved shared source use, which we had not. I do not want to flood you with private correspondence. For the contributor review, I think we need a simple source-by-source record of what Harbor House was told and what each contributor actually agreed to.

Nina replied:

Agreed. Please do not send other contributors’ emails without their permission. I will prepare our source-use summary and ask Ellen to do the same. Each contributor can provide their own record.

Again, process.

Again, relief.

That evening, Ellen called.

“Nina says you found another old note.”

“Yes.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

The question angered me more than I expected.

“I am trying to stop guessing.”

“You think I planned this from the beginning.”

“No.”

“Then why are you digging through version history?”

“Because you told Jo I approved something I did not approve.”

Silence.

“How do you know that?”

“She showed me.”

Ellen’s voice became quieter.

“I was trying to get the manuscript finished.”

There it was.

Not a full explanation.

Not an apology.

A motive small enough to be believable.

“By telling her I had already said yes?”

“I believed you would.”

“You believed I would or you needed me to?”

She did not answer.

I looked at my mother’s recipe card on the desk beside me.

“Ellen, I am not going to argue this one email at a time. Nina is organizing a review. I will bring my records. You bring yours.”

“What happens to us?”

The question cut through everything.

“I don’t know.”

“Seventeen years and you do not know?”

“Seventeen years is why I am not pretending I know before we finish the truth.”

She started crying.

Quietly.

I hated hearing it.

I did not take back the boundary.

Both things were possible.