Index Cards

She always shopped like she was trying not to be seen.

Not in the dramatic way — no sunglasses indoors or trench coats in July. More like she moved through aisles with the careful economy of someone who’d learned to take up less space. She kept her basket close, read labels too intently, and never made eye contact with the cashier until the moment she had to.

On a Monday in early October, she broke her own habit and went to Pomeroy’s Market at 6:17 p.m., the hour when other people — loud people — showed up to decide dinner based on hunger and optimism. She came because her fridge was empty except for mustard packets and half a lemon. Also, because she’d promised herself she’d cook something real.

Something that took a cutting board.

She took a handbasket and drifted past the produce. Apples. Kale. Avocados stacked in a careful pyramid. She had no plan yet. Plans were the part where things got complicated.

She stopped at the end cap where Pomeroy’s advertised LOCAL HONEY in block letters. The jars were squat and serious, like small trophies. Next to them sat a stack of index cards in a wire holder. Above the holder, a sign read—

LEAVE A RECIPE, TAKE A RECIPE.

The cards weren’t printed. They were handwritten, some in careful looping script, others in frantic slants like the writers had been mid-thought when they committed the ingredients to paper. She hovered like she was in a museum she couldn’t afford.

She took one card from the top.

It was pale blue, edged a little frayed. The handwriting was neat, slightly old-fashioned, and the title was underlined twice.

Lemon-Rice Soup (for when your kitchen feels too quiet)

Makenzie read it once, then again, slower.

It listed simple things — onions, broth, lemons, eggs. A handful of herbs. Rice. It was the kind of soup that sounded like it belonged to someone who knew how to keep a house warm.

At the bottom, under the instructions, there was a note—

If you can’t get fresh dill, use parsley and forgive yourself.

Makenzie’s throat tightened in a small, embarrassing way. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the forgiveness. Maybe it was the idea that a stranger had written it for no reason except to send comfort out into the world like a message in a bottle.

She looked around to make sure nobody was watching her be sentimental in aisle three. A man was choosing between two brands of crackers with profound seriousness. A toddler was crying because life was unfair. Nobody cared about Makenzie and her little recipe card.

She slid it into her jacket pocket as if she were stealing it.

Then she made herself do the hard part — she built dinner from words.

By the time she reached the soup aisle, she had repeated the ingredient list in her head enough times that it started to feel like a spell.

Broth. Rice. Eggs. Lemons. Onion. Dill.

She took chicken broth, low sodium, because that was what her mother used to buy when she still cooked like she believed the future was stable. She grabbed a bag of jasmine rice before remembering the card didn’t specify a type. Rice was rice, right?

Makenzie didn’t trust that.

She went back and found plain long-grain. Safer.

In dairy, she hesitated at the eggs, hovering like the carton might bite her. Eggs meant precision. Eggs meant possibility. Eggs also meant that if you messed up the temperature, you ended up with hot broth full of pale, sad ribbons that looked like a science experiment.

She took a dozen anyway.

By the time she found dill, it was the last bunch and it looked like it had survived a small war. She picked it up, sniffed it, and felt ridiculous for doing so. It smelled bright and green, like a clean shirt.

At checkout, she placed her items on the belt carefully, as if order would make them behave.

The cashier, a young woman with a nose ring shaped like a tiny crescent moon, scanned the broth and rice and nodded.

“Soup night?” she asked.

Makenzie blinked. “Is it… obvious?”

“A little,” the cashier said. “It’s getting cold out. Plus you have dill. Dill’s a soup herb.”

Makenzie didn’t know dill had a reputation.

The cashier scanned the lemons. “This is your first time trying the recipe cards?”

Makenzie’s hand moved to her pocket instinctively. “I — yeah.”

“They’re nice,” the cashier said, as if they were talking about a TV show. “My grandma leaves one every month. She says people need more instructions and fewer opinions.”

Makenzie almost laughed, but it came out as a soft breath.

“Does she sign them?” Makenzie asked, unable to help herself.

“Sometimes. Sometimes she writes little notes and forgets she wrote them.” The cashier smiled, then tilted her head. “You’ll do fine. Soup is forgiving.”

Forgiving. Again with the forgiveness.

Makenzie paid and left, holding her grocery bag like it contained something fragile.

Her apartment was on the third floor of an old building that smelled faintly of laundry detergent and someone’s incense. The stairwell light flickered the way it always did, like the building was tired of pretending to be reliable.

Inside, her kitchen was small enough that she could stand at the sink and touch the stove with her hip. The counters were clean in the way of a place where nobody really cooked — there was nothing out to get messy.

She set her groceries down and pulled the card from her pocket.

The blue paper was warm from her body. She smoothed it on the counter and read it one more time, as if the words might change.

Lemon-Rice Soup (for when your kitchen feels too quiet) Makes 4 bowls, or 2 bowls and leftovers you will actually want.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced (optional, but recommended)

6 cups chicken broth (or veggie broth)

1/2 cup uncooked long-grain rice

2 eggs

2 lemons (zest + juice)

1 small handful dill, chopped

Salt + pepper

Olive oil or butter

Instructions

1. In a soup pot, warm 2 tbsp olive oil (or 1 tbsp butter). Add onion. Cook until soft and glossy, 6 – 8 minutes. Add garlic if using. Stir 30 seconds.

2. Pour in broth. Bring to a gentle boil. Add rice. Lower to a simmer. Cook until rice is tender, about 15 minutes.

3. In a bowl, whisk eggs until smooth. Add lemon zest and lemon juice.

4. Temper the eggs- Ladle in one scoop of hot broth while whisking fast. Then another. Slowly pour egg mixture back into the pot, whisking the whole time. Do not boil after this.

5. Stir in dill. Taste. Add salt and pepper until it feels like something you’d serve to someone you like.

6. Eat. If you’re alone, eat anyway.

If you can’t get fresh dill, use parsley and forgive yourself.

Makenzie stared at that last line for a while.

Then she took out her cutting board.

The onion made her eyes water almost instantly, which she appreciated. It was a clean, physical reason to cry. She chopped it into uneven cubes, and instead of getting frustrated, she reminded herself — the soup didn’t care.

The pot warmed. The olive oil shimmered. She added the onion and listened to it sizzle.

The sound filled the kitchen like company.

While the onions softened, she minced garlic, even though the recipe had said optional. She didn’t want optional. She wanted definite. She wanted the soup to taste like it knew what it was doing.

She poured in the broth, watched it go from clear gold to a gentle rolling boil. She added rice and turned the heat down, stirring once in a while, just enough to keep it from sticking.

When the rice was nearly tender, she zested the lemons, the peel fragrant and sharp. She juiced them and got sticky fingers. She cracked two eggs into a bowl, the yolks bright as tiny suns, and whisked until they went pale and foamy.

This was the part she didn’t trust.

She ladled in hot broth, just like the card said, whisking as if speed could solve everything. The egg mixture warmed without scrambling. She breathed out slowly.

Then she poured it back into the pot in a thin stream, whisking the whole time. The soup clouded slightly, turning silky, like it had decided to soften.

Makenzie turned off the heat before it could boil.

She chopped the dill, sprinkled it in, and watched the little green fronds scatter and float.

The soup smelled like clean heat and bright citrus, like an open window on a cold day.

She tasted.

It was gentle, but not bland. The lemon lifted it. The rice gave it weight. The dill made it taste alive. It tasted like someone had set a blanket on fire, carefully, for the purpose of warmth.

Makenzie stood in her kitchen holding the spoon and realized she’d been smiling without meaning to.

She poured herself a bowl.

She ate at the small table by the window, her knees tucked up, her phone facedown. Outside, the streetlights had turned on, reflecting in wet patches on the sidewalk. Somewhere below, a car door slammed. Someone laughed, briefly, then vanished into the noise of the city.

Makenzie took another spoonful.

Halfway through the bowl, she thought of the cashier’s grandma — of her hands writing the recipe card, choosing words like forgive yourself the way some people chose spices. The thought didn’t make Makenzie sad. It made her feel… included, somehow. Like she’d been offered a small membership to something she didn’t know existed.

When she finished, she didn’t immediately stand up to clean. She sat and let the warmth settle.

Then, because the card holder at Pomeroy’s had been clear about the rules, she did the other half of the bargain.

She pulled a notepad from a drawer and tore off a page. She stared at it, pen hovering.

She didn’t have a signature dish. She didn’t have a family recipe with history and gravitas. She had a few things she could make without Googling, and most of them involved pasta.

But the card hadn’t been fancy. It had been kind.

So Makenzie wrote what she knew.

She wrote in her own careful handwriting, slightly cramped at first, then loosening as she went.

Midnight Toast (when you want something warm but don’t want to talk about it)

Ingredients- bread, butter, cinnamon, a pinch of salt, honey if you have it.

Instructions- toast bread until you can smell it, butter it while it’s still hot, sprinkle cinnamon and salt, drizzle honey. Eat standing at the counter like it’s a secret. If you’re sad, take smaller bites. It lasts longer.

At the bottom, almost without thinking, she added-

This isn’t a meal, but it’s a moment.

She looked at what she’d written and felt a little exposed. Like she’d left her window open.

Makenzie folded the paper in half, then unfolded it, smoothing it again. She copied it onto an index card she found in a junk drawer, one that had been left over from a time she thought she’d learn a new language.

She held the finished card between her fingers.

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

The next day, she went back to Pomeroy’s at 6:17 p.m. on purpose.

She didn’t need groceries. She needed the wire holder.

The store looked different in daylight, more practical. Less like a place where strangers could leave little gifts. But the recipe display was still there, right by the honey. The same sign. The same stack of cards.

Makenzie stood there longer than necessary, card in hand.

A woman beside her pulled a recipe from the stack and frowned at it like it had personally offended her.

“Who needs three kinds of beans?” the woman muttered.

Makenzie almost said, Maybe someone who’s trying their best. Instead, she simply slid her own card into the holder, tucking it between a recipe for “Easy Weeknight Chili” and something titled “Grandpa’s Pancakes.”

She stepped back, heart oddly quick.

It felt like leaving a note in a library book.

As she turned to go, she reached out and took one new card — because that was the rule, and because she wanted to see what else lived in this small, anonymous exchange.

This card was yellow, the writing messy, bold. The title read-

Tomato Butter Pasta (for when you’re out of ideas)

Makenzie smiled right there in the aisle, the kind of smile that made her look, briefly, like a person who belonged to her own life.

She tucked the card into her pocket.

She didn’t know who would pick up her Midnight Toast. She didn’t know if it would help anyone, or if it would just confuse them.

But last night, lemon and rice and dill had turned her quiet kitchen into something softer, something human.

And today, she’d left a small instruction behind.

Not an opinion. Not a performance.

Just a way through the evening.

When she walked out of the store, the wind had teeth, but the sun was still out, and the recipe card stayed warm in her pocket.

Butter. Tomatoes. The sound of something starting in a pan.

Later, she would cook again.

The kitchen might be quiet.

That would be fine.