The head judge was Mr. Abernathy, who’d judged preserves for twenty years and who’d given Mama five blue ribbons. He came over while Carol was still talking, picked up the winning jar, and tasted it with the little wooden spoon. He looked at Carol for a long moment.

“Interesting,” he said. “Linda’s jam never tasted like this.”

Carol’s smile finally cracked. “Well, I — I made a few adjustments—”

“Did you?” He set the jar down. “Because this tastes like somebody followed a card and missed the whole point.”

He didn’t disqualify her on the spot. He didn’t have to. Half the exhibition hall was listening, and by suppertime everybody at the fair knew. Carol left before the pie auction. She hasn’t spoken to me since, and my husband — caught between his mother and his wife — has been sleeping on the couch of his own choosing, which tells you everything about where the guilt sits.

This August, I entered eleven jars under my own name. Mama’s real recipe. I won, and when Mr. Abernathy handed me the ribbon his eyes were wet, and he said, “Tastes like Linda.”

That night I sat at Mama’s kitchen table and copied the true recipe onto a hundred index cards — the real one, leaf tea and all. At Christmas, every jar I give away will have one tucked under the ribbon. Some things a woman keeps. But some things, once somebody tries to steal them, you give away free so nobody ever has to steal again.