冰箱里的最后一块蛋糕保存了137天

When the coffee machine buzzed for the third time, I was scraping the frost off the freezer door with my fingernails. The red cake box wrapped in three layers of plastic wrap always occupies the top shelf, and the date is scribbled on the lid in marker: 2023.2.14 - Valentine's Day, the last time my mother called my name in full.

Every Tuesday at 3:14 p.m., I would take out the candle box from the depths of the cupboard. Those small colorful cylinders poked honeycomb-like holes in the condensed cream layer on the surface of the cake, like some weird geological specimens. Today is the 20th candle. The ink marks left on the candle body turned blue-purple in the low temperature. That was the number of the dying record form that the nursing home nurse stuffed into me last Christmas.

"Ding——"

The sound of the oven timer and the alarm of the monitor in my memory completely overlap. I turned around suddenly and knocked over the latte on the counter. The brown liquid flowed down the pages of "Alzheimer's Care Guide", and a swamp was stained in the "Memory Regression Therapy" chapter. A yellowed Polaroid slipped between the pages: my mother smiled at me with the same cake, and the frosted rose cast a small shadow on the tip of her nose. It was the last birthday cake she baked for us before she was diagnosed.

The refrigerator suddenly made an unusual buzzing sound. The moment I opened the freezer door, 20 candles burst into sparks at the same time, solidifying into golden amber in the -18℃ air. The candlelight refracted through the ice crystals on the side of the cake, revealing a line of frosting handwriting I had never seen before: "Don't count the candles, I stole the blueberry filling - Mom"

When my fingers touched the bottom of the cake box, the metal foil made a crisp sound. After removing the insulation layer, three dried blueberries lay on tin foil produced in 2017, with half a supermarket receipt next to them. The purchase time was 2016.11.23 - 17:03 on the day I received the diagnosis report.

The church bells downstairs rang at this time, shaking off the old frost on the top of the refrigerator. In the fluttering ice crystals, I noticed for the first time that the lighting in the freezer was warm goose yellow, just like the night light that my mother always insisted on turning on at the bedside.

I gently placed the 20th candle on the windowsill. The afternoon sun passed through the icicles and left a rainbow bridge on the surface of the cake, just connecting our smiling faces on the Polaroid.

(Thank you for accompanying me to this ending with the taste of frosting. May every frozen memory wait for the morning light to thaw.)