There was only an hour to go before they could close the shop for the day, and Hannah was anticipating an evening at home with Moishe, a simple dinner of whatever she could find in her cupboards or her refrigerator, and a trial run of a new recipe she’d mixed up while the cheesecakes were baking. It was a type of cookie she knew Lynne would like, modeled after her favorite sandwich, peanut butter and banana on toast. It was the only cooking Lynne had ever done, if you could call toasting bread, spreading peanut butter, and slicing bananas “cooking.” They’d eaten so many peanut butter and banana sandwiches while studying together for finals in college that Hannah hadn’t been able to look at a jar of peanut butter for a full year after she’d left the campus to return home.

Hannah had just finished the last of her coffee and was preparing to rinse out her mug in the sink when the back door opened and her mother breezed in.

“Hello, Hannah,” Delores greeted her eldest daughter. “I have wonderful news!”

“You do?” Hannah took one look at her mother’s delighted expression and smiled right back. It was the first time she’d seen Delores look truly happy since Winthrop’s abrupt exit from her life.

“We finished early and Jared told us it’s absolutely perfect! The nineteen-fifties house is up and running, and I want you to be the first to see it. I value your opinion, dear.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’d love to see it,” Hannah agreed, pleased that her mother had chosen her for the first viewing. “Just let me ask Lisa to hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

A moment later, Hannah was back. She grabbed her coat from the hook by the back door and followed her mother across the parking lot to the rear of Granny’s Attic. She wasn’t even mildly suspicious until Delores opened the back door of Granny’s Attic, and Hannah found Ross Barton waiting for them. Was this another of her mother’s matchmaking attempts? Or had she invited Ross by virtue of his writer–producer hyphenate?

“Hey, Hannah!” Ross looked pleased to see her as she came through the back door and into the small narrow room that Delores and Carrie used for storage. “They made me wait in here for you. We’re supposed to be the first to see it.”

“That’s so you an keep us from looking like fools if there’s something wrong,” Carrie confessed, looking almost as happy as Delores did. “All you have to do is tell us, and we’ll fix it before anyone else sees it.”

Ross gave both older ladies a warm smile. “I’m sure it’s perfect. Can we go in now?”