Hannah glanced quickly at Norman. They both knew what Candy had been about to say. I haven’t even finished high school, would be a fairly safe guess.

“How old are you, Candy?” Norman asked the question that was on the tip of Hannah’s tongue. It would be interesting to see how many fictional years Candy would add to her young life.

“Twenty,” Candy said, without batting an eyelash, and Hannah got the impression she’d told that particular lie before. “I’ll be twenty-one next month.”

Hannah and Norman locked eyes. Even though they didn’t say a word, Hannah got the feeling that Norman could read her mind and he agreed with what she was thinking. More questions would serve no purpose other than to elicit more lies from Candy. It was time to call it a night and let her think they’d believed her.

Norman gave a yawn that Hannah suspected was purely theatrical, and finished his mug of hot chocolate. “We’d better hit the road, Hannah. Tomorrow’s a workday and you have to get up early.”

“Right,” Hannah agreed, and then she turned to Candy. “You’ll be perfectly safe here if you lock the door behind us. I’ll be back around five tomorrow morning to start the baking.”

“I’ll help you. I like to get up early. Is there anything I can do before you come in?”

“Only if you get up before five.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll be up by four-thirty.”

“Then you can put on the coffee.” Hannah motioned toward the kitchen pot. “The grounds and filters are in the cupboard to the left of the sink.”

“Okay. It’s just like the pot Dad had at the clinic, so I know how to do it. How strong do you like it?”

“As strong as it gets.”

Candy nodded quickly. “You want me to fill the basket almost all the way to the top with grounds?”

“That’d be perfect. Thanks, Candy.” Hannah slipped into her coat and pulled on her gloves. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Hannah and Norman made their exit. They stopped outside the door, and by unspoken agreement they waited until they heard Candy lock the door behind them. Then they hurried to Norman’s car and climbed in, shivering.

“I’ll get the heater going right away,” Norman promised, firing up the engine and turning the heater to high.

Hannah shivered as he backed up the car. She shivered some more as he drove out of the parking lot and down the alley. But when Norman stopped at the end of the alley, she realized that she’d stopped shivering. As a matter of fact, she had to slip off her gloves and unzip her parka a bit because she was too warm. Norman’s heater was pouring out waves of hot air that felt positively tropical.

One glance at the windshield and Hannah was even more impressed. Instead of the patches of frost that clung to the inside of her windshield for the first five or six miles of winter driving, Norman’s windshield was already picture window clear and they’d been driving less than a block!