Going through recipes without reading them was like eating a cream puff before it was filled. Even though Hannah did her best to page quickly through them, she found herself pulling out several she wanted to try immediately, some she needed to make for Christmas, and even more she intended to try within the next few months.

Her mug was empty by the time she finished sorting all the papers in the box, and Hannah got up to refill it. She hadn’t found Ibby’s toffee recipe, but she was sure she had it.

There was another place she could look. Hannah headed for the bookshelf in the living room where she kept her collection of cookbooks. One was from her father’s mother, Grandma Ingrid, and it had an envelope for recipes on the inside of the front cover. She might have slipped it in there.

By the time she’d finished going through the envelope, Hannah had a fistful of recipes to add to her piles on the kitchen table. Unfortunately, Ibby’s toffee recipe wasn’t among them. That meant there was only one more place to look and the moment Hannah thought of it, she was off and running to the guest room closet, where she was almost certain she’d stashed her old college backpack.

It took some doing. The closet was stuffed with cast-off clothing and other useless items she hadn’t been able to throw away, but eventually Hannah emerged from the depths, her search complete. Her naturally unruly red hair had been made even more unruly by an intimate encounter with a black plush coat that had belonged to her maternal grandmother, but she was clutching a bright red backpack covered with sewn-on patches from exotic places she’d never been.

“I found it!” she said, as she switched off the lights and carried it down the hall to the kitchen. That was another advantage of living alone. There was no one to think you were crazy if you talked to yourself. And on the off-chance that someone dropped by and caught her at it, Hannah could always pretend she’d been talking to Moishe and she hadn’t realized he’d left the room.

Hannah sat down, took another sip of coffee, and eyed the backpack. Without books it seemed oddly deflated, like a beach ball that had been left out all winter. It didn’t look promising, but it was the only place she had left to look.

“Here goes nothing,” Hannah said to the cat that wasn’t there, and plunged her hand down into the bottom of the backpack. The first thing she encountered was her old lunch sack with something in the bottom. Whatever it was, or had been, it was light years past the expiration date. Hannah also found a pair of sunglasses, a handful of assorted pens, and a combination lock to which she’d forgotten the combination. Eventually her fingers touched paper, stiff paper the size of an index card.

Heart beating hard, Hannah drew her hand from the backpack and took a look. It was Ibby’s recipe for Metaphysical English Toffee. She could hardly wait to taste it again!