“What’s that?”

“Everyone in Lake Eden knows I could use some help over the holidays. Lisa and I are so busy, we have to make an appointment with the Kleenex box to sneeze.”

Baking at The Cookie Jar was a dream come true. Hannah was nice and she said funny things that made Lisa and Candy giggle. Candy hadn’t felt this good since she’d grabbed her things and hit the road, and she found herself smiling as she shaped a pan of Candy Cane Cookies the way Lisa had taught her. It was easy. All you had to do was roll out a spoonful of white dough and another of pink dough, twist the two rolls together, and shape it into a cane with a crook on top.

“We bake these only nine minutes,” Hannah told her. “Any longer and the white part will turn brown.”

“Wouldn’t that be golden instead of brown?” Candy quipped, remembering how her mother had described the cake they’d left in the oven too long.

Hannah laughed and turned to Lisa. “She’s a natural. She’s already read the baker’s excuse book.”

Candy finished the last sheet of cookies and slipped them into the oven. They were flavored with almond and her mother would have loved them. There was a bakery only three blocks from their house and she used to walk down there every Saturday morning and buy Mom a chocolate-covered stick of marzipan.

Tears sprang to Candy’s eyes. She really missed her mother. To keep from thinking about her too much, she concentrated on the cookies baking in the oven.

“You don’t have to watch them every second,” Lisa told her. “You set the timer, didn’t you?”

“Sure, I did. For nine minutes. And I wasn’t really watching the cookies.” Candy blinked the moisture from her eyes and turned to face Lisa. “Do you want another candy recipe? I just remembered one.”

“You memorized recipes?”

Candy nodded. “I’ve got one of those weird memories. I can see the recipe in my mind and all I have to do is read it out loud. I forget what it’s called.”

“Photographic memory,” Hannah supplied the term. She was standing at the counter, her back to Candy and Lisa, crushing peppermint candy for the topping on the Candy Cane Cookies. “It’s like your mind takes a picture with a camera. There are times I wish that I had a photographic memory, but I understand there’s a drawback.”

“What’s that?” Candy asked.

“Photographic memories aren’t very selective. Memorizing recipes is a skill that could come in really handy, but I’ll bet you find yourself memorizing a lot of useless things, too.”

“You’re right!” Candy said with a giggle. “I still remember the license plate on our old van. It was personalized and it said, critters. Mom got it for Dad when he opened the clinic.”

Lisa laughed. “That’s cute. How about your driver’s license number? Did you memorize that?”

“I don’t have…” Candy stopped in mid-sentence. She’d told Hannah that she was twenty and that meant she should have a driver’s license. “I don’t have that one memorized. I can name all the books of the Bible in order, though. I memorized them right before we went to visit Grandpa Samuel. He’s a Methodist minister.”