“I’ll bet he was impressed,” Hannah said, turning to smile at her.

Candy nodded. “So was Mom. And after that, she used to ask me to memorize things for her.”

“What things?”

“The grocery list when we went to the store. That was just in case she forgot it. And Dad’s number at the clinic. She could never remember it. I tried to teach her, you know? I told her it was all ones, fours, and eights. I mean, how hard is eight-one-four, eight-four-four-one? But she kept getting it mixed up.”

Candy stopped speaking and frowned slightly. It was time to change the subject. She was talking too much about herself and she didn’t want Hannah or Lisa to guess where she came from. “When we’re through with the cookies, do you want me to make you a chocolate pecan roll? You could sell it in slices.”

“That sounds fabulous,” Lisa said. “How about it, Hannah?”

“Absolutely. If there’s anything you need that we don’t have, I’ll give you some money and you can run down to the Red Owl.”

Candy thought about that for a minute and then she shook her head. She’d taken a good look at the contents of Hannah’s pantry the first night she’d stayed in The Cookie Jar, and she’d spotted almost everything she needed. “Do you have butter?”

“We’ve always got butter,” Hannah told her. “My Grandma Ingrid used to always say that there’s nothing that doesn’t taste better with more cream, more sugar, and more butter.”

Candy laughed. It was a funny line and she had to remember it so she could use it on Mom. But she wouldn’t see Mom again, at least not for a very long time.

“Anything else?” Lisa prompted her, and Candy was glad. She was getting sad again, thinking about Mom and home.

“Chocolate in squares, the kind that’s wrapped in white paper. I need two of them.”

“Unsweetened, semi-sweet, or German’s?” Hannah gave her three choices.

For a second, Candy was stymied. She hadn’t known there was more than one kind of chocolate that was wrapped in white paper. The one she needed smelled good and tasted awful, but they might not know that. “Just a second, and I’ll tell you what the package says,” she said.

Candy shut her eyes and thought about the package they kept in the cupboard at home. “It comes in an orange and brown box and it says Baker’s in big yellow letters. And there’s a picture of a lady in an apron right before the name. That’s at the top on the brown part. And then on the orange part it says, Unsweetened Baking Chocolate Squares.” Candy opened her eyes and blinked.

“You were visualizing it, right?” Hannah asked.

“Right. Do you have it?”

“Yes, we do. Anything else?”

“Just stuff you already have. Do you want me to write out the recipe to make sure?”

“Good idea,” Hannah said, handing her a pen and one of the notebooks that secretaries used to carry in the old black-and-white movies Mom and Dad used to watch. “It never hurts to double-check. If we like it, I’ll add it to our recipe file. Put your name on top so we can give you credit if we use it in the shop.”