“Norman and I will be right back.” Hannah rose to her feet and motioned to Norman. “We’re just going to dash to the kitchen and compliment Sally on her Guilt-Free Parfait.”

Delores pulled a stack of papers from her briefcase-sized purse. They were stapled together, and Hannah assumed they constituted the list of names her mother and Carrie had called on the phone. “Go ahead, dear. I just want to go over these names with Carrie one more time. If you see our waitress, would you ask her to leave a large carafe of coffee?”

“I’ll make sure she does that, Delores,” Norman promised.

“Thank you, dear. That’s very sweet of you.”

Hannah couldn’t believe what she had just heard. Dear? At some time when she hadn’t been looking, Norman had been elevated from Norman to dear.

“I should call Lonnie,” Michelle pushed back her chair. “He may have some information for us. The reception’s better in the lobby, so I’ll just go out there to call.”

Andrea jumped up. “Hold on and I’ll go with you. I need to check on the kids.”

Hannah gave a glance back at the booth as everyone bailed. Carrie and Delores didn’t look at all upset, and she guessed it was okay with them. What on earth could she ask them to do that would be exciting and not injurious to their health?

“You look worried,” Norman commented.

“Just trying to think of something the mothers can do.”

Norman reached out to take her hand as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen. “That’s a tough one. They’re going to know if you feed them a placebo.”

“Nicely put,” Hannah teased him. “Do they teach about placebos in dental college?”

“Dental school,” Norman corrected her. “It’s just like med school, except it’s for dentists. We take courses in pharmacology so we can prescribe medications.”

They’d reached the plain wooden door near the end of the hallway. It wasn’t marked in any way, but both Norman and Hannah knew it led to Sally’s kitchen.

“Let’s go,” Hannah said, pushing it open and stepping into the busy interior of a working restaurant kitchen. “Come on, Norman. Let’s find Sally and tell her we love her parfait.”

Less than a minute later, Hannah and Norman were standing in the office Sally called her own, a room just off the busy restaurant kitchen. Large picture windows looked out onto the controlled chaos of the kitchen, providing Sally with a view of what her chefs and servers were doing on this busy night.

“Sit down and have one of my special espressos,” Sally said, pouring them both an espresso in the doll-sized cups Turkish coffee had made popular.

“The parfait was great,” Norman told her, leading off the conversation.