“Bake a Chocolate Chip Mega Cookie for Sue Plotnik. She’s been depressed lately, and Phil wants us to cheer her up. And that reminds me, do we have any extra Oatmeal Raisin Crisps we can package up for Janice Cox at Kiddie Korner? I need to go see her today.” Hannah stopped speaking and began to frown. “Let me rethink that. Maybe I shouldn’t give so many cookies away.”

“Wrong. You should give extra cookies away. Everybody knows we don’t sell day-old, and giving them away goes under the promotion category. I’ll check with Stan to make sure I’m right, but if I keep track of fair price for day-old cookies, we can deduct it from our taxes.”

“I’ve never done that before!”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t do it now. I’ll bet you never even thought to mention it to Stan.”

Hannah gave a little shrug. “You’re right. I don’t think I mentioned it. I just assumed that…”

“Never assume,” Lisa interrupted her. “Assumption is the mother of a compound word I’m not going to say. Just let me keep track and see if we can use the deduction.”

“Okay,” Hannah said, giving her partner a smile. It was going to be a lot more fun letting someone else handle the finances.

“Why do you have to see Janice? Andrea’s not thinking about putting Bethie in preschool this early, is she?”

“No, Grandma McCann is still living in, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she stayed for a couple more years.”

Lisa got out one of the stainless steel mixing bowls and began to round up ingredients for Sue’s cookie. “Herb ran into her at the Red Owl the other day, and she said she really likes living in town, especially now that it’s winter. She told him that wintering on a farm is hard when your family’s grown up and moved away, and you’re all alone out in the country.”

“I can understand that! My grandparents lived on Grandma McCann’s road, and sometimes it took almost a week to get it plowed. They were stuck there, come whatever, and if there’s a really bad winter storm, the phone lines go down.”

“Then you’d be stuck in a house all alone with no way to get out and no phone you could use to call for help. That’s really scary!”

“You bet it is, but that’s not the worst of it.”

“Really? What’s worse than that?”

“No cable and no satellite dish. The cable company doesn’t run out that far, and her farm is down in a low spot, so a dish won’t work without building an expensive tower. Andrea told me that Grandma McCann just loves the movies on the romance channel, and the only place she can get the romance channel is at Andrea and Bill’s house.”