“Thank you,” she says sweetly and cocks her head to the side. “So I want to tell you about my cookies. I spent all Saturday making them. I got the idea from the Internet. And I baked them all and carefully laid them out to cool before I assembled them, and soooooo that’s allloooooottt of cookies.” She inhales sharply, showing the great amount of work and difficulty. “You guys know how busy I’ve been with so so much to do … Ohmigod. And the cookies are always extra. Well, they were all over the dining-room table and all over the counter and so I had to put wax paper on the bed and put more there.” She exhales. “So I start a load of laundry while they cool, ’cause after all I have to do the housewifey stuff, too, and just after I get the load in, Kevin calls. I’m considering putting some of the cookies on the washer and dryer next. But Kevin needs me to check something on the computer about a case. ‘I’m doing my cookies,’ I tell him.” Her voice changes to the sweet, cloying tone she purrs when talking to Kevin.

“‘I know. I know it’s cookie day. I hate to bother you.’” And now she deepens her voice.

“Boy, does she have him trained,” Taylor jokes.

Jeannie says, “Yeah, my husband knows to stay away on cookie day, too. ‘Don’t interrupt the cookie bitch on cookie day,’ he says.”

“Ahem.” Rosie brings the attention back to her. “So. I go into the office and fill out this quit-claim deed for him and it takes about fifteen minutes. All the time I’m thinking this is okay, the cookies’ll be nice and cool. Then I email it to him.” She punches an imaginary send button. “And call and tell him it’s in his inbox and start back to my cookies.” She has the invisible phone between her fingers. She leans over slightly. “But there’s Thelma coming out of the bedroom with a guilty expression on her doggy face. I check the bedroom, and sure enough, she had jumped up on the bed and eaten half the cookies and messed up the other half.” Rosie shakes her head annoyed. “That dog!” And shakes her head again. “That dog. I love her, but …” She exhales to show exasperation. “Then I check the dining room and she had pulled down one sheet of paper and eaten those. So I had to remake the cookies. And, you’ll see, I had to figure out which ones she ate and that took almost an extra hour and then I had to redo them and let them cool.”