To bake, slice thin, about 1/6 inch, with a sharp knife. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes until just slightly browned at the edges. Watch closely, as they can get overbaked easily. Allow to cool a few minutes before removing from the pan. Each log makes about 25 to 30 cookies.

Cookies are very crisp and taste great dunked in coffee or milk. My favorite holiday breakfast and late-night snack!

JULIET’S HIPS SWAY AS she sashays into my office to retrieve her bags. She towers above us, cascading curly blond hair.

“All that Pilates you’re doing is really paying off,” Allie comments.

Juliet reaches for a sip of wine and says, “I got the greatest compliment in my life. My daughter came home unexpectedly and I had just gotten out of the shower, dressed only in bra and panties, and she said, ‘Wow, Mom. I hope when I’m your age I have a body half as good as yours. You look terrific.’”

“Well, you can see the difference. Like Wonder Woman,” Laurie says.

Juliet brings her brows together and squints one eye, a perfect caricature expressing, Oh yeah, right. “The cellulite and wrinkly knees are under the clothes.” She laughs.

I enter the kitchen for chips and dip, and Laurie follows. “Juliet’s something else. Great husband, great career, great kids, grandkids. And to top it off she’s beautiful.”

The mention of grandkids immediately reminds me of Sky. My cell still hasn’t rung.

“And in great shape.” Laurie pours Diet Coke in her wineglass. “And lives in a terrific house! Well, I don’t know how she does it. She makes it look effortless.”

“We’ve all had our share of shit.”

“But hers is invisible. She seems to float through everything. Even her cancer.”

“She was scared. I was, too. Later, she led support groups for several years.” A few days before her surgery, Juliet had talked to me about her fear. Breastless, what would happen to her marriage? Then she added, “Besides, so much of my erotic feelings are in my nipples.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Better to miss your nipples than your life.”

“Exactly.” And she looked away.

“Well, see? She turned lemons into lemonade,” Laurie says.

“Yeah,” I agree. I remember when I met her, the girl who sat next to me in homeroom complaining about curly hair she couldn’t iron straight enough to meet the style of the day. So much is determined by whether our looks match the ideal of our teenage years. Her hair and her pimples and her height made her a giraffe among ponies.

“I hate hate hate my hair,” she had said one day.

“I used to want hair just like that. Spent hours winding strands around my fingers trying to make ringlets.”

“Used to.” She spat back at me. “Back in elementary school.”

“Who knows, maybe curly hair will be in again.”