Perhaps she shouldn’t have had Sally’s freshly baked salted pretzel appetizer at the Lake Eden Inn last night. She’d dipped Sally’s delicious pretzels in Kalamata olive aioli and that had been salty, too. She’d consumed more salt than she usually did, and that must be why she was so thirsty this morning.
But was it morning? Hannah came out of the bathroom clutching a half-empty glass of water. It was still dark outside the window, but that told her nothing about the time of day. It was February in Minnesota and daylight didn’t come until after seven in the morning. It could be six-thirty and that meant she was late to work. Or it could be ten or eleven-thirty at night.
There was only one way to find out what time it was and Hannah checked her alarm clock. And that was when she discovered that it was thirty minutes past the time she usually got out of bed. That meant she’d slept through the whole night without waking once. Perhaps Mike had been right when he’d recommended delicious food, good wine, and sleep. Sleep was a great cure for anxiety . . . unless you woke up with a nightmare. Now that she’d assuaged her thirst, she felt much better. She also felt safe because Mike was sleeping on the couch in her living room. She’d slept so deeply, she hadn’t even roused when her alarm had begun its irritating electronic beeping. Or had her alarm beeped at all? She might have been so tired, she’d forgotten to set it last night. Either that, or Michelle had come into her bedroom and turned it off to let her sleep longer.
There was a delicious scent in the air and Hannah began to smile. Michelle was up and she was baking. It took Hannah a moment to recognize the scent, and then she laughed.
“Apricot!” she said, leaning down to pet Moishe. “Michelle’s baking something with apricots.” And the moment she identified the scent, she remembered the strange dream she’d had. She must have smelled the scent in her sleep and spun the story of her dream.
“Let’s get up, Moishe,” she said, interrupting his morning stretch. “I’ll take a quick shower and we’ll go find out what Michelle has made for our breakfast.”
* * *
“Apricot Coffee Cake,” Michelle responded to Hannah’s unspoken question. “I knew that baking something good would wake you up.”
“It’s smells wonderful, Michelle,” Hannah said, heading straight for the kitchen coffeepot to get her first cup of eyeopening java. “How long have you been awake?”
“A couple of hours. I tested recipes and my Apricot Coffee Cake is just one of them. I’ve already packed up the others and we’ll try them when we get to The Cookie Jar.”
“I didn’t see Lonnie in the living room,” Hannah said, and then she wished she hadn’t mentioned it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry into your personal life.”
Michelle laughed. “You didn’t. He got up when I did and headed for home to change clothes and take a shower. He told me that he’d be back before breakfast.”
Hannah carried her full coffee mug to the kitchen table that, according to Delores, would be an antique in less than ten years. A moment later, Michelle joined her at the table with her own mug of fresh coffee. “Would you like me to take an Apricot Coffee Cake over to Marguerite and Clara? I baked four of them.”
“That would be lovely, but you’d better check to see if they’re up yet. They always open the curtains in their living room to let me know that they’re awake for the day.”
“And I’d better do it before Mike gets out of the shower,” Michelle said with a smile. “Right?”
“Right!” Hannah watched as Michelle wrapped one of the coffee cakes on the cooling rack in aluminum foil and carried it to the living room to check on the status of their neighbors’ curtains.
“They’re up,” Michelle reported. “I’ll be right back, Hannah.”
When Michelle left, Hannah took a deep swallow of her favorite wake-up beverage and smiled as she looked out of the kitchen window. One of the arc lights that bordered the condo complex was casting shadows on the snow, and she wondered whether Clara had completed her assignment for painting class by finishing her photos of shadows. She was still thinking about Clara’s assignment and how much work it would be to take photos every two hours of the shadows falling in a particular spot, when she heard the door