Four full years, give or take a few days, had now passed since Chelsey had last participated in Thanksgiving dinner with her family. She had never made a conscious decision to stop attending her family’s Thanksgiving celebration. But four years ago, something had come up, she and her husband and daughter couldn’t make it, and then that made it easier for something to come up the next year, which made it even easier for something to come up the next year, which made it not even necessary for something to come up last year, which led to family-wide outrage at Chelsey’s string of absences. And then this outrage was multiplied by the death of Chelsey’s father, because that meant she had skipped out on his last ever Thanksgiving, which Chelsey didn’t think was that big of a deal since she’d been with him at his last ever Christmas, his last ever birthday party, and his last ever anniversary celebration, all of which had occurred after his last ever Thanksgiving, but her siblings, especially her older brother Seth, disagreed.

               So, having driven back to Multioak just ahead of a pursuing cloud of unaccepted guilt, Chelsey and her husband and daughter arrived at Chelsey’s parents’ house, which was now just her mother’s house, Chelsey supposed. Noon was yet ten minutes off. The day was both cold and bright, a common combination in the Multioak Thanksgivings of Chelsey’s memory.

               “Look, Mom,” said Ginger, who was thirteen. “Grandmom already has her Christmas stuff up.”

               “Huh,” said Chelsey, eyeing the unlit multicolored bulbs strung straight along the gutters to both ends of the house.  

               “Has she ever done it this early before?” asked Gage, Chelsey’s husband.

               “Not that I remember,” said Chelsey. A giant wreath adorned with sprigs of holly and gold garland hung on the door. Chelsey rang the doorbell. Her mother answered, scolding Chelsey for ringing instead of just coming inside. Only then did she hug her daughter, then her granddaughter, then her son-in-law. And then, though most of the family gathered in the living room had a clear view of the front door and all arrivals thereby, Chelsey’s mother called out, “The Wallards are here!”

               Ginger scurried down the hall and disappeared down the basement stairs to join her cousins in front of a movie already in progress. Chelsey and Gage made the circuit of the living room, hugging or shaking hands or neither as was appropriate. How are you? How have you been? How are you holding up? Chelsey’s mom had invested in a new pre-lit Christmas tree that dominated the space, and the mantle above the never-used fireplace was lined with a mixture of unfamiliar, presumably new Christmas knick-knacks and those Chelsey remembered from her childhood.

               Chelsey waited until she crossed paths with her sister Sybil to ask. “What’s up with the Christmas stuff? Why did Mom decorate so early this year?”

               Sybil rolled her eyes. “She did it two weeks ago. Paid a service to put up the outside lights. I guess Dad was the only thing holding her back all these years.”

               “I mean, I don’t really care,” said Chelsey. “We don’t have our Christmas stuff up yet, but whatever, it doesn’t bother me. But it’s just strange because I thought decorating the day after Thanksgiving was the family preference.”

               “So did we all,” said Sybil. “But it was just Dad’s preference, apparently. Farah and Kyle put their Christmas decorations up as soon as they heard Mom had done it.”

               Farah, Chelsey’s sister-in-law, walked over when she heard her name invoked. “So?” she said. “Thanksgiving doesn’t have its own decorations. They’re holiday decorations. No one complains when the decorations are still up at New Year’s. Why shouldn’t they be up for Thanksgiving too? They’re all part of ‘The Holidays.’ So why is it so wrong?”

Her voice, rising as she became more defensive, attracted Seth’s attention, who joined the conversation from across the room, thereby drawing everyone else in as well. “It’s not objectively wrong. But it’s just funny to me that as soon as Dad dies, everything changes. It’s like you all were waiting for him to die so you could get your nutcrackers out of the attic a few days sooner.”

“Us ‘all?’” said Kyle. “You mean Mom and me and Farah. And we were not waiting for Dad to die. Farah’s family has always decorated well before-”

“Where is Mom?” asked Chelsey.

The argument continued around her, but Sybil touched her elbow and said, “I think she’s in the kitchen.”

Relieved to have a reason to escape the living room, Chelsey wound her way through family members and various pieces of furniture bearing forgotten snack plates, their surfaces smeared with crumb-specked dip residue, and plastic cups, their contents reduced to discolored ice-melt. In the kitchen, which displayed fewer touches of Christmas than the rest of the house but not zero touches of Christmas, Chelsey found her mother chatting with a young woman wearing a white apron and a hair net. The turkey was carved, side dishes of all kinds appeared ready to go, and a variety of pies waited in the wings. But it was the aroma of baking bread that elicited the sharpest hunger pangs from Chelsey, which was a shame because she was no longer eating gluten.

“Hi, Chels,” said her mother, who had never before addressed her as “Chels.”

“Hi, Mom,” said Chelsey. “Who’s this?” She smiled at the young woman, extending her hand.

“I’m Lydia,” said the young woman. “I’m a baker.” Her hand was cold and damp, but not in a way that suggested a recent washing. Chelsey had expected the hand of a baker to feel more like a baked good itself, warm and pliable.

“A baker, huh?” said Chelsey. “You didn’t feel like baking this year, Mom?”

Chelsey’s mother waved her hand. “Oh, I baked all the pies. Lydia’s just here to bake the rolls. Don’t they smell good?”

“They do,” said Chelsey. “No offense meant to Lydia, Mom, but you hired her just to bake rolls?”

“They’re special rolls,” said her mother. “It’s a whole big deal. And expensive, too. But Seth’s paying and he explained the whole thing to me and I think it sounds good.”

“Explained what?” asked Chelsey. She glanced at Lydia, who was observing the conversation without, it seemed, any impulse to step in and clarify. Chelsey wished she would. Her mother always took the most roundabout possible route to a point, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to get lost along the way.

“I set up Christmas too early,” said Chelsey’s mother. “I got too excited. Your dad wasn’t here to stop me.”

“Who cares?” said Chelsey. “I was surprised to see all your Christmas stuff out already too, but I really don’t see why it’s become this big family scandal. And what does that have to do with Seth paying Lydia to bake special rolls for our Thanksgiving dinner?”

A pocket on the front of Lydia’s apron emitted a harsh alarm sound, prompting Lydia to remove her phone from said pocket, silence it, grab an oven mitt, open the oven, and extract a large pan of golden dinner rolls.

“Go gather the adults in the dining room and tell the kids to sit down at their table in the basement,” said Chelsey’s mother. “And then come back and help me start bringing the food out.”

When everyone was seated and all but the pies and rolls was arrayed on the dinner table, Chelsey’s mother announced that she wanted to say something. Everyone hushed.

“I’m so glad everyone’s here,” she said. “Well, everyone except Cassius.” Her voice quivered on the second syllable of her deceased husband’s name. “But that’s the point, right Seth?”

Everyone looked at Seth, who nodded. They mostly looked as confused as Chelsey felt.

Her mother went on. “But I’m glad you’re all here. It’s really important. Because we have to figure it out now. We all have to pitch in and try to make up for the loss.” She paused. “Someone has to keep me from setting up Christmas before we even eat Thanksgiving dinner.”

Chelsey and Gage gave this line a little sympathy chuckle, but no one else did, and nothing in Chelsey’s mother’s demeanor suggested she’d meant it to be taken light-heartedly. Chelsey glanced at Farah and Kyle. She wasn’t the only one. Her brother and sister-in-law were meeting each glance with defiance.

“All right,” said Chelsey’s mother. “Before you make plates to take down to the kids and then serve yourselves, there’s something we need to do first.” She turned to the kitchen. “You can bring them out now, Lydia.” Chelsey’s mother sat down and Lydia emerged cradling a cloth-lined wicker bread basket full of rolls. She stood next to Chelsey’s mother at the head of the table.

“Happy Thanksgiving, everyone,” she said.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” said Chelsey, alone failing to pick up on the cue that a reciprocal greeting was not expected.

“Before you begin your meal in earnest,” Lydia continued, “we’re going to pass this basket of rolls. Each of you is going to select one roll. Then, when you’ve all made your selection, I will come around and take note of which roll you chose. And then, when your selections have been recorded, you’ll all eat your rolls. And then I’ll be out of your hair and your Thanksgiving dinner can proceed as usual!” She smiled as if she expected no questions.

“What’s this about?” asked Kyle, prickly from the ongoing Christmas decorations dispute.

“She’s getting to that,” said Seth, his voice weary from the task of maintaining patience with such people as his mother and brothers and sisters and their spouses, not to mention their kids, not to mention his own spouse and his own kids. Seth’s wife, Tilly, displayed what Chelsey took to be limited and conditional support for her husband’s plan, whatever it was.

“Oh, OK,” said Lydia, apparently surprised to hear that she was getting to that. “I wasn’t sure how much detail you wanted.”

“Just lay it all out,” said Seth. “If you don’t, there’s gonna be even more complaining after the fact. Unless knowing up front could change the results?”

“It won’t change the results,” said Lydia. “It just slows down the choosing, sometimes.”

“Just tell us,” said Gage. Lydia was surprised to hear her husband speak up. He had a tendency to fade into the background in her family’s spaces.

“So,” said Lydia, snapping back into presentation mode. “Each of these rolls has been carefully crafted to represent some of the important roles that your father, Cassius Mirrow, filled in your family, roles that, through the research conducted by me and my team, we have determined to be vital to maintaining the family dynamic you all rely on. In order for this family dynamic to persist, you all will have to take on some of these roles that were vacated when your father passed. So, as you select a roll, you will also be selecting a selection of roles, and by consuming the roll, you will be adopting those roles, declaring your intention to perform those roles to the best of your ability for as long as you remain a member of this family.”

“Excuse me,” said Sybil, raising her right hand high over her head like a student eager to correctly answer “chlorophyll” or “cadmium” or “Carl Jung.”

“Yes?” said Lydia.

“When are you saying ‘roll’ as in ‘r-o-l-l’ and when are you saying ‘role’ as in ‘r-o-l-e?’” asked Sybil. “Like, is this explanation written down anywhere? Are you speaking from a script we could look at? Because this ‘roll/role’ thing doesn’t really work when you’re just saying it out loud. It doesn’t work in an audio-only format. It’s like you’re trying to be confusing on purpose.”

“Just use context clues!” Seth nearly shouted. “You know the difference between ‘roll’ and ‘role,’ Sybil, you know how they’d be used in a sentence!”

Wyatt, Sybil’s physically imposing husband, planted both palms on the table on either side of his empty plate as if about to stand, but said nothing, opting to glare at Seth instead.

“Just a second,” said Chelsey. “So, just going back to something from earlier…are you saying, Lydia, that being the person who stops my mom from putting up her Christmas decorations too early is one of these roles ‘vital to maintaining our family dynamic’ or whatever you said?”

Lydia nodded. “Yes. I know it may seem trivial to you, but look how much strife her early decorating has already caused. Consider how much better this gathering would already be going if someone had prevented the early decorating.”

“It would be going the same,” said Kyle. “It would just be a different argument.”

“All right, well, that may be,” said Lydia. “But sometimes the important thing for the family dynamic is not whether or not an argument happens, but what the argument is about, who’s on which side, how the tension builds and releases. There are many subtle factors. And if a certain role within the argument is vacant, a role that you all rely on playing off of, that you all look to for cues, then you feel uncomfortable, the whole argument is imbalanced, and you feel things and say things and do things you would never have otherwise felt or said or done.”

“But what are the other roles?” asked Chelsey. “Other than stopping Mom from decorating early, I mean.”

“I’m not going to run through the whole list now,” said Lydia. “I’ll cover each of the roles that you’re taking on individually after you’ve eaten your roll and I’ve determined which roles those rolls correspond to. But I’ll give you a few examples. One of you will become the family member who keeps everyone abreast of your cousin Kayla’s troubles. One of you will become the family member who reminds everyone to vote. One of you will become the family member who tells everyone how mutts live longer than purebred dogs. One of you will become the family member who understands Kyle’s job.”

“I hope I get that one,” said Kyle, entertaining the possibility of being in a good mood again.

This time, everyone except Chelsey chuckled, even Gage.

“So we just choose a roll at random?” asked Chelsey.

“No,” said Lydia. “It’s not random. You choose the roll that you want.”

“But we don’t know which roles correspond to which rolls,” said Chelsey.

“Right,” said Lydia. “But by choosing the roll you want, you end up with the roles you’re meant to have, the roles to which you’re most suited or the roles to which you’re most capable of becoming suited.”

Chelsey sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. “Well,” she said. “I hope everyone else enjoys their new roles in the family. But I don’t eat gluten anymore.”

She expected Seth to erupt, but it was Tilly who said, “Oh, come on, Chelsey! You’re just now dropping gluten? No one even talks about gluten anymore!”

For some reason, the unexpected source enabled this attack to penetrate Chelsey’s armor, and she scooted her chair back so quickly that its legs caught on the carpet and she almost tipped over. Instead, she steadied herself, bumped the table as she stood since she was still too close to it, squeezed around Gage, and fled to the living room as Seth called, “Where are you going, Chelsey? We need you here. Everyone needs to choose a roll!”

“It’s OK,” said Lydia. “I’ll talk to her.”

Chelsey stood in front of the mantle as she collected herself, surveying the Christmas knick-knacks arrayed there through tears she would not acknowledge enough to wipe away. She felt Lydia enter the room behind her, but Chelsey didn’t acknowledge her either. The knick-knacks she knew made her feel nothing. The wooden snowflake, the inexplicably green glass snowman, the caroler figure with the crooked nose: nothing. And of course she felt nothing for the new ones. The winking angel, the fawn wearing a jingle-bell collar, the cardinal wearing a green scarf: also nothing. But there was one she kind of liked. She wasn’t sure why. It just appealed to her. It was a minimalist Santa figure. He didn’t even have a face, just a hat and a beard framing a peach-colored blank. Was there a faint reddening to represent his famously rosy cheeks? Chelsey picked it up to examine it more closely. No. No reddening. No rosy cheeks. But now that she held the figure in her hand, what was it made of? It was hard to tell, even in a general sense.

“A bold choice,” said Lydia.

Chelsey didn’t turn around, but she didn’t set the Santa knick-knack back on the mantle either. “What do you mean?”

“You chose your roll,” said Lydia.

Now Chelsey turned. “Do you mean ‘roll’ or ‘role?’”

Lydia smiled. “‘Roll’ is actually a very broad term,” she said. “Most non-bakers don’t know that. Even many bakers don’t know that. They don’t know how many things can be a roll.”

“You baked this?” asked Chelsey.

“I baked it,” said Lydia. “I baked it to represent the most important roles your father once filled for this family and I placed it where only the right person for those roles would find it and choose it.”

“The most important roles?” asked Chelsey. “What are they?”

“They were secret roles,” said Lydia. “Secret from everyone. Even secret from himself, in some cases. Roles he didn’t even know he was filling. Roles through which, in his performance of them, he kept you all from heartbreak, disease, insanity, divorce, criminal prosecution, asphyxiation, obsession, poverty, abduction, ennui, public humiliation, perversion, failure, and so on. Or, mostly kept you all from those things, anyhow.”

“And If I don’t choose these rolls?” asked Chelsey. “I mean roles?”

“You’ve already chosen them,” said Lydia. “All that’s left is for you to take a bite.”

With her mouth still full, Lydia asked, “Does this have gluten in it?”

“No,” said Lydia.

“I didn’t think so,” said Chelsey. “‘Cause this does not taste like bread.”