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I get the second box loaded. “You want tarts, too?” I ask. “I’ve got the little lemon ones.”

“Yes. Obviously. Those are the ones Mom likes.” She finally puts the phone down on my case, face up, right on the glass, and leans on her elbows. “Okay, so, can I tell you about Mom? Because she is unwell.”

“What’s happening?”

“She’s spiraling about the slideshow.”

I look up. “The what?”

“The Christmas Eve slideshow. That Dad always did? Jeez, you’re way out of it today.” Vivian rolls her eyes so hard her whole head goes with it. “She’s been up my ass about it. Who’s going to do the slideshow, we can’t not have the slideshow, your father always had the slideshow ready way in advance. Like, ma’am, he’s dead. Nobody’s doing the slideshow.”

It takes the full force of my will not to break down then and there.

Of course she’s talking about Dad’s slideshow. In the corniest of cornball Dad traditions, he never missed a year. Every Christmas Eve, after dinner, he’d hook the laptop up to the projector in the den and run through the highlights of the year for the whole extended family. Vacations, birthdays, graduations, weddings, all of it, always soundtracked to the same way-too-upbeat rendition of Silent Night.

But Dad’s dead. It’ll be our first family Christmas since we buried him.

So I guess there’s not going to be a slideshow this year.

Unless...

All of a sudden, I get hit by a bolt of inspiration lightning.

I wrench my gaze up from the display case.

“I’ll do it.”

Vivian blinks. “Do what?”

“The slideshow. I’ll do it.”

“Seriously?”

“Sure.” I shrug like it’s all nonchalant. “It’s just pulling photos. I can throw it together real fast. And I’ll be there early with the food anyway.”

“You look like you’re about to keel over. You sure?”

That might be the kindest thing she’s ever said to me. “I’m fine,” I assure her. “Just had a long night getting all the holiday orders ready.”

“Oh, thank God. I’ll text her right now.” She flips her hair over one shoulder and giggles. “Do-It-All Delilah. You’re so good at that stuff.”

That stuff. Part of what she means is “stuff” like plugging a projector into a wall and hitting the play button in PowerPoint.

The other part of what she means is just generally having enough empathy to recognize that other people exist and have feelings.

Maybe it’s the nickname that pushes me over the edge. After more than two decades of it, I’m getting kinda sick of the whole thing.

I have done it all. When Dad died, Mom was grieving and Vivian was on an “unmissable” trip to Cannes with some new beau, so I talked to the hospital and the funeral home and the church.

I planned my whole wedding to Connor, down to the place settings. He wouldn’t have known where the ceremony was if I hadn’t told him the day of.

I paid my way through culinary school and opened this bakery, I shoveled the driveway when Connor “threw out his back,” I helped Viv de-ice her window when she swore she couldn’t figure out which end of the scraper to use.

I’ve done everything for my family.

And this is how they repay me?

She has the boxes tucked under her arm and her sunglasses back over her eyes, halfway turned toward the door, when I stop her by blurting out a question.