You wouldn’t believe how many folks don’t want to cook breakfast on Christmas morning. They much preferred Mama’s hot biscuits and homemade preserves to anything they could do themselves. We were always up by four that morning prepping, open for business from eight to noon, and home opening our own gifts by two. A strange Christmas, a working Christmas, but I never minded. The money we made that morning didn’t just pay for Christmas gifts. It paid for dance and singing lessons. For cheering and gymnastics fees. For new tap and ballet shoes. Mama never held with me having a job because she knew how demanding my schedule was, but I worked for her.

Inevitably, I’d have Christmas dance recitals, parades, holiday singing competitions. Mama never complained. She just juggled all her responsibilities at the diner, made sure I got where I needed to be, and that she was there when I needed her presence and support.

Christmas was a time of traditions, hard work, and gratitude. Mama never wanted me to take the little we had for granted. She made sure each Christmas Eve Glory Falls’s homeless or those in need had a hot meal. They’d crowd the basement of Glory Falls Baptist Church, and we would serve. Even though Mama is gone, that tradition remains.

And if I never see another dollop of mashed potatoes it will be too soon. I’m not sure if Glory Falls’s homeless population has tripled in the few months since I moved to L.A., or if I’m feeling Mama’s absence that acutely, but I can’t keep up with this crowd. Aunt Ruthie and I have been plating for the last thirty minutes. I first learned about the miracle of the fish and the loaves in a Sunday school classroom upstairs. It feels like we have our very own miracle meal going on, because I swear we didn’t make this much food. It’s multiplying faster than we can scoop it into the sections of the rectangular Styrofoam plates.

“Kai, honey, can you serve plates out there for a little bit?” Aunt Ruthie swipes a sleeve over her perspiring forehead. “I think Lila could use some help.”

“Sure thing.” I tighten the ties of the apron around my waist and adjust the hair net Aunt Ruthie insists I wear. I think more just to privately laugh at me than for sanitary reasons.

I grab a tray of plates, almost buckling under the weight of the food, and walk into the basement’s fellowship hall. Some church members are upstairs preparing for the service we’ll have in about an hour. Others are serving food out here or helping Aunt Ruthie in the kitchen like I was. Some are giving out coats from the winter wear drive Mama started years ago. I love seeing that program live beyond her. Christmas has always been all hands on deck for those less fortunate. That’s a legacy from Mama, and Grammy before her.

“Let me take that for you, Kai.” Mr. McClausky, one of Pops’s oldest friends, relieves me of the heavy tray. “Sure is good to see you back.”

“It’s good to be back, Mr. M.” I lift a couple of plates from the tray and hand them down to people waiting for food.

“How’s it going out in Los Angeles?” Mr. McClausky follows behind me with the tray, and I keep passing plates down to people and adding a smile.

“Pretty good.” I grin up at him over my shoulder. “Can’t complain.”

“You meet any superstars out there?” Mr. McClausky gives me a peekaboo grin, showing off the space where a tooth used to be.

“One or two.” I can’t help but think of Rhyson and wonder what he’s doing right now. Maybe I’ll sneak in a text if we finish the service before it’s too late to see how things went with his parents.

“We sure do miss you around here.” Mr. McClausky hands the now-empty tray over to me. “And your mother. She was a fine woman for sure, and this town hasn’t been the same since she passed.”

“Thank you.” I drop my eyes to my soft-soled boots that split the difference between fashion and comfort.

“Your daddy . . .” Mr. McClausky pauses, an uncharacteristically uncertain look on his face.

“What about him?” My voice usually weakens to nothing or goes stony when I speak of my father. There’s no middle ground. I’ve wasted enough weakness on him, so stony it is. Mr. McClausky must hear the hard shift because his face softens with something close to pity.

“He was a fool.” Mr. McClausky pats my shoulder. “How he could leave a precious little thing like you and a woman like your mama, I’ll never understand.”

He’s asking a question that has tortured me since the day Daddy missed my recital. I avoid the sympathy in his eyes and look around at the people enjoying a hot meal on Christmas Eve.

“I always knew he wasn’t the one though.” Mr. McClausky tucks his words into a conspiratorial whisper, making me lean in to find them.

“Wasn’t the one?” I frown, finally looking at him again in case his face yields more insight. “What do you mean?”

“Before he retired, I told your grandfather Jim wasn’t the one to take over Glory Falls Baptist. I said he wasn’t the one for your mama neither.” Mr. McClausky gives a firm nod of his balding head. “But he didn’t listen to me. Twenty-five years of friendship, and he chose that one time not to listen. Well, and your mama loved that man something fierce, so it seemed like it was meant to be.

“Why wasn’t he the one?”

There are questions that stay with us our whole lives. Seeking, searching for the answers, is what drives us on and forward. If we ever found the answers, we might stop moving. If we ever found the answers, it might feel like losing a friend who has spurred us on every step of the way. All my questions about my father are like that, but I have to know.

“First time I met your daddy, he ate past full.”

“What does that mean? Ate past full?”

“I watched that man eat himself almost sick that night. Your mama had a spread like nothing I’d ever seen.” Mr. McClausky licks his lips like he can still taste that meal. “Like she emptied the pantry trying to cook her way into that man’s heart. He was just about sick, but do you know what he did?”

I shake my head because I gave up long ago trying to figure out anything about my father.

“He heaped more on his plate and kept on eating.”

“That’s why you knew he wasn’t the one?” I give a sharp, little laugh. “People overeat all the time, Mr. McClausky.”

“You didn’t see him. It was something about the way he just wasn’t ever . . .” He twists his lips, searching for the word. “Satisfied. He wasn’t ever satisfied. No matter how good a thing was, no matter how much he got, he couldn’t be satisfied. It wasn’t just food either. I saw it more than once. Underneath it all, he was a man of excess. You can’t hide something like that forever. His appetites ruled him, and nothing was ever enough.”

Nothing was ever enough.

Certainly not a backwoods Baptist church with only a handful of members and a small hundred-year-old parish house to live in. Certainly not his little wife, who devoted everything she had to a modest home and a family. Certainly not his daughter, always nipping at his heels, doing pirouettes, and begging for attention. Was it that nothing was never enough, or when it came down to it, was it just that we weren’t?

“William McClausky!” Aunt Ruthie yells from the kitchen doorway with her hands on her ample hips. “You been standing still long enough for moss to grow under them feet. Get back in this kitchen and grab another tray.”

Mr. McClausky pushes his brows up his shiny, bald pate, his face longsuffering.

“Duty calls, and her name is Ruthie.”

He ambles off toward the kitchen, and I start counting the number of people who still need plates. About halfway across the room, I become aware of someone standing a bit too close at my back. I turn abruptly and nearly stumble face-first into a broad chest. I look up, but can’t see the man’s face because his head is lowered, and a hood flops down to obscure my view.