Every year for Thanksgiving, my mother would splurge on a very expensive cake from our local, bougie pastry shop. My father complained that it was too much money for a cake. My mother cut him a small slice. A moment of silence, a begrudging nod, and the argument was over.

The frosting was always decadent and tasted faintly of cream cheese, and the cake itself a dream of thick sweetness. One slice always felt like just enough.

Uncle Dylan, a man of many talents and very few dollars, became obsessed with this cake. Every Thanksgiving, he attempted his own version. The two cakes sat side by side, their frostings looking a little more the same every year as he perfected his baking. Every year, there was a blind tasting and every year Uncle Dylan’s cake sat, defeated, while the bougie pastry shop cake was dubbed “the real thing.”

Uncle Dylan handled the defeat the same way each year: a long sigh, a heave of his shoulders, and a single shot of Dad’s best whiskey. “I’ll get ‘em next year.”

Uncle Dylan was a man of “nexts”. He moved from relationship to relationship, hobby to hobby, quick money scheme to quick money scheme. It made it hard to know if he’d pull through on anything that mattered. I loved him, though. So did my older sister, Rose.

By the time I was eighteen, Rose and I were his baking assistants. We walked down the street to his house on Thanksgiving Day while Mom freaked out about the turkey. Uncle Dylan’s home was warm and small, and smelled of vanilla and coffee.

Bob the cat sat atop a stack of mail on the kitchen table. We paid homage to him with chin scratches and were rewarded with deep purrs.

“Welcome, my dears,” Uncle Dylan said. “Sorry everything’s a bit of a mess.”

We didn’t mind. Rose immediately began pulling ingredients out of the fridge. I nudged Bob’s ginger butt so I could get the mail off the table. A car I didn’t recognize pulled up outside, carving a path through the unraked leaves. A woman with lavender streaked hair handed Uncle Dylan a large paper bag and drove off.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“My spice girl,” Uncle Dylan said, waggling his greying eyebrows. We opened the bag to discover several glass containers marked in Sharpie. Mexican vanilla. Saigon cinnamon. Sea salt. Caster sugar. “She only brings the best.” Rose started measuring with Uncle Dylan’s mismatched sets of bowls and spoons.

“Is everything okay?” I asked quietly. All of the bills on the table had overdue notices on them.

“Everything’s fine, Lily. Don’t worry,” Uncle Dylan, taking the pile from me. “I’m like Bob. Always land on my feet. Come on, let’s bake.”

We were tweaking several amounts that year: cinnamon, vanilla, and freshly baked sweet potato. Once the orange brown batter had been poured into Uncle Dylan’s fancy pie tins, I mixed the frosting. Rose cuddled Bob while bemoaning her latest breakup.

“Whatever happened to Alex?”

“You mean my boyfriend from freshman year?” Rose was a senior in college. “He’s fine. We still hang out sometimes.”

“He was very steady,” Uncle Dylan said. I nodded at him behind Rose’s back. Alex had been the best of her boyfriends. She had a tendency to choose people as spontaneous as her, which was fun for a while, but usually ended with her talking to me and Uncle Dylan about how lame men were. Alex had been different.

“Yeah, he’s smart and funny, too.”

“All good qualities.”

“I’m texting this guy from New York right now, though. He’s pretty cool.”

“Just so long as he cares about your needs and appreciates you,” Uncle Dylan said. Rose rolled her eyes. Uncle Dylan raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. Uncles aren’t supposed to tell their nieces what to do.”

“That’s right,” Rose said with a mock glare. But I could see her thinking about it.

That night, Uncle Dylan’s cake lost by a single vote. Rose and I celebrated with a loud victory dance. Uncle Dylan smiled and bowed. I waited for the quick shot of whiskey and the “I’ll get it next time.” It never came. He walked home before Rose and I could say goodbye.

The year after, Uncle Dylan was gone for Thanksgiving, chasing one of his “nexts.” He was traveling a lot more. Bob had wandered over one day and basically moved in with Mom and Dad. They didn’t mind. Rose and I called Uncle Dylan to say hello and tell him about our baking endeavor that year: sweet potato cupcakes. His voice was tired on the other end.

“Turn the camera on so you can see me,” Rose said. The light flashed as it caught the ring on her left hand. “Tada!”

“Rose! Congratulations! Who is it? That cool guy from New York?”

“No,” Rose smirked. “It’s Alex.”

“Ah. Good choice.”

“We’re going to have the sweet potato cake from the bougie pastry shop for the reception.”

“Just make sure those pastry shop people don’t overcharge you.”

“Will do. The wedding’s in May. Can you come?”

“I’ll try to be there, my dear,” Uncle Dylan said.

Rose swallowed. ‘Try to be there’ was typically Uncle Dylan code for ‘I will forget and be sorry.’ “Okay, great. We love you.”

“Love you both.”

We barely heard from him in the coming months. The wedding preparations took up a lot of time and space so we didn’t worry too much. I think both of us kept thinking that he would show up full of wedding excitement and strangely niche expertise. And then his RSVP went unanswered. Rose cried. I did what I could to cheer her up, but that had always been Uncle Dylan’s forte. Aside from grabbing Bob for some cuddles, I was at a loss as to how to help her feel better.

The day of the wedding, Rose sent me to pick up the fancy sweet potato cakes from the bougie pastry shop. I felt a bit odd in my wedding makeup and hair paired with sweats and a plaid shirt. I was also in a rush because Rose had forgotten to send me the day before.

“Ah, yes, the Smith wedding,” the girl at the counter said. “We’ve got your boxes right here.”

I checked the clear tops of the four pink containers. Cupcakes for the kiddos. Good.

“And the main cake?”

The girl looked confused. “That’s all we have.” She clicked repeatedly on her clunky computer. She turned around and fumbled with the boxes behind her, nearly upsetting a tower of cookies. “I don’t see anything else.”

Oh no.

“What date was it placed?” I asked, mentally flipping back through all of the times Rose had invited me to work on wedding planning. I distinctly remembered having a long debate about the cake and seeing the final image on her phone.

“February 17th,” the girl said.

And just like that, I saw the whole scene: Rose with her hair up, lounging in her faded green pants with the paint stains, while her thumb hovered over the cake photo and the little checkbox for ordering it. “I’m going to get it!” But her phone pinged. One of her friends wanted to go for a last minute hike. I remembered the pause of her thumb as she saw the message come through and now I realized she had moved on without clicking the checkbox.

I left the pastry shop while the girl apologized profusely, my arms loaded with pink boxes. In the car, I took a deep breath. This was fixable, right? Wedding photos were in an hour, and the ceremony was in an hour, but someone could surely run out for a grocery store cake. It wouldn’t be ideal.

“She’ll feel so terrible,” I said to the car. The wedding had been stressful enough to plan while in her first year of grad school. This cake was one of the big things she wanted. I started to cry. “No. No. NO. Can’t cry with this makeup on.” I dabbed at my eyes. “Call someone.” But who? Everyone else was getting ready or picking up guests or taking things over to the reception hall.

I found myself dialing Uncle Dylan. The phone rang over and over and then, suddenly, his voice was on the other end, warm and welcoming.

“Lily! How are you?”

And then I did cry, makeup be damned. He listened in silence.

“When is the ceremony?”

“In an hour.”

“And the reception?”

“I mean, it’s a quick service and they’re heading there really soon after. Maybe two hours?”

“Leave it with me, my dear.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I know exactly what to do.”

I sent him the reception hall details, a picture of the cake Rose thought she had ordered. He promised to have a cake there in time. I dropped the cupcakes off in the reception hall freezer and told the people setting up the hall that the cake was on its way.

“Special delivery,” I said, hoping I sounded official. And hoping there would be something in the freezer when I returned.

Then I drove over to wedding photos, arriving just in time to assure Rose that everything was fine, even though I wasn’t sure if it was. Uncle Dylan sounded so sincere on the phone. What if he let me down?

The wedding blurred by me. Rose was beautiful. Alex looked like he was going to cry. I felt like throwing up.

The reception began. I kept trying to find a time to get back to the freezer to see if the cake was there, but everyone kept stopping me to chat or celebrate or talk about how beautiful the ceremony was. It was awful. I was certain any minute that Uncle Dylan would call to say that he hadn’t been able to find anything or, even worse, that he wouldn’t call at all. We would all be eating little tiny cupcakes and Rose would cry and it would be the worst wedding reception ever.

“Cake cutting time!” Rose declared. This was it.

Nothing happened. Everyone was realizing that they hadn’t seen a cake. Rose turned to look at me, confused.

And then, through the double doors from the reception hall’s kitchen, calm and collected, strolled Uncle Dylan. He was wheeling a three tiered cake with roses on it. Rose jumped up to hug him, dragging Alex over while everyone applauded.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” She was crying, but they were happy tears.

“Of course, my dear. Wouldn’t miss it.” He winked at me. I tried not to pass out. Where and how and when? Behind him through the double doors, I thought I glimpsed a woman with lavender streaked hair. The spice girl.

The cake was cut and Alex fed Rose a tiny slice oh so gently. She took a slice and playfully slammed it into his face. He didn’t seem to mind.

“This cake is so good!”

I had my own slice. It tasted just like the bougie pastry shop. “How?” I asked Uncle Dylan.

“Lily, you know I always land on my feet.”

The cake was such a hit that Mom had to fight off some children before she could get two slices to save for Rose and Alex’s anniversary. I caught her licking frosting off her fingers. The rest of the cake was completely abolished. I looked over to see Uncle Dylan talking to Dad. He seemed more alive than I had seen him in years.

That year for Thanksgiving, Bob made a triumphant return to Uncle Dylan’s house. Rose and I walked over to help with baking, accompanied by Alex. Uncle Dylan came out the door with two pie tins wrapped in foil. “I’m all ready!”

“What about the cake? The competition? Don’t you want to prove to everyone that you can make the ‘real’ thing?”” Rose asked.

“I think I’ll manage,” Uncle Dylan said. “What even is ‘real’ anyway?”

Maybe it’s just me, but the bougie pastry shop sweet potato cake tasted a bit subpar that year.