At Christmas dinner, my sister lifted her glass, smiled like she was delivering a punchline, and introduced me to her boyfriend with one sentence: “This is the failure of our family.”

Christmas at my father’s house always smelled like cinnamon, roast butter, and performance. The garlands were always hung at the same angle over the staircase, the silverware always polished until it could turn candlelight into another kind of lie, the tree always dense with ornaments heavy enough to suggest history and wealth and the kind of family tradition people admired from the outside. Every December, the same message floated invisibly through the rooms along with the scent of cloves and orange peel: look how happy we are. Look how lucky we are. Look how beautifully this family turned out.

I was standing in the kitchen tying an apron around my waist when my stepmother, Tina, swept past the island and stopped to inspect the hors d’oeuvres as if she were a general checking a line of nervous soldiers before battle. Her blond hair was sprayed into a smooth helmet. Her lipstick was the exact glossy red she wore every year because she believed Christmas photos needed a signature color. She didn’t ask how I had been. She didn’t say I looked tired from the drive. She didn’t say she was glad I had made it.