By the time dessert was served, I could already tell my father had slipped into one of his performance moods.

My parents hosted Sunday family dinners twice a month in their wide, immaculate suburban home in Columbus, Ohio—the kind of place where every chair matched and every framed photo looked more genuine than the people inside it. My brothers, Ryan and Caleb, were there with their wives. My younger sister, Lauren, had brought her twins, who were smearing mashed potatoes across their faces while everyone called it adorable. I sat halfway down the table in a navy blouse from Target, trying to look like I belonged in a family that had spent twenty years treating me like the typo in their perfect sentence.