I could smell the turkey cooking, even in the attic where I was hiding out. I heard a laugh, too, and a bang from something being dropped. Our house was noisier since my new stepsister and step-mother moved in — Jen and Mom.

I called her Mom, but the word felt uncomfortable, like a pair of shoes that pinched (夹脚). I didn’t remember my own mother; she had died in an accident when I was a baby. It had always been just Dad and me. We were a team. Now, so much had changed, and sometimes I wished I had the magic to change it back.

I heard Dad’s footsteps upstairs. “Do you want to take Jen skating?” he asked.

“I guess.” I sighed, thinking about how Dad and I usually spent Thanksgiving Day building a big snowman. But this year, Dad was too busy helping Mom cook the turkey.

“Thanks,” Dad said and put his arm around my shoulders. “We’ll make that snowman later,” he promised.

“Yeah,” I agreed, not too sure we’d have time.

Mom handed us some homemade cookies with smiling faces as we grabbed our skates. I had to admit, Mom came up with good ideas sometimes. Even though I liked that, I still couldn’t help but feel as if she were changing everything.

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry,” I said, although I was, a little.

“Ready?” I asked Jen. She nodded, and we headed out the front door.

The snow crunched under our boots as we walked down the street. The silence was awkward. “Did you go skating a lot last year?” I asked, blurting out the first thing that came to my mind.

Jen shook her head and looked at me. Finally she said, “On Thanksgiving, Mom and I always went to visit some friends on a farm. I especially loved seeing their big turkeys.”

Until then, I’d never even thought about how Jen must be feeling. She not only had a new stepfather and stepbrother; she had a new town and home, too. Jen and her mom used to live near a lake, and she’d had to move up north with us. She’d had more changes than me.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so sorry for myself.

We were so busy making it that we didn’t hear our parents come outside.

Some of my earliest memories involve silting with my dad in his study every night when he came home from the office. I’d watch as he put his personal items away: his watch, wallet, comb and car keys would always occupy the same spot on the table every time. It was as if he could see invisible lines drawn specifically for these things, not a centimetre more or less.

Dad's comb was jade green. I heard he bought it when he married Mum, which made the comb two years older than I was. Every night, he would smile, hand me the comb and say: “Be a good girl and help Daddy clean it, OK?”

I was more than happy to do it. At age five this ordinary task brought me such joy. I would excitedly turn the tap on, then brush the comb with a used toothbrush as hard as I could. Satisfied that I’d done a good job, I would proudly return die comb to Dad. He would smile at me, and place the comb on top of his wallet.

About two years later, Dad left his sales job and started his own wholesale business. I started primary school. That was when things started to change. Dad's business wasn’t doing so well, and our stable life started getting shaky. He didn’t come home as much as he used to - just a couple of times a week. And when he did come home, it was always late and I'd already be in bed. I started to get mad. Why didn't he listen to Mum and just stick to his old job? Why take the risk and place the whole family in trouble? Over the years, I stopped waiting for him to come home, and stopped going downstairs to check on him.

Today, I'm no longer a kid. Now 28, I ’ve graduated from college and got a job. Dad’s business has also started to get back on track. Things are better now. Yet the uncomfortable silence between Dad and me continued.

Two days before my birthday last year, Dad came home early.

When I passed the clean comb back to Dad, I noticed the wrinkles next to his eyes.