Vespera had chosen the seat that put the most distance between herself and everyone else, angled slightly away from the arrangement, closer to the far side of the room than to the center. Her legs were tucked to one side. Her hands rested in her lap. Her posture was immaculate, spine straight, chin level. A woman sitting exactly as her parents had taught her to sit in every room she'd ever entered.
The laughter hadn't reached her. It had passed through the space between the couches and the armchair and arrived at her like an echo, like music from a party she was standing outside of.
She watched her son scratch behind his lover's ears while another lover sulked beside him and three more laughed across the table. The scene was so warm and so foreign that it might as well have been behind glass.
