The Space Between
The dining room smelled like rosemary and the particular brand of ambition that had always filled her parents' house—sharp, expensive, a little suffocating. Alice sat in her usual chair, the one closest to the kitchen door, the one that had somehow become hers not through claim but through absence of objection. Nobody had ever said *this is your seat, Alice*. It had simply happened, the way most things in her life happened: by default, by elimination, by nobody caring enough to argue otherwise.
Her mother's crystal candlesticks threw small trembling flames across the tablecloth. Four places had been set with the good china, the kind reserved for holidays and visits from out-of-town relatives, though tonight was neither. Tonight was simply a Sunday when all three of the Hartley children happened to be within driving distance of the house on Larkspur Lane, and her mother had decided that warranted the Wedgwood.
"Tell them, Diana," her mother said, practically vibrating in her chair. Linda Hartley was a small, sharp-featured woman who moved through life like she was perpetually approaching a finish line. "Tell them the whole thing, don't leave out the part about Dr. Whitfield."…
