Free Rosethorn by Ava Zavora

Aunt Miranda!" Stanley raised his glass.
    “To Miranda!” chorused the guests.
    Miss Haviland seemed touched and was unable to speak for a few minutes.
    In the middle of dinner, Sera had burst into the kitchen after she had just set out more of the polenta, and confronted Andrew, who was eating some of the lamb. “What are you doing?  He’ll kill us!”
    “I don’t care,” he said between mouthfuls. “I’m starving. We haven’t had a break. Here, taste it, it’s delicious."
    Looking over by the kitchen door, which led to the dining room, Sera furtively took a slice and stuffed it into her mouth.
    “Doesn’t Miss Haviland seem different?  I just thought of her as an old lady in a big house with a big garden, but she has this whole other life and secrets.”
    “What are you talking about?"
    “I think she has...a past,” Sera declared dramatically.
    Andrew laughed. “She’s, like, 75 years old. Of course she has a past.”
    “A tragic past."
    Andrew wiped his mouth and leaned back against the sink. “You wish you were one of them, don’t you?”
    “No.”
    “You think all this,” Andrew waved his hand around contemptuously, “is exciting.”
    “I think it’s different, that’s all. It’s interesting how they talk and what they talk about.”
    “I can’t understand anything they’re saying.”
    Sera did not want to admit that she didn’t understand either. “Don’t you wonder what you’ll be like 10, 20 years from now?  What you’ll be doing and where you’ll be?  I don’t want to be cleaning houses 10 years from now, and I know you don’t want to be mowing lawns. Shoot me if I’m still living in this god-awful town.”
    “I know what I want for myself." Andrew’s voice was tinged with something sharp and feral and reminded her of the night on top the hill. “But is that,” he pointed to the dining room, “What you really want?  Besides, what’s wrong with living here?"
    “Not exactly that. But they talk about books I’ve never heard of and they’ve been to places I’ve only read about."
    Sera had overheard a couple talking about their villa in Montelpulciano and how they made wine with grapes harvested from their vineyard. She did not know that anybody could live a life that seemed right out of a book. The most exciting place she had ever been to was San Francisco.
    “I think they’re all posers."
    The door swung open and Stanley popped his head in. “We’re done. Can you two start clearing the table and washing the dishes?"
    The guests had moved back on to the piano room. The table, which had been gleaming and immaculate a few hours ago, was littered with remnants of the feast, wrinkled silk napkins, and a bloody wine stain bloomed on the crisp white tablecloth. Sera started piling the dishes and taking them back to Andrew, who was scraping the food off them and placing them in the sink.
    She noticed that one of the wine glasses was nearly full with wine. She held up the glass to the light, turned the rim to find a clean spot, and drank from it. Tasting bitterness, Sara spit it out. She heard laughter behind her and whipped around.
    “Is the pinot noir not to your liking?" One of the guests, a man, was leaning against the doorway to the hall. He held a glass of wine in his hand and was looking at her, amused.
    Sera turned red, her mouth open in surprise. “I was just cleaning, someone left it there—“
    “Don’t worry. It’ll be a secret between the two of us." He began to advance towards her.
    She reddened even more when she saw that he was the same man who earlier had said rather loudly, when she was serving hors d’oeuvres, “Who is that girl with the magnificent hair?"
    Sera had looked behind her, trying to see the girl and became embarrassed when he laughed as he looked straight at her. She had stumbled and spilled some of the phyllo wraps and quickly tried to pick them up before Stanley noticed.
    The man, who seemed to be the youngest of the guests, with