Desire and Red Wine

by Victoria Norvaisa

Prologue

Aurelia sat on her bed looking through the window at the white snowflakes dancing through the air of a cold November day. Her husband’s sleek, double barrel Remington, resting on her lap, felt as cold as the ice and snow outside, and was just as beautiful. The dark gray steel was shiny, impersonal and deadly. It combined well with the warm glow of polished walnut, intricately engraved and in places worn by the hunter’s loving hands.

“It would be so easy and so quick”, she thought. She would pull the trigger just as he was coming into the bedroom, returning from his hunting trip. The thoughts came too clearly, too logically. She wondered at the lack of emotion in her heart for the man with whom she had lived for twelve years. Even the hate that she had felt for him for his drinking and infidelity during those years was gone now. She just wanted him out of her life forever. What kind of a monster had she become? Was it his fault, or was it all hers, as he always wanted her to believe?

Lia had never faced a more difficult decision in her life. What would happen to her four children? They were so small and innocent. Could she destroy their world for the sake of her own happiness? She fought the desire to be selfish, tried to drive away the feelings of guilt, tried to forget her love for Sam which had lasted all those years.

The winter storm outside was raging on, the wind was whirling the snow faster and faster, forming strange looking shadows and shapes. Visibility was almost gone and her house seemed completely isolated from the rest of the world by the winter storm, the dark clouds and the sound of the wind. She pressed her forehead against the window pane, felt the cold glass sting her skin and wondered when it was that her heart forgot how to laugh.

Should she, could she just walk away? She had to decide soon…