My Ex Is Haunting the Wine Tasting

How it begins

The ghost disliked the first wine.

Too much oak, he said, appearing in the reflection of Rosa Saye's glass. Like licking a respectable cupboard.

Rosa set the glass down before anyone noticed her hand shaking.

Her ex had been dead for four years. His opinions had apparently survived in excellent condition.

"Everything all right?" Daniel Marsh asked.

The event host stood beside the tasting table with a jug of water and the careful expression of someone willing to accept an honest answer.

"I may need a minute."

"Of course. Garden's through there. I'll keep your place."

He moved away without asking whether she was nervous about being single. Rosa appreciated that so much she nearly cried, which would have complicated an evening already containing one impossible person.

In the glass, the ghost folded his arms.

He seems nice.

"You are not assessing him."

A woman beside her turned.

Rosa smiled. "The wine. I'm talking to the wine. Occupational habit."

She had spent twenty years learning to identify what a bottle contained. Fruit, soil, time, someone's very expensive attempt to disguise a bad season. None of that training helped her interpret a familiar face where the room's lights should have been.

Outside, the vineyard sloped toward the dusk. Daniel had placed blankets on the garden chairs. A bowl of small crackers sat beneath a handwritten note saying they were also for people who simply liked crackers.

Rosa laughed once, unexpectedly.

The ghost followed her reflection into the window.

You used to laugh like that with me.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I did."

Behind her, Daniel began introducing the next bottle without hurrying anyone back inside.

Rosa looked at his reflection, clear and alive beside the impossible one.

For the first time that evening, she wondered whether there might be room for a taste she didn't already know.