Incorrect hierarchical links on page with url alias.

I have a drupal site installed in subdirectory /home.
All is working great, except for one peculiar behavior.

I have a page with a url alias of
/home/cust/support

On that page, I create the following link:
href="about/privacy"

When I hover over this link or click on it, it takes me to:
/home/cust/about/privacy

which is the incorrect link. What I actually wanted was
/home/about/privacy

It appears as though drupal is assuming that I wanted a hierarchical
link, which I didn't.

Is this the intented behavior of drupal? If so, how can I
cleanly create a link to my other page without the hierarchy.
I don't want to hardcode the entire link because I might change my
/home subdirectory path sometime.

Thanks for any suggestions.