The House in Amalfi Read Online Free

Frank Mortimer went instead to represent me.
    I had such happy memories of our time together at the little house Jon-Boy had bought there with, I suppose, some of the money earned from his novel that after he was gone for a long time I couldn’t even bear to think about it. In all these years I’d never been able to bring myself to return to Amalfi and face my “ghosts.”
    There’s absolutely nothing Jammy and I don’t know about each other, and only Jammy knows the true extent of my second devastation, when my husband, Alex, was killed. She was there with me; she saw my naked soul tear apart; she stayed to pick up the pieces. She did not leave my side for weeks, telling her own husband he would just have to manage for a while because I needed her more. And good man that Matt is, he said, “Go ahead, baby; help her all you can.”
    And now she’s here again, still trying to coax and bully me out of my funk and the rigid small life I’ve permitted myself, with its work guidelines and no play, because I’ve forgotten how to do that and anyway I just don’t care anymore. And also, having lost two men I loved, I can’t allow myself to be hurt again by falling for another. My life is on course. I have my work and that’s it.
    Jammy steered me down a couple of side streets out of the direct path of the wind coming off the lake to a small storefront trattoria optimistically called Tre Scalini. It was the name of a once-famous restaurant on Rome’s Piazza Navona, the place Dad used to take me for their delicious
granita,
the espresso-flavored ice mixed with whipped cream.
    “It’s strange how food can trigger memories,” I said, hoisting myself up on the bar stool next to Jammy and nodding meekly when she raised a questioning eyebrow. She went ahead and ordered two martinis with Ketel vodka and three Roquefort olives, shaken, James Bond fashion. “I remember the real Tre Scalini. . . .”
    “In Rome, of course.” Jammy propped an elbow on the bar. She shoved her blond bangs aside and gave me that sideways exasperated blue stare. “I swear you think you’re Italian and that you never lived anywhere else but that old city. Except oh, where’s the other place?”
    “Amalfi.” I turned huffily from her stare. “And I can tell you this trattoria has nothing on the real thing.”
    “Then if it’s so great why don’t you just go back there?” She put two elbows on the counter now and stared angrily into the mirror behind the bar.
    I hoisted my martini to her reflection in a mock toast. “Here’s to a long and happy friendship.”
    She turned to me, eyes blazing. “You know what, Lamour Harrington, you are turning out to be a miserable old bitch. I don’t know what I ever saw in you. I’ve a good mind to walk out on you right now.”
    For a minute I was stunned into silence; then I said, “You wouldn’t be the first. Remember Skeeter Malone? He left me at the senior prom for Melanie Damato.”
    “Melanie Tomato, we called her. She had tits out to here at age thirteen and we were all sick with jealousy.”
    “At least you caught up,” I said, glancing enviously at her Victoria’s Secreted bosom. “I was never so lucky.”
    I caught her eye in the mirror and we grinned. “Anyhow, Skeeter Malone was a shit to do that to you,” she said, still loyal after all these years.
    “Yeah, but he married those tits a few years later,” I said, taking a gulp of my martini and coughing until my eyes brimmed.
    “You should see them now,” Jammy said, and then we were giggling again, silly as those two high school girls.
    “Know how many years ago that was?” Jammy asked.
    I shook my head. “Don’t wanna count.” I took a morecautious sip of the martini this time, poking my fingers in it to catch an olive.
    Jammy gave me a reproving shove. “Mom would have slapped your hand for that.”
    “And she would have been right. I seem to have lost my manners along with everything else.”
    “You haven’t