The House in Amalfi Read Online Free PDF Page B

as fat crystal balls of tears rolled down my cheeks and into the pillow. Alex loved me; I knew it. There had never been a wrong word between us. Besides, I would have known if there had been another woman. Or would I?
    Oh,
damn
Jammy;
damn her.
How could she put these ideas in my mind? Alex was the perfect husband. We’d had the perfect life. Hadn’t we?
    Doubt slid like a traitor into my golden memories. I recalled with sudden terrible clarity Alex’s frequent absences “on business,” his calls saying he’d be home late again, the cell-phone ring answered with a terse “yes” or “no,” and how he would suddenly have to return late to the office for some papers he’d forgotten. My thudding heart missed a beat as I recognized there was a pattern to Alex’s behavior. The pattern of a man involved in a secret love affair.
    I got up and walked into my smart living room. I stood, staring bleakly at the familiar view from my bank of windows. I remembered how thrilled we had been with that view, oneof the best in Chicago, Alex had told me proudly when he’d first shown me the place. Alex had bought it without me even seeing it, which upset me at first—but “I knew you’d love it anyway,” he’d said. “How could you not? It’s a class act, baby, and just right for you.”
    He was right of course, as he always seemed to be. Or perhaps it was that I just never questioned him. I was immersed in my work, my own separate life. Landscaping was my life; real estate development was Alex’s. I allowed him to make the decisions and went along with them. He rarely asked about my work and he never volunteered much information about his, except to say how busy he was with a big deal pending.
    Alex always seemed to have “big deals” pending, which was why when he died it had come as a shock to find out that we were not rich after all. There was simply no money. His only asset was this apartment, which was in his name and on which there was a substantial first mortgage as well as a second. I knew Alex was a wheeler-dealer, and I had to assume that business had not been going well before he was killed. We’d always had a good lifestyle, though, good restaurants, good clothes. At least Alex had good clothes; I was never much of a shopper, and after all, when I worked, which was most of the time, I wore jeans and work boots with a T-shirt or a sweater.
    I had a couple of pieces of decent jewelry: my engagement ring, a nice three-carat emerald-cut diamond chosen by Alex, nothing too huge because Alex said my hands were small and slender and anything bigger would have looked “flashy” on me; a pair of diamond studs that I wore every day and was so used to I hardly noticed anymore; and the gold Cartier tank watch he’d given me for a birthday. I had a string of those diamonds you buy “by the yard” at Tiffany’s. For a supposedly “rich” woman that was not much, I realized now.
    In fact, Alex had not bought me any gift, not even flowers,let alone jewelry, in a long time. For more than a year that I could recall, maybe even longer.
    I sank back into despair. Alex couldn’t have been planning to marry someone else. I
refused
to believe it. I remembered when we had met, how he’d sought me out across a room filled with middle-aged socialites to whom I’d just given a lecture on the art of landscape gardening. Alex hadn’t attended the lecture; he’d been at a financial conference in the same hotel and had caught the last few minutes of my speech from the open door as he was passing.
    “You were great,” he’d said, fixing me with those dark eyes. “I’m Alex Monroe. And I know who you are. And won’t you please have a drink with me.”
    He’d led me to the bar and bought me champagne and it had simply taken off from there. With never a hitch, until he died.
And until now.
    I stretched my weary body along the length of the Italian leather sofa, moaning softly. Jammy had been right: it
was
too hard. All for