Honeymoon in Italy Read online

  Honeymoon in Italy

  Before the Otto Viti Mysteries

  Jen Carter

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © Jen Carter

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  About the Author

  ONE

  Five years ago

  I walked into the apartment.

  Everything looked the same. The hand-me-down couch from my sister Stella, the cheap art on the walls, even the mess my fiancé, Shane, had left in the kitchen that morning—it was all exactly as we had left it before the funeral.

  And yet, it all looked different.

  It’s the time of day, I told myself. It’s just the late afternoon light messing with me.

  I dropped my purse on the little table by the front door and shuffled into the living room. The lingering smell of stale coffee hung in the air, but I didn’t have the energy to clean out the coffeepot since Shane had forgotten his promise to do it that morning. Because really, what did it matter? As I sat down on the worn couch to unbuckle my shoes, that last thought echoed through my mind.

  What does it matter? What does it matter?

  “Hey,” Shane said from the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

  I looked up and pushed the curtain of long, black hair that had fallen over my face behind my shoulder. I shook my head. “No.”

  As I went back to the ridiculously complicated buckles on my shoes, I heard the refrigerator door open and close. Then I heard Shane walk around the corner from the kitchen to the living area. He stopped next to the television and didn’t say anything. He was probably watching me struggle with the shoes.

  “What?” I said, not looking up.

  “Let’s go out.” He crossed the living room and sat on the coffee table facing me. “Let’s go get some dinner and then maybe see a movie. It’ll help you get your mind off things.”

  I looked up in time to see him scratch the top of his head, leaving his sandy hair a little messier than before, and then drum his fingers on the coffee table. He was restless.

  I finally got the first shoe unbuckled and pushed more hair behind my shoulder before going to work on the second shoe. That ridiculous hair of mine—it was always in the way. It was almost as ridiculous as those buckles on my shoes. I wished that I had the guts to cut all that hair off like Stella had done, but I didn’t. It had always been long, and it probably always would be.

  “I’m okay,” I muttered. “I’m really not hungry, and I don’t feel like a movie. I just want to go lay down.”

  Shane leaned forward and rested his forearms on his legs. “It’s not even going to be dark for a couple more hours. Do you really want to lay down? And don’t you think you’ll be hungry soon? I think going out will help you get your mind off everything.”

  Forget it. Those buckles were a nightmare. I pulled the shoe off my foot, leaving marks on my skin and probably nearly breaking the strap. Then I stood. “I don’t want to get my mind off everything.”

  Shane didn’t answer as I made my way toward the back bedroom.

  “If you want to go get something to eat, that’s fine,” I added over my shoulder. “Don’t feel like you have to stay with me.”

  I pulled off my black dress—the only decent dress I owned—and threw on a white tank top and blue shorts. Then I slid into bed and buried myself under the covers. My skin felt raw against the sheets, despite my having proclaimed they were the softest sheets I had ever bought only a week ago.

  “Hey,” Shane said. He sounded like he was standing in the doorway, but I didn’t bother to look. “I’m going to get a hamburger. You don’t want anything?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Okay. I’m going now.” He paused. “You sure you don’t want to go see a movie?”

  “No. But feel free if that’s what you want to do. I’m fine here.”

  Merely a second passed before he answered. “I might do that then. I’ll call the guys and see if they want to catch a movie.”

  I didn’t have the energy to answer out loud. In my head, I said, Okay, see you later.

  When I heard the front door latch behind Shane, I let out a long, deep breath. And then another and another. Inside, I was choking. My stomach, my muscles, my brain—every part of my body was choking. I kept taking deep breaths, trying to force myself to relax.

  What was going to happen to us? Stella had her husband, Jason, and yes, he was her rock. But even so, she was pregnant. How could she go through this right now?

  And what about our younger sister, Holly? She was all alone in that big house now, just days from college graduation. Just days.

  What about me? What was I going to do?

  Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty deep breaths later, I felt sleep edging in. Finally, a release from the nightmare I had been living for the past week.

  Before I slipped all the way into blackness, a vision of my father floated to the surface of my mind. He was smiling at me and reaching for my hand. As I took it, I realized he was wearing a tuxedo, and I was in a white dress. We emerged through double doors and walked slowly down a long aisle toward a candlelit altar where a line of bridesmaids and groomsmen stood. In the middle of the wedding party stood Father Tim alongside a dark-haired, faceless groom. Mom was sitting with my grandfather Aldo in the front pew.

  My father squeezed my arm, and the scene faded to black.

  Goodbye, Mom and Dad.

  TWO

  Six months ago

  I trudged up the walkway to my apartment, my legs feeling like jelly. When our school’s athletic director had talked me into coaching soccer one more time, I hadn’t expected junior varsity to be so feisty. The girls were like puppies. Wearing them out to the point of exhaustion was the only way to keep them under control. Today during practice, I couldn’t handle their bickering and smart remarks, so I sent them on a four-mile run. And when one particularly mouthy ninth-grader snidely commented that I probably couldn’t run four miles myself, I did the exact opposite of what a mature coach would do: I retorted that I could run circles around the them. Six miles later, I proved my point.

  But having not run that far in at least a year—and only managing to do it today because I had opened my big mouth and had to follow through—my legs were now jelly.

  I was never coaching girls junior varsity soccer again.

  On the patio table next to the front door was a blue-and-white polka dot gift bag. A gift bag? My twenty-eighth birthday wasn’t for three months, and my roommate’s birthday had been last month. I highly doubted Amazon had started delivering packages in polka dots, though that would have been a nice touch. The bag must have been left in front of the wrong apartment.

  I peeked inside it and saw a big book—maybe it was a scrapbook with the way the pages looked uneven and slightly warped at the top. I pulled it out. Yep, it was a scrapbook. And surprisingly, it had been delivered to the right place. On the front of the plastic cover was a green sticky note covered with my sister Stella’s writing.

  Jill,

  Holly wants us to go to Italy this summer. She found this scrapbook of Mom and Dad’s honeymoon and thinks we should take a trip to celebrate t
heir lives since all we ever do is mourn their deaths. I said I’d go. You in?

  Stella

  I peeled the note off the protective plastic. In the cover’s cutout was a picture of Mom and Dad in front of the Colosseum. Mom, with her long, straight black hair—just like mine. And Dad, with his unruly mop—just like Holly’s. Both of them with big sunglasses—just like Stella’s. Except theirs were 1980s style, and hers were always perfectly modern.

  I didn’t open the book. Instead, I slid it back into the gift bag and wondered why Stella hadn’t brought it over when I would be home. She only lived ten minutes away, and I would have loved to see my nephews. We lived so close, yet we rarely saw each other.

  I opened the front door. Amanda was singing an ode to pasta sauce in the kitchen. I dropped my messenger bag full of ungraded English papers by the door and followed my roommate’s voice into the kitchen.

  Amanda stood in front of the stove, each hand stirring its own bubbling pot. She was doing a little wiggle-wiggle-sway-sway dance while continuing to sing the praises of a lycopene-rich sauce. Upon seeing me, she switched up her tune.

  “Hello my wonderful roommate,” she sang, pulling a wooden spoon out of boiling water and waving it over her head. Water dripped into her wavy, brown hair. “I am making spaghetti, or as you Italians call it, spa-geee-ti, and would you care to join me for dinnnnnner?” She wiggled and swayed and wiggled some more. “I made enough to feed an army, or maybe a soccer teaaaaaaam! I have some fancy mooo-zar-ellla that I can bake across the top if you want to get a little craaaaaaazy!”

  I grinned at my swaying roommate and patted her shoulder as I passed through the kitchen to the little dining nook.

  “That sounds amazing. I’m dying for some good food,” I said. Maybe some carbs would help restore some of my strength. I placed the gift bag on the table and slowly lowered myself onto a chair, groaning as my legs threatened to give out.

  “What’ve you got there?” Amanda’s eyes flicked toward the gift bag. “A present, for moi?”

  “Sorry, no,” I said. “Though I owe you a thousand presents for cooking so often.” I dug the scrapbook out of the bag again and held it up. “It’s from my mom and dad’s honeymoon. Stella left it on the porch and said that Holly found it. Apparently my sisters are planning a trip to Italy this summer to celebrate our parents.”

  Amanda turned from the pots on the stove and gave me a look of utter surprise. “Really? That’s a fantastic idea.” Her shoulders dropped slightly and she sighed as she went back to the stove. “Oh, I miss Lia and Marco. What incredible hearts they had.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. Amanda and I had been friends since our first year of college, and she loved coming home with me on weekends to hang out with my family. If any of my friends knew how great my parents were, it was her.

  “But wait!” Amanda whipped back toward me, this time pulling the spoon from the sauce pot with her and splattering the walls with red. Her eyes narrowed. “Will Stella really be able to release that death grip she has on her boys long enough for a trip to Italy? And will Holly insist on taking that obnoxious boyfriend with her?”

  “Ugh, Guy,” I spat. The dude was born and raised in Bakersfield, California, and didn’t speak a word of French, but he insisted on the French pronunciation of his name, Ghee. “If he goes, then you’re coming, too.”

  In a singsong voice, Amanda said, “I have an idea, daughter of the wonderful Lia and Marco D’Angelo. Let’s have our spa-geee-ti, then open a bottle of the glorious wine your grandfather makes and look through that scrapbook.” She took up her little wiggle-wiggle-sway-sway dance again. “And then we can walk down to the pubs along the beach and find some trouble in honor of your father.” She finished off with a little shimmy and a spin, which I knew would have made my dad laugh from deep down in his gut.

  Truthfully, none of Amanda’s plan sounded good to me, except for the food and wine. I didn’t really want to look at the scrapbook. And I absolutely didn’t feel like going to any pubs—not on my shaky legs.

  “Let’s have the wine with dinner,” I said, “and go from there.” I stood and squeezed past Amanda to the pantry where we kept bottles and bottles of D’Angelo wine. I selected my favorite Cabernet Sauvignon and rooted around in a drawer for a cork screw.

  “Deal,” Amanda said as she plated the spaghetti. “By the way, I lied about the mooo-zar-ellla. We don’t have any. I just wanted to say moo-zar-ellla.”

  ***

  By the time we finished dinner, looking at the scrapbook didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The wine had made me feel nostalgic. Normally I might have called Stella to talk about Mom and Dad when I was feeling that way, but I was still a little irritated that she hadn’t dropped off the scrapbook when I was home. And Holly was probably out with that annoying boyfriend of hers, Guy, so calling her would be pointless. My only choice was to continue on with Amanda’s suggestion: the scrapbook and a little more wine.

  Mom and Dad’s honeymoon filled me with awe. They started in Venice and worked their way down to Sicily. Mom had captioned all the photos, pasted in maps and postcards and tickets for travel, and even included odds and ends like pressed flowers and old coins. She was so sentimental. I loved that about her.

  There was no way my sisters and I were going to be able to trace their whole honeymoon. They must have been there for at least two weeks—maybe three. Stella might have been able to afford a trip like that, but I couldn’t. And Holly, the starving grad student who mooched off our grandfather, really couldn’t afford it. I had a lot a questions about what my sisters had envisioned, but now with two glasses of wine swishing around my belly, I had zero motivation to ask. Those questions would have to wait until the morning.

  As I closed the last page of the book, Amanda patted my hand. “Let’s go get ready and head out. Which bar do you want to hit first? Nick’s Irish Pub? Or Surfboard Sandy’s?”

  I had managed to get through the scrapbook, but going out still didn’t sound like a good idea. “I don’t know. I kind of just want to stay here. Maybe watch a movie.”

  “Really? Are you sure? It’s been so long since you’ve been out. It would be fun.” Amanda sounded disappointed, but I didn’t have the energy to give in and go.

  “I know. I’m just really tired. Long week teaching and coaching.” I pushed myself up, groaning as my legs protested. “I’m going to put my pjs on.”

  Amanda followed me down the hall toward my bedroom. “What do you want to watch? Comedy? Romantic comedy? Or something more action-packed?”

  I opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of pajama pants. “You choose. Surprise me.” I expected her to disappear down the hallway, but she didn’t. Instead, she leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms.

  “Hey, Jill?” Her voice had sounded disappointed when I suggested staying home for a movie, but now it sounded tentative—even a little worried. I stopped rummaging through my dresser for a tank top and looked up. “I’ve been thinking,” she continued. “I’m not sure me living here is doing you any favors.”

  I squinted at my roommate.

  Huh?

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I mean,” she paused, eyes scanning the corners of the room as she searched for words. “How long has it been since you and Shane broke up?”

  I went back to looking for a tank top. “I don’t know. A long time. Years. So?”

  “Well, I guess I’m wondering if I’ve become a safety zone for you. It’s easy to come home with me here, hang out, and not really…” she trailed off.

  I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not unhappy, if that’s what you mean. I don’t have to go out and meet lots of new people to be happy. You don’t have a boyfriend, and you’re just fine.” I wanted to add so what makes you think that I need something more in my life to be happy? But I kept it to myself. No doubt she knew what I meant.

  “I know,” she said. “But you’re just kind of stuck in this bubble of
work and home and work and home. And hey, listen, I get where you’re coming from—you think you have a lot of baggage. Shane broke off the engagement because he couldn’t handle your grief after your parents died. I get it. But it’s more than that. You don’t even really see your family very much.”

  “I do,” I protested.

  Well, that wasn’t really true.

  “Sometimes,” I added.

  But that wasn’t really true either. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Stella, and even though I was irritated that she hadn’t come over today when I was home, I rarely made an effort to go see her either. And it was easy to say that I’d see Holly more if she wasn’t always with her dumb boyfriend or if she didn’t live an hour north on my grandfather’s vineyard. But with coaching soccer and long hours grading papers, I just didn’t get up there that often. Once a month, probably.

  “I’m just saying,” Amanda said.

  I nodded at my dresser. I understood. And she was right. “I know.”

  “Maybe it’s something to think about.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get this movie night started.” Amanda turned and headed toward the front of the apartment. “You’ll never guess what I’m going to pick,” she called. “You’re going to be blown away. Just wait.”

  “Something Italian?” I called back.

  “Darn it! How do you know everything?”

  Me, know everything? She clearly knew more than I did.

  THREE

  I’d never liked change, and coming face to face with my flaws had never been easy. But Amanda did have a point about me not seeing my family very often. Sure, we traded texts nearly every day and occasionally had long telephone conversations about missing Mom and Dad, but we weren’t really part of each other’s lives. And that wasn’t something Mom or Dad would have wanted.

  So it didn’t matter if I liked change. It needed to happen, and the next morning was a good time to start.