Belonging by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page A

Carter married her.”
    “She’s beautiful. No denying that. Has money of her own, and that probably mattered when they were young. She knows how to present the facade. Blair has nothing beneath the facade. The scary part is, she knows it, and likes it that way.”
    Joanna had turned away from the bedroom, with a glad heart. She and Carter shared so much: passion, an enthusiasm for their work, triumph when shows went well, network gossip, challenging ideas. If all he shared with Blair was this shell of a house, perhaps he should leave her and make a permanent home with Joanna.
    Then she’d passed by an open bedroom door. A boy’s room, baseball posters on the walls, bats, balls, and mitts on the bedspread, a love-mauled stuffed bear tucked against the pillow. Chip. Blair would name her son Chip. Still, the room evoked a person, with desires and dreams—and needs, needs for a whole family, an available father. Joanna did not want to be responsible for taking a father away from a child, not ever. She’d gone silently back down the stairs, into the sunny day. She’d gone smiling, back into the midst of the party.
    She’d never asked Carter to leave Blair. She’d never even really wanted him to. Why should she? Her life was full of work and friends and travel and exhaustion as well as his very satisfying love. She was proud of her self-sufficiency.
    But on this lovely August evening Joanna didn’t want to be self-sufficient. Summer light lingered in the sky and summer sounds drifted up from the streets. Laughter. Singing. The whir and click of roller blades; the excited tap of high heels.
    Grabbing up the phone, she dialed Tory’s number.
    Tory and Joanna had met at a dinner party two years before when they’d been forced to talk with each other by virtue of their placement at the table. Tory was happily married; her life centered on her family. Joanna had just returned from a skiing trip to Vail with a man twelve years younger than she; she was working hard, climbing the ladder of her career. The two women lived very different lives, but their friendship blossomed in spite of that.
    At the dinner party, Tory confessed that she’d seen the first few segments of Fabulous Homes and thought it was wonderful. Homes were so important, she’d said, and impassionedly she’d told Joanna about the old Victorian house they’d just bought on a bluff in Nantucket. Tory was obsessed with its furnishing and decoration. Joanna asked Tory if she could do a series about decorating the perfect summer house for her new show. Tory agreed; and over the weeks that followed, whenever Tory went to Nantucket,Joanna joined her, taking notes and pictures. Joanna admired Tory’s sense of style and her commitment to her family’s comfort and pleasure. Tory was fascinated by the way Joanna’s mind worked and she respected Joanna’s professional achievements. They became close friends.
    It was Tory, pleading for the sanctity of the family, who kept Joanna from asking Carter to leave his wife. Joanna should drop Carter, that was Tory’s view. Carter was married, and he had a son, and did Joanna really want to be responsible for breaking up a home? But he doesn’t love his wife, he loves me, Joanna insisted, and often she wept, and Tory wept in sympathy, and they had gone on arguing that way every time they talked.
    The Randalls’ housekeeper answered their phone. “No, Ms. Jones,” she said, “the Randalls are not here, remember? They’re in Nantucket.”
    “Of course, Lei, thank you.”
    Joanna hung up the phone, despondent. Of course, the Randalls were on vacation, too. On a family vacation.
    Fool! she berated herself. You should have made plans! Stalking into her living room, she flipped through her address book, looking for—what? An acquaintance she could spend the evening with? Irritated, she tossed the book aside. She would read one of the many novels she had stacked in wait. She’d answer some of the letters she’d brought