Read Online Belonging by Nancy Thayer - Free Book Online

house. The windows on this side were boarded up; so the house was deserted. What a shame, on such a lovely summer day.
    She wanted to linger, but knew she shouldn’t, and so she crossed back to the driveway, the slender heels of her shoes sinking into the turf. As she slid back into her car, she had the oddest desire to—oh, it was odd!—say something to the house. To connect with that house. So, feeling strangely very much like herself and not like herself at all, she said, aloud, “I promise I’ll be back.”
    She hadn’t planned to say those words. She couldn’t imagine why she said them. Shaking her head at her foolishness, she turned her car around and headed back out toward Squam Road. In the rearview she saw the house standing: sturdy, solitary, and proud.
    A few hundred feet on, she found the Latherns’ residence. Its drive was packed with cars, but Joanna was able to pull her little convertible into a space between a Range Rover and a gorgeous old classic woody station wagon. Sliding out, she took her timeapproaching the house, studying its unusual architecture, which was gray-shingled, according to the dictates of the Historic District Commission, but otherwise was purely modern, utilizing sharp angles and extreme slopes and lots of shining glass.
    She could hear the noise of the party out here. When she was younger, just this moment made her heart beat faster: standing on the threshold, wearing a sexy frock, anticipating any variety of significant encounters with the crowd who gathered inside. Now, more often than not, she found herself girding her figurative loins, as if for some kind of onslaught.
    She had met her hosts, Morris and June Lathern, last fall when she featured June’s sister and brother-in-law’s house in Austin, and now as she entered the house she was glad to find June just inside, standing next to an enormous bronze sculpture of summer flowers. All the rooms and even the hall were packed with people.
    “I’m so glad you came!” June shouted. She and Morris were lawyers, with their own firm here on Nantucket, and as professional women, June and Joanna had sensed a camaraderie. Joanna also liked June for her height: Joanna at five eight, and as broad-shouldered as she was, often seemed to dwarf other women, and too often caught herself slumping or stooping in a crowd. But Morris and June were tall; Morris was six six and June an even six feet; Joanna felt comfortable with them.
    “I turned off on the wrong drive,” Joanna informed her hostess. “Coming from ’Sconset. There’s the most wonderful storybook house—”
    “You must mean the Farthingale house. I think it’s on the market. It’s got some marvelous old legend connected with it—a treasure, I think. I’ll find Bob Hoover, he’s in real estate, he can tell you about it. First, let’s get you a drink.”
    There was no hope of hearing each other, so they didn’t attempt conversation as they passed through the crowd to the drinks bar that had been set up on the deck of the ocean side of the house. This was an older group, in general, undoubtedly a more conservative one; the men wore Nantucket red slacks and blue blazers, the women, sinfully expensive shapeless silk dresses printed in geometric blocks in primary colors, making them look like flags of antagonistic nations. As she walked through the room, Joanna could hear the sudden lull in conversation, and then the whispers, as she passed through. And sure enough, by the time she’d been handed a vodka and tonic, here came the first assailants, a short blond husband-and-wife pair who seemed to have been molded from the same plastic as Barbie dolls.
    “You’re Joanna Jones of Fabulous Homes , aren’t you?” the wife asked, and not waiting for Joanna to reply, plunged ahead, “I just knew you were. I’m Mindy Whippet and this is my husband, Mark. We own Couturier on Main Street, you must know it, it’s the best women’s clothing shop on the island.”
    “I