Belonging by Nancy Thayer Page A

door on Carter’s side folded in like a bit of aluminum foil. For a moment, instinctively, Joanna’s eyes closed as she braced herself.
    She felt only a gentle shudder. Her seat belt held her tight. She heard the shock of impact as it resonated through the car and braced herself for a blow, but felt instead only a kind of determined shifting, so that she felt like a creature lifted up and transported to the shore and laid down by a force like an ocean wave. There was a definite flow and ebb to the crash.
    When all movement stopped, she opened her eyes and looked down at herself. She was fine. She was intact. Somehow she had come out of this untouched. Her immediate, instinctive reaction was a wash of gratitude. She wondered: was there a message here, a direct communication from Fate? She’d think about that later. Now shewas shaking with relief and gratitude.
    In the silence, Joanna looked over at Carter. Blood streamed down his face.
    Leaning toward him, she asked, “Are you all right?”
    “Take off the wig,” he moaned.
    “What?”
    “Take off the wig. The police will be here. If they insist on checking you over at the hospital, it will look awkward if you’re wearing the wig. Just be yourself. Tell them we were having a business dinner. Considering the inn for the show.”
    “Carter, I don’t think—”
    “Do it!”
    “All right, Carter. But are you okay?”
    “I can’t move my leg.”
    The temperature was falling inside the car. Snow was already blanketing the windshield, but Joanna was able to see through it well enough to tell that the driver of the pickup truck was collapsed over his steering wheel, not moving.
    “I’m getting out. I’m going to see if I can get help,” Joanna said.
    Carter didn’t respond. His head had fallen forward onto his chest.
    In her professional guise Joanna had spoken on the phone with Blair many times before, of course, asking to speak to Carter about the show or relaying a message from him when he was in conference, and so after Joanna crawled from the car and stumbled through the snow to the pickup and spotted a CB radio inside next to the unconscious driver, and after she’d pulled her shuddering body up into the cab of the truck, irrationally terrified of the unconscious man next to her, after with shaking hands she figured out how to work the radio and had gotten hold of someone who promised to send the police and an ambulance right out, and after the police had arrived and taken down the necessary information and escorted her to a hospital in the nearby Connecticut town, she called Blair to tell her about the accident. Blair wasn’t home, of course, she was in another hospital with Chip, but a friend was at the Ambersons’ house, and took the message from Joanna, and commiserated with her, and also said, “I know this isn’t the time or place, but I want to say while I’m speaking to you personally, I tell Blair all the time how lucky she is to know you. I just love your show.”
    It was a small, pleasant hospital, and it didn’t take long for the doctor to checkJoanna over and pronounce that except for an understandably elevated blood pressure, she was fine, and free to go home. Carter’s leg had been broken and he was already in the operating room. Blair would arrive as soon as she could. There was no reason for Joanna to remain.
    It was almost eleven o’clock. Joanna was hungry and exhausted, and she wanted someone to put his arms around her, to say, “Thank God you’re all right.” She wanted someone to pick her up at the hospital and drive her back into the city and escort her to her lonely apartment and tuck her into bed. And to stay with her, just to be with her, just in case, all through the night.
    If not that, then she wanted to be the one who would sit on the scuffed vinyl sofa in the hospital lounge, waiting to hear how Carter was. She wanted the nurses and doctors to reassure and comfort her, to respect her as an integral part of Carter’s