Always the Last to Know by Kristan Higgins Page 0,37

too busy wondering if this month would be when nature deigned to let me have—and keep—what everyone else seemed to get so easily. John was sympathetic enough, but it was hard to put into words just how empty I felt. Like all the work and time I’d put into getting to this point in life meant nothing, not without a baby. What good was I if I couldn’t be a mother? Oh, I knew it was harder for some women, of course I did. But when Tina called with the news that she was having twins, I hung up, then called back later, saying a storm had knocked out our phone lines.

Babies were everywhere but in my womb.

I went on Clomid, but had to go off it because of the blinding headaches it caused. “There’s nothing medically wrong with either of you,” the doctor said, and I quit his practice and found someone else.

The second year of trying turned into a third year.

It wasn’t fair. Going out with other couples was harder now; once we’d all been in the same boat; now Ellen was having her second and was tired, and the Parsons couldn’t get a babysitter, and Abby and Paul had exciting news, and I didn’t want to see them anymore. Friday night dinners, which had been such fun and felt so grown-up, were now morose. Why us? When would it happen? What if something was really wrong? Should we be trying to adopt now? Could we afford a trip to Korea? Colombia? Russia? We were on three agencies’ lists, and not once did we make it to the interview stage.

Then John’s grandfather died, and much to his surprise, John inherited the old man’s home in Stoningham, Connecticut. When we pulled up to the house, I sat there, stunned silent. Grandpa Theo had been living with his sister in Maine for years and years. I’d never even been to Stoningham. Didn’t know this house existed.

It was absolutely beautiful. A Greek Revival that needed some work, but was elegant and large and so . . . so classy. As I wandered through, taking in the huge windows, the columns, the pilasters, friezes and cornices and other words whose meaning I didn’t even know, I fell in love. A front hall with a curving, graceful staircase. Fireplaces. A front parlor, a study, a family room, a dining room, a sunny if dated kitchen. Five bedrooms upstairs. Five!

A far cry from our run-down farmhouse in Nowhere, Minnesota. Our house in Cranston was cute but humble, not a place where we could have more than two couples over because the rooms were so small. But this house . . . this was heaven! The town, the house, the small enclosed yard, the nearby library, the smell of salt in the air, the cheerfully painted businesses on Water Street . . . honest to Pete, I was in heaven.

Stoningham was what a person thought of when they heard the word Connecticut—a little village of Colonials and Victorians, old cemeteries, posh boutiques, several restaurants, the historical society, the garden society, Long Island Sound sparkling, dotted with the white sails of boats.

Suddenly, marriage seemed wonderful again, new lifeblood injected into our lives. We needed this, John and I. The change. The freshness. We moved, John commuting half an hour or so to Providence. I decided to quit my job and devote myself to the house, which hadn’t been lived in for nearly a decade. This was where I was meant to be. This would be where my child would be born. We would belong here in a way I’d never belonged anywhere. I’d been the girl who lived on that cow farm outside of town, one of the many Johnson kids. I’d been Barb from Minnesota in Providence, and since I worked the whole time we lived in Cranston, we still hadn’t met some of our neighbors.

But in Stoningham, I could be someone. I wanted to be someone here, to fit into Stoningham’s effortless grace, to be known by name, to have our house on the tour of homes at Christmas, to be recognized by the society ladies, because this was a town that had society ladies. Being a Frost was suddenly relevant; while we may or may not have been related to the poet, the name Frost was carved in granite on three war memorials here—Silas, Obadiah and Nathaniel.

I wasn’t a paralegal anymore; I was the wife of an attorney. He’d gone to Boston College