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 and Northeastern, and suddenly, that mattered more. He had a pedigree (maybe), and I would reflect that in everything I did, starting with our home. And once that was done, maybe God would grace me with a pregnancy, because this was where my child should be raised.

I threw myself into the town and was received graciously. Welcomed, even. I met Caro from around the corner. She was married, had one infant son and was desperate for an adult to talk to. I joined the Friends of the Library and asked for advice about the restoration of our columns from the head of the historical society, who was pleased that I took the house’s history so seriously. John bought a little sailboat and we joined the yacht club.