I still didn’t get pregnant, though. Years passed. Years of trying, that one brief pregnancy. Four different ob-gyns. No diagnosis.

It was devastating. Everywhere I went, I felt judged. I wasn’t childless by choice. I was broken somehow. Everywhere I looked, there were pregnant women, children, babies. In the summertime, when the population doubled, there were so many beautiful children everywhere that I would cry. “Don’t worry, honey,” John said one night. “It’ll happen, and if it doesn’t, well, we’re happy just the way we are.”

I wanted to punch him. Hard. I was not happy, not on the inside! Couldn’t he see that? I almost hated him, living the same life as always, staid and unruffled, driving back and forth to Providence, reasonably successful but ever complacent. How dare he be happy when I wanted to drop to my knees and sob?

When a woman can’t get pregnant, the world judges her. The husband, gosh, he’s just a great guy, releasing millions of sperm for his wife’s selfish, snobby egg to reject. He’s so patient, so understanding, so good-natured, so supportive (of her problem). That John, I imagined people thinking. He sure is a saint.

I was barren. That hateful word. I wanted to be lush, fertile, inviting, warm, nurturing . . . and instead, my uterus was an empty white room with sharp angles and immaculate floors.

One of my former coworkers was Japanese, and she told me once that women who couldn’t have children were called stone women. I felt like stone, all right. I went through the motions, sex becoming only about procreation. I snapped at John. My smile felt hard as I volunteered on committees and worked in the garden. When Genevieve London, the most influential and beloved of all Stoningham’s residents, told me I’d done a “truly stellar” job on the fund-raiser for a new wing in the library, I almost broke down. I don’t care about that! I imagined sobbing on her shoulder. I just want to be a mother.

I spoke with adoption agencies, longing for the Victorian days when you could just go to an orphanage and pick out a child. “This one’s adorable! We’ll take her!”

Caro was the only one I told. She’d just had her second boy, and I’d gone over with a hot dish. She let me hold him, and I must’ve looked sad, because she said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s just . . . we’ve been having some trouble on the baby front.” A few tears dropped onto her son’s tiny, perfect head. “He’s awfully precious, Caro.”

She got me a tissue and gave me a hug. “If you ever want to talk about it, or borrow the boys, I’m here.” And she let me hold that baby a long, long time.