First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes...a baby carriage? Isn’t that what all women want? Not so for Claudia Parr. And just as she gives up on finding a man who feels the same way, she meets warm, wonderful Ben. Things seem too good to be true when they fall in love and agree to buck tradition with a satisfying, child-free marriage. Then the unexpected occurs: one of them has a change of heart.

Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville's elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she's strayed from the person she once was. Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville's most prestigious private school.

What happens when love, marriage and children don't come in the expected order? Fifteen years after the tragic death of their older brother splintered Josie and Meredith's already fragile relationship, the two sisters are following very different paths. Hardworking, reserved Meredith thought she'd done it all the right way round - married the perfect man, had the perfect daughter - but now she's wondering if she got the love part wrong. Impulsive and spirited Josie has been single for years.

Thirty-three-year-old Shea Rigsby has spent her entire life in Walker, Texas - a small college town that lives and dies by football, a passion she unabashedly shares. Raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the daughter of Walker’s legendary head coach, Clive Carr, Shea was too devoted to her hometown team to leave. Instead she stayed in Walker for college, even taking a job in the university athletic department after graduation, where she has remained for more than a decade.

Marian Caldwell is a 36-year-old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door ... only to find Kirby Rose, an 18-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. From the moment Kirby appears on her doorstep, Marian’s perfectly constructed world - and her very identity - will be shaken to its core.