Saving My Breath

She's done explaining herself to people who were never listening.

Too much. For six years, that's what Marley's second husband, Carlos, made her feel. Too loud, too emotional, too much, until she started to believe it. So she left. Again. This time she kept the colored Christmas lights he hated, the big laugh he kept trying to turn down, and her cat Venus, who has strong opinions and shares none of them politely.

Marley sells houses for a living. She knows how to walk into a room, flash her open-house smile, and make everyone feel at home. She gives herself gold stars for the scary stuff, because nobody else was handing them out. And every Saturday after spin class, she sits across a café table from her new friend Leslie and says exactly the right thing.

What she doesn't say is what happened at an open house on Juniper Lane, when a woman from her old married life lowered her voice across the kitchen island and told Marley what Carlos has been saying about her. Or how the old voice in her head has started asking, again, whether she's too much.

So Marley does what she's always done. She keeps everyone else afloat. Her sons, Devon and Corey. Her daughter-in-law, Ashlee, who adores her. Leslie, whose marriage is wobbling. Even the scrawny stray cat that has started showing up at the fence, and the quiet neighbor, Adam, who names it Gary. The name sticks, even after Gary turns out to be a girl.

But a stray cat won't be rushed, and neither will trust. Somewhere between Thanksgiving and New Year's, Marley has to decide whether she's brave enough to let the people who love her see all of her.

Saving My Breath is Book 3 of the Breath Trilogy, the story of the friend Leslie met at spin class. Big-hearted, funny, clean women's fiction about friendship, starting over (again), and finally being heard.