Butterfly Lane

Zanny learned early that people don't stay because they love you. They stay because they're stuck with you. It was the only lesson her father ever taught her, and he was thorough about it.

When she married John Campbell—her best friend's brother, the boy she’d adored since before she knew what to call it—it felt less like something she’d been given than something she’d been allowed to borrow. Five years and two sons later, she is still waiting for someone to come collect.

Then she walks in on a coworker kissing him and realizes the bill has come due.

John Campbell thought getting married was the hard part, not the marriage itself. You find the person, you marry them, you’re happy. He has never once considered that his wife has spent five years waiting for him to leave.

So when he tells her the truth—that the coworker kissed him and not the reverse—he expects her to believe him. She doesn't. And the speed with which she doesn't tells them both something neither wanted to know. The kiss isn't what's wrong with their marriage. It's just the first thing either of them has been willing to look at.

Butterfly Lane is the third book in the Firefly Hollow series, an Appalachian family saga.

Content note: This book portrays the loss of a pregnancy, as well as a physically and emotionally abusive parent. Grief is given room in these pages, and it is not resolved quickly.