Making Memories of Love (Preview)

Chapter One

Kate wasn’t an argumentative sort of person.

She didn’t like the way it made her throat feel tight or the way her palms always seemed to itch the moment there was any hint of confrontation. Kate liked calm and easy; she liked the comfort of well-drawn lines and shaded charcoal on parchment paper. She liked quiet afternoons and a good book. 

All of these things were at the forefront of her mind as she tucked the letter she’d been carrying into the front of her apron as she walked up the front walkway, her blonde hair where it wasn’t swept up in a mess of wind-blown waves around her face as she watched the curtains twitch before she’d even hit the first porch step. 

Her tongue was pressed hard into the backs of her teeth to keep herself from saying anything as she opened the front door, trying to pretend she was surprised to see her Aunt Marsha standing in the sitting room, her hand still on the curtain. 

“You’re late,” Aunt Marsha said, not unkindly, but full of the same worry that Kate felt had been stifling her for weeks now. 

“I was talking to Reverend Marshall,” Kate answered with a ready smile, trying not to feel guilty about the half-truth she offered. 

Aunt Marsha huffed, her wispy blonde hair fluttering around her oval face as she left the window to perch elegantly on the edge of her favorite armchair. Aunt Marsha’s sharp brown eyes, so much darker than Kate’s, looked for holes in Kate’s story. She could see the worry and the barest hint of irritation that let Kate know that her half-truth hadn’t gone over quite so easily as she had hoped. 

Kate had always been a terrible liar. Or, at least, as far back as she could remember she had been. 

“Were you pestering him about the past again?” Aunt Marsha finally asked, her thin lips pressed in a tight line as she folded her hands delicately in her lap. 

That knot that had built in Kate’s belly tightened, her own blue eyes tightening as she kept from uttering the barrage of words that battered at the back of her throat. The word “pestering” seemed to dig itself into her brain, repeating over and over again as she fought for some hint of composure. 

“It isn’t pestering,” she said primly, her words clearly enunciated in her own frustration. 

“Kate, I’ve told you a thousand times—” 

“I know! Don’t keep pushing. You’ll remember when you’re ready. God has a reason for everything. Everything in God’s time, not ours. Don’t extend yourself too far, Kate; remember God punishes those who think they know better than He! I know all the things that you say, Aunt Marsha!” The words burst from Kate as she fell inelegantly into the seat across from her aunt. 

Her sitting came with a whoosh of air and a ruffle of her skirts as they poofed up around her legs. 

“Don’t sound so dismissive, Kate!” Aunt Marsha said exasperatedly. She threw her hands up, her lips in a tight line as she shook her head. “If you know all of the things that I say, maybe it’s time you got to taking heed of them. Remember who you are.” Her voice was more gentle as she said as much, though, that worry was at the forefront of everything as she looked Kate over again. 

“How am I supposed to know who I am when I can’t remember anything before waking up in the doctor’s office that morning, Aunt Marsha?” Kate asked, beleaguered as the fight drained from her as if someone had pulled a drain plug. “It’s been four years, and I can’t remember any more now than I could then.”

“The doctors told you that you couldn’t force the issue, Kate,” Aunt Marsha reassured her, although Kate could see the hesitance in the way she spoke as well. “And saying that you’ve remembered nothing in all that time just isn’t true. Why, just last month, you remembered how your father used to read that Mark Twain story to you before bed!” 

Kate sighed, her frustration mounting again as she shrugged. She didn’t want to point out that it had been a hazy memory at best, only the sound of his voice and the story itself coming to her—and all of that only because she had happened across the book in Aunt Marsha’s study. 

“I’m not remembering anything here,” she repeated forlornly. “Maybe…” She stopped, her voice cutting out as she glanced away from her aunt. “Maybe I just need to stop waiting for my memory to return,” she said softly, her heart hammering in her throat as silence fell after her words. 

“Oh, Kate, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Aunt Marsha sighed almost happily. 

Kate flinched, realizing how differently her aunt had taken her words about how she had meant them. “I mean… I just… I think maybe if I get out, if I don’t just sit here waiting for it to move on,” Kate’s sentences were fractured, hope building behind her stuttered explanation as she sat straighter. “Maybe if I just moved on with my life and focused on the future, it would stop being so hard,” she rushed out. 

Her eyes landed back on her aunt as she spoke, watching as her aunt deflated under Kate’s actual meaning. 

“How does leaving here help anything?” Aunt Marsha demanded sharply. 

“Maybe if I move on with the future, I’ll actually stand a chance at fixing the past,” Kate murmured, hating how anxiously her aunt’s face twisted with her words. “All the memories I’ve recovered from my past were triggered by something, Aunt Marsha,” she pointed out. 

“All by things in your day-to-day life here!” Aunt Marsha argued, the same argument she had used again and again any time Kate had ever so much as ventured an opinion on leaving Illinois and the grief that it carried with it. 

Normally, that portion of their disagreement was where Kate swallowed the rest of her argument. Normally, she would have ducked her head already and offered a half-meant apology to keep the peace, but a fire burned in her she didn’t know how to explain or give a name to. 

“I can’t stay here forever, living a half-life going nowhere,” Kate answered, with emotion brimming in every word. “I can’t stay where everyone remembers me from being a girl, whether I lived here or not, where they remember my family visiting, and I… remember nothing before these past four years.” 

Her voice shook over the last words; the same grief always seized her when she tried to remember her parents. She couldn’t take it; the pity in their stares or the questions the doctors asked her. As if they would help figure out why all those memories were still buried so deeply.

“Where will you go then?” Aunt Marsha demanded. “You can’t afford to be reckless, Kate! Your mother and father would turn over in their graves if they knew I allowed you to make some risky, last-minute decision out of the arrogance of youth! Do you know how young they were when we lost them in that accident? I couldn’t live with myself if I lost you too!” 

There it was. 

The line that always shut everything down, the truth behind her aunt’s worry and the way she hovered so closely over everything that Kate did. 

Kate’s tongue felt thick as she swallowed her own hurt. “And I can’t live knowing that there could be more for me out there than this,” she stated woodenly. 

“I don’t know how old they were, at least not in any real way. I’ve read the obituaries, I’ve heard your stories, but I remember nothing of them beyond my mother brushing my hair and my father reading me stories before bed. I can’t tell you what my mother smelled like, I can’t tell you anything about them beyond those two things, and I can’t keep pretending like that changes nothing!” Kate’s voice warbled as she stood back from where she had flung herself down earlier, her eyes misting with tears while she hurried away from the blurry visage of her aunt calling after her. 

Her tears were hot as they tracked down her face, her steps echoing as she ran up the steps and to her room, her aunt following her the whole way and calling her name. 

The click of her door coming to a sharp close filled the room, sunlight streaming through the curtains on the far side and her back sliding against the door as she shut her eyes tight to try and block it all out. 

She couldn’t afford to be reckless…

The noise that left Kate was muffled through her tears, the back of her head hitting the door as she tried to get a hold of her emotions. 

She’d been careful her whole life. Or at least the four years of it she remembered. 

She didn’t go anywhere; she didn’t do anything. She did her chores, read her books, helped around the house, and… what? Kate didn’t do anything other than what was expected of her.

Well, at least she normally didn’t. 

Her tears died down some as she pulled the letter she’d hidden from view on her way up the walkway, sniffling as she moved away from the door. 

Guilt filled her belly all over again as she wandered over to her desk, her eyes furtively checking the door to make sure that her Aunt Marsha hadn’t followed her. 

Louisville, Colorado, stood out on the envelope as if it were reminding her of just what risk she had been taking lately. She could almost hear her aunt’s scandalized inhale. Aunt Marsha had been ominous warnings and disapproval when Penny Farrington had abruptly accepted a bride advert from out west. She’d worked herself up with all of her muttering and naysaying.

The blocky, almost too neat writing was something that was becoming familiar to Kate. 

She didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she took those adverts out of the paper up to her room. It had been a kind of wild fancy just doing so after she’d gone with her aunt to the Tillbury wedding. She’d only intended to read through them and see what they were all about. But then she’d come to his advertisement and was intrigued.

Eric Latham had a way with words rivaled only by the great classics that Kate enjoyed reading well into the night. His description painted a picture of his ranch in Colorado that made it sound both peaceful and exciting all at once. 

Even reading over his most recent letter filled her with a sort of longing and awe that she sometimes wondered if it had anything to do with Eric at all. Or if it were more for the life that he spoke of. Out of Illinois, away from the memories that haunted her and somewhere she could be herself. 

Whoever that was. 

I long for the day that I get to tell you how beautiful you are to your face, dearest Kate. I doubt your picture, even as lovely as it was, did you any real justice. I find myself wishing more and more to share my days with you. To build on this budding romance between the two of us and find that hope we have both been so desperately searching for. 

Maybe that is why I am rushing things. Am I rushing things? I reckon only you could tell me. You only need to tell me that you are truly as invested as I am, and I will gladly send you the tickets for you to join me here in Louisville. 

Come, be my bride-

All the other words seemed to fade off of the page, Kate’s eyes going over the short proposal he had written between his usually very long letters. 

“Come, be my bride.” 

Four words had never filled her with such anticipation before. 

Even amid all the grief of her disagreement with her aunt, even with how guilty she felt over having kept this a secret for as long as she had, somehow it still also felt undeniably right. As if this were the path God had intended to set her down all those months ago when he had first put the adverts in front of her. 

She felt almost giddy as she pulled her own pen and parchment out, her mind buzzing with anticipation as she hurriedly accepted his proposal, rapidly approaching dates and all. 

This was what she needed. This was that step outside of the door that she needed in order to break free of those chains that had been holding her down and keeping her memories hostage. 

She just knew it. 

She knew it as surely as she knew that her Aunt Marsha was going to disapprove and try and talk her out of it. As surely as she knew that her name was Kate and that she had been in an accident four years ago. She knew that this was the right step for her to be taking, that this was the path that God had intended for her. 

Her aunt would just have to trust her and her faith. 

Not that Kate had any intention of telling her Aunt Marsha yet. Kate confirmed as she sealed her letter with all the hope of a girl half her age. No, she would save that for another day. 

That anxiety wouldn’t temper the excitement welling in her chest as she hurriedly filled out the envelope. 

It felt all at once like she was running and jumping off a cliff and coming in from a cold winter morning to a log fire at the same time. Exciting and new, and full of the comfort of something familiar in the same breath. 

She’d never been to Louisville, Colorado, but somehow just the thought of it felt like she was going home…

Chapter Two

The sound of metal striking metal carried through the yard in the back of the building, the sparks that flew off of the freshly heated elements a bright, glowing red even despite how high the sun shone in the sky beyond. 

“Ah, you’ve burned me!” one of the men working called out, snorts of laughter breaking between the words despite how he cradled his arm to his chest as he hopped back away from the slightly taller gray-eyed man working the hammer. 

“I did no such thing,” Simon snorted, half-rolling his eyes as his lips quirked in a half-smile. “Although if you don’t move, I’m likely to.” 

“You’re likely to burn me either way,” Jackson moaned, his green eyes still flashing mischievously as he lifted one hand and shook out his long black curls. “Swinging the hammer like that. What’d it do to you anyhow?” 

Simon straightened, the hammer in his hand hanging heavily at his side as he tilted his head. He wasn’t quick with words like Jackson, nor did he care to be, although Jackson’s humor was always a welcome reprieve. Simon was slower in many ways. Slower to act, slower to respond, slower to anger. It wasn’t that he wasn’t as quick-witted as Jackson. It was that he thought through what he had to say before blurting it out. 

“I reckon next you’ll tell me I’m causing a ruckus,” he joked back, his lips twitching as he ran his free hand through his unruly dark hair. 

“Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it,” Jackson laughed as he bent to get some of the horseshoes that they’d struck earlier that morning from the pile by the anvil. 

“He’d call it doing his job,” a voice croaked from behind the both of them. 

Terry was more than three times either of their ages, his gray hair and brown eyes weathered in a way that he bore in every inch of his being. His skin was darker than both of theirs too, a creased leather from all of his years at sea. Despite how serious his voice sounded, the deep crow’s feet around his eyes were etched with laughter as he came up alongside Jackson and Simon. 

“Aw, Terry, I’m doing my job here too.” Jackson chuckled, not repentant in the slightest as he stood from where he had been crouched. 

“I’ve like to never have met someone who could jaw as much as you and still get things done,” Terry sighed, looking over what Jackson had been working on with a shake of his head. “Your mama said you could talk the legs off a chair, Jackson, and if that ain’t the truest thing I ever heard, I don’t know what is.” 

Simon snorted, hiding his grin as he ducked his head and looked at the horseshoe he’d been hammering. 

“My mama must’ve got me confused with one of her other kids then,” Jackson argued good-naturedly. “You know she’s got more than enough to choose from.” 

Even Terry snorted at that, his gray mustache twitching as he shook his head. 

Jackson came from one of the bigger families around town, even if they had only moved to Louisville a little over six months before. With eight children, Simon didn’t know how Jackson’s mother kept them in order, but he wasn’t about to go without saying as much in the midst of Terry and Jackson’s conversation either. 

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to be tellin’ your mama just how confused you think she gets next time she stops by to check on you,” Terry returned in that crotchety, teasing way of his. 

Jackson made a noise like a wounded dog, backing away with his hands full and muttering some nonsense or another about taking things too far. 

Simon was silent and amused throughout all of it. It didn’t matter how much grumbling either of the men did, Simon knew they’d never go so far as to actually offend one another. Jackson just pressed too hard and Terry had never quite come off of that ship he’d captained all those years before, no matter how long it had been since he was a captain. He was salt and roiling waves… and Jackson was a bright midsummer’s day. They were bound to clash now and again, though never seriously enough to worry. 

“Seventy-two years old and still teaching whelps to mind their p’s and q’s,” Terry mumbled as he came to a stop next to Simon. “Did you finish that order for Mr. Jenkins this morning, son?” 

Simon nodded, moving around the anvil to get the sack of nails, hoops, and hinges that the man had ordered, handing it off to Terry to inspect without so much as a question. 

After four years of working with Terry, Simon had come to learn how to navigate the man’s pricklier points, and a well-finished order certainly made that list. 

“You want me to get started on those pots and pans that Timothy O’Shan ordered too?” Simon asked as Jackson slunk back over with a glint in his eye that Simon just knew meant trouble. 

Terry huffed, his brown eyes narrowed slightly as he looked over at Jackson, too. “Best not. That fool will be in at least ten times more to change that order. You let him make his mind up good and proper before we dedicate any time to it.” 

The older man cut off suddenly, a dry, hacking cough overtaking his answer. 

Where Simon had been slower to act than Jackson before, all at once he was in motion, his feet quick to take the steps to get to Terry’s side. 

Terry, who was waving him off with one hand while he used the other to mop a handkerchief across the lower half of his face. 

“Don’t you go starting none of that now,” Terry croaked. “I’m right as rain, just got some dust in my lungs is all.” 

Simon and Jackson shared a look over the old man’s bowed head, Jackson’s gaze just as full of worry as Simon’s heart was. 

“Ah-hmm,” Terry cleared his throat, standing straight again and ignoring their concern as he pocketed his handkerchief again. “Y’all see to those plows Father Jessop was asking after. I reckon he’ll be by today to check on them, and it’d be nice to surprise him with the finished product.” He looked around the yard in the back of the blacksmith shop, his bushy gray eyebrows furrowed and a look of confusion in his eyes before he seemed to shake it off of himself. “I’m going to go see what I can do about that dratted ax handle…” 

He was already walking before he finished talking, his steps a little slower than they had been coming out but otherwise seemingly unchanged. 

The mood he left behind him was much more somber than it had been before. Though, both Jackson and Simon were staring after him in silence for a long moment. 

“That cough sounded like it had a bit of a rattle to it,” Jackson finally commented, his words slower than they’d been in the conversation prior. 

“Maybe,” Simon hummed, not wanting to agree one way or another as he frowned and moved over to grab the plows that Terry had been talking about. 

“Don’t maybe that, Simon,” Jackson breathed, following him unenthusiastically. “You know as well as I that coughing is coming on more and more, and it ain’t let up neither, not even with the weather warming up as it has.” 

Simon’s frown deepened, his movements jerky as he pulled the pieces of the plows out from where they had been stacked. “Mornings are still a bit chilly. After nightfall too,” he answered cryptically, his chest tight with the awareness that he was just searching for any excuse. 

Jackson made a noise of disagreement, his green eyes unusually somber as he bent to grab one of the pieces that Simon had missed with a flourish. “I know the two of you are close—” 

“Hand me that ball bearing, would you?” Simon interrupted him uncharacteristically. 

Jackson was right, in more ways than one, and Simon hated to admit it. 

Terry’s coughing was getting worse. He was moving slower, his bouts of confusion were coming on more and more regularly… His health was declining, and fast, and just the knowledge of it was enough to make Simon all kinds of uncomfortable. 

In the four years that Simon had lived in Louisville, Terry had taken him under his wing. The old man had been the first to show Simon any kind of kindness and he’d spent four years more after it doing nothing but that. He’d been the one to get Simon a job, to help him with his living arrangements, to get him going to the church… He’d even been the one waiting for him at the train station after Simon had tried going back home to visit his old childhood friend only to find the news of her family’s passing waiting for him instead. 

It had been Terry who had prayed with him after that, Terry who had comforted and seen him through that grief… 

And it was Terry now who seemed to be struggling just to do the basic tasks that Simon had seen him carry out with ease over the last handful of years. 

Jackson handed him the ball bearing silently, his green eyes heavy on Simon as Simon bent his head and continued to ignore him. 

It was only after several minutes had passed in that same awkward silence that Jackson tried again. 

“Maybe you ought to talk to him about slowing down some,” Jackson offered quietly. 

Simon winced, his hand slipping as he tightened a bolt off to one side. “Don’t think he’ll be very interested in hearing that,” Simon said dryly. In the four years Simon had been working with him, he hadn’t seen Terry take one day off that he wasn’t forced to. 

“If anyone could get him to listen…” Jackson trailed off and the two men descended into silence once more. 

Simon knew he was right, but the very thought of suggesting such a thing made him feel like he was sticking his nose somewhere it didn’t belong. 

Their focus returned to putting the plows together until the moment that they finished, Jackson standing proudly with an ‘aha’ noise. 

No sooner had Simon stood, running his palms down the front of his jeans, than Terry wandered back out, his eyes moving over their work appraisingly. 

“Well, now, I’ll tell you-” 

But whatever Terry had been going to tell them was lost. 

Where the older man had coughed before, he wheezed then, his body bent in half and his hands on his knees as his whole back arched with the effort it took for that rattling cough to make its way up through his old bones. 

The tools Simon had been organizing were forgotten, dropped from his hands as he rushed to Terry’s side, all thoughts of his nose and minding his own shoved from his head by the overriding worry that seized him. 

“Terry!” Jackson hollered, only a few steps beside Simon as they came up on either side of the older man. 

“I’m… ” Terry’s words were swallowed by coughing as well, his brown eyes watery as he pitched forward. 

It was only because Jackson and Simon were already there that they were able to catch him from falling on his face, a man on either of his shoulders, as they hauled him back up just in the nick of time. 

“Terry, you need to sit,” Simon said firmly, walking Terry back with Jackson’s help to the wooden chair off to one side of the back door. 

“I don’t need to sit,” Terry argued weakly, cutting off again with the coughs that racked his body as both men guided him down into the chair. Spittle lined his lower lip as he sat up, his eyes tight and full of fear as he used the back of his wrist to wipe his mouth. “It’s this dratted cold weather,” he complained grumpily, glaring at the yard at large as if it, too, was at fault. 

Simon frowned, not meeting Jackson’s pointed gaze as he stared at Terry. 

“Are you cold right now, Terry?” he asked neutrally, watching as the older man wrapped his arms around his torso with a hardened glare. 

It was bright and sunny out, spring well underway and just warm enough that Simon didn’t feel like he needed more than a long-sleeved shi‌rt. 

Terry grunted, tossing his head as he wheezed in the aftermath of his coughing. “Of course I’m cold,” he grumbled. “Weather’s so cold I can feel it in my bones.” 

His words settled in Simon like a sack of hot rocks, his lips thinning into a tight line as he inhaled sharply. 

“I reckon you ought to go‌ fetch Doctor Brown, Jackson,” Simon said carefully, only just not flinching under the heat of Terry’s sudden glare. 

“I don’t need no doctor!” he argued with a croaking noise in the back of his throat as he fought off another cough. “I done told you, it’s this weather—” 

“It’s unseasonably warm out this afternoon, Terry,” Simon pointed out placidly, no anger in his voice, like Terry’s.

Terry shrunk, deflating before Simon’s eyes, as Jackson turned on his heel and went to fetch the doctor. 

Standing with him, his hand on Terry’s shoulder comfortingly, Simon just wished he hadn’t waited so long to insist on it.

---

“Making Memories of Love” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

In Laten, Illinois, Kate Townsend feels like a prisoner since the tragic accident that claimed her parents, haunted by a past that she can’t remember. Desperate to escape the suffocating memories that surround her, Kate seizes the chance for a fresh start out West, responding to a bridal advert that promises a new life. Little did she know, a secret friend from her past will also be waiting in the new town.

Is perhaps this offer in the mail-order bride ad too good to be true?

Simon Porter is a man whose heart has been shattered by tragedy but who still has hope for a future filled with love. When he sees Kate, he is struck by her uncanny resemblance to his lost love, but he soon realizes that she has no memory of him or their past together. Despite the pain that it brings him, Simon knows that he must help Kate…

Will the present he builds with her eventually be larger than their past?

As they spend more time together, Kate and Simon find that the past matters less and less. Can they overcome the questions left by Kate’s lack of memories? Will they ever be given the chance with the arrival of Simon’s rival coming after him? If love conquers all… is their love enough to conquer the insurmountable odds they find themselves facing in Louisville? Or is it bound for another set of tragedies to further mark both of them for life?

“Making Memories of Love” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!