Echoes of a War-Torn Heart (Preview)

Chapter One

1865, Six Crow Hollow, Texas

Ivy was next up in the queue. She breathed in deeply, squaring her shoulders. 

Easy peasy, she told herself. You know what you’re going to say. You mapped it all out in your head. Just say it. That’s all. 

At least it was the grocer’s daughter, Helen, at the counter, not the grocer himself. There was something about his angry, direct stare that made it much harder to get her words out. 

That, and his thinly veiled comments about the war, about the ‘darn traitors’ who fought for the Union, and about how American civilization would crumble into pieces if everyone was forced to release their slaves. 

“It ain’t right!” he’d bellowed once, when Ivy was foolish enough to argue with him. “Should they release all their cows and sheep and cattle, too, huh? Just let them roam free in the hills because they got no right to keep them? The world’s gone mad!”

Ivy wished with all her heart that she was the sort of person who would speak up fearlessly about that sort of thing, who was eloquent enough to say what she thought and make it count. 

But she wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be heard, anyway. Ivy had long since realized that nobody listened to her in this town, even if she managed to swallow past her stutter and make herself heard. 

It was useless to point out that people were not cattle, not even close. Mr. Boules just didn’t believe it. People were people, and he did not view certain humans as real people. There’d be no changing his mind on that, not now, not ever. He was an angry man; everyone knew that, and he had the sheriff’s ear. 

Ivy, on the other hand, was a single woman living alone on that big old ranch, with only her little brother for company. Not that there was a great deal of crime in their small town, but there were always…always dangers. Ivy didn’t like being there alone. She felt…well, she felt vulnerable. Days went past sometimes, when the only people she saw were her own brother and her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Hutch, and she was more or less housebound these days. Better to just shut up around people like Mr. Boules and hope that his dicky heart just stopped working one day. 

She got to the front of the queue and smiled nervously at Helen. Helen smiled back, but with all the other smiles Ivy saw, it was taut and false. It made her think of the painted-on smiles on china dolls, the kind she’d had as a child. She’d had a rag doll, too, but its stitched red mouth could never be seen as anything real. The china dolls were more realistic, but their curled, painted lips, sometimes showing a flash of lips, just seemed wrong. 

It had been a relief when she could finally give up the china doll, and get away from its staring eyes and painted mouth, glowering down at her from the shelf, as if it were her fault that it was up there gathering dust. 

Not that she would have dared to play with it. It was an expensive toy and easily broken. 

“Hey, Ivy,” Helen said brightly. “How’s Josiah? Still making trouble?”

“Y-yes,” Ivy responded, feeling some of her tension seep away. “You know Josiah.”

“I sure do. Still no sweetheart, yet?”

There was an odd sort of look in Helen’s eyes, something a little malicious. She would know the answer, of course. Everybody knew everything in this town. If Ivy were to step out with a man, even once, even if she thought nobody saw them, everyone would know before the close of the following day. Gossip was like gold in these small towns, and Ivy was always careful not to provide any. 

Well, except for the usual, unavoidable things, of course. 

Helen was still looking at her expectantly, eyebrows raised. Waiting for an answer. 

Ivy’s cheeks burned. This sort of questioning always made her uncomfortable. The answer, of course, was no, always no, and she had to act like she didn’t care. Women around her were getting married to their sweethearts and fiancés who returned from the war, and the women who were still single cooed about it and pretended not to be jealous. 

Helen, for instance, had been courting a young man who went away to war, fighting for the Confederates. They hadn’t been engaged, but there was an understanding. Well, he’d never returned. The man hadn’t died, he only found a better home and simply decided not to return to Six Crow. 

Presumably, he’d also found a better sweetheart. 

Naturally, Ivy and her family had nothing to do with Helen’s disappointment, but there was no denying that they supported the Union side of the war, the side which had caused the trouble, to Helen’s way of thinking, and therefore, led to her losing the man she might have married. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else for Helen to marry. 

Ivy cleared her throat, hoping she’d kept her expression smooth, betraying nothing of what she was thinking. Helen was still waiting for her answer and seemed a little impatient now. 

The truth was, she would like to be married, but it simply wasn’t possible.

If Ivy let on that she was looking for a husband, she’d be set up and talked about nonstop, and she couldn’t bear that. Firstly, the sort of men they’d see fit for a Union-siding traitorous girl was the sort of man who would ‘fix’ her, making her see ‘what was right and wrong’, as the saying went. Ivy shuddered at that thought. No, thank you. Besides, she knew all the single men in town, and didn’t care for a single one of them. She’d rather be single forever. 

And, of course, there’d be the endless, pouting pity because who’d want to marry a girl who could barely speak? Luke used to tell her that it didn’t matter. He said it over and over before he left, as if by repeating it, he could undo all the smirks and harsh comments from the locals. He’d held his sister’s hands tightly and made her promise that she wouldn’t listen to their nonsense. 

She’d promised that she wouldn’t, of course, but those were just words. Words were cheap. 

Well, they would be cheap, if Ivy could ever get them out of her mouth. 

Ivy cleared her throat, trying to look at ease and unflustered. She forced a smile and shook her head. 

Helen smiled back, not seeming surprised in the slightest. “So, what’ll it be?”

Deep breath. Review the list in her head. Go. 

“I n-need six cans of beans, a big jar of pick-pickles, a roll of plain calico if you’ve got any, and a bag of c-corn.” 

“You got it. Just wait a minute.” 

That was an unexpected kindness from Helen, who was one of the kinder locals, but it didn’t help Ivy’s knotted tongue or the way her breathing was speeding up. 

Ivy let out a breath, leaning against the counter. It was irritating—she rarely, if ever, stuttered at home. But once she left the security of Turner Ranch, it was as if her tongue stopped working. She babbled and blushed, taking far too long to get out the simplest of sentences. 

People were sympathetic, mostly. Or at least, they had been, before the Turners fell out of favor in town and started getting sideways glances and disapproving glares. Now, Ivy found that people rolled their eyes when they thought she wasn’t looking, and their eyes glazed over when she talked, as if willing her to just spit it out, just say what she thought she needed to say, and let them get on with her life. 

Some of them winced and hissed as she made her slow, unsteady way through the sentences, almost seeming to share in her humiliation. Those sorts of people usually avoided her, as if they couldn’t quite bring themselves to be around her. 

It was embarrassing, that was what it was. 

Ivy took Helen’s absence as a chance to get her breath back, to remind herself that she had every reason to be here. This was a general store, and her coin was as good as anyone else’s. Everyone came here, and it didn’t matter if she stuttered a little when listing what she wanted. 

It doesn’t matter, she told herself in her head. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Who cares what they think of you? It doesn’t matter if people think badly of you. You know you’re right. You know they’re wrong. If you keep telling yourself that, you’ll believe it, sooner or later. 

Of course, this sort of internal chanting hadn’t done Ivy any good, not yet. Still, she lived in hope that it would work, eventually. It would be good if Pa and Luke came back to find Ivy a more confident, more eloquent young woman than when they’d left. 

They would come back to find some other terrible changes, so she hoped to provide one good change. 

Helen came back with the requested goods, and Ivy piled them up in her basket. She paid and slipped gratefully out of the general store before Mr. Boules could turn up after all. 

Outside, the small town of Six Crow Hollow was bustling. It was market day, and that meant that everyone from the neighboring towns came flooding in to buy and sell. 

Ivy hated the crowds. All those strangers bustling around her, looking at her curiously. There were a lot of young men ogling her—and older ones, too, who didn’t seem to mind flirting with women young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters. She hated that in particular. Her stutter always got much worse, and they seemed to like that. 

It was as if vulnerability made her more attractive to them, and it made her sick. 

Ivy knew, in a vague sort of way, that she was very pretty. She was twenty-one, with fair hair, a proper flaxen shade instead of yellow, and large blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. She had freckles blooming across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and she was short and petite in the bargain. 

Very pretty, said the faces of men she passed by. Men who didn’t know that she could barely speak without turning red and stuttering fiercely, or that her family had joined the Union side of the war instead of the Confederate side, like everybody else in town.

Shameful, people had said. They’d come to console Ivy when her pa and big brother first left to fight for the Union. They’d expected her to be mortified, sad, embarrassed, and outraged at what the men of her family had done, albeit helpless to defy The Men. 

It had been funny to see the expressions on the faces of the guests when they realized that Mrs. Turner and her daughter wholeheartedly supported their menfolk. 

That was then, though, and this was now. 

Ivy hurried through the crowds, relief flooding through her when she spotted the familiar, battered old cart pulled by the faithful old carthorse who wouldn’t go faster than a trot these days. 

She threw her supplies up into the back of the cart, alongside the vegetables she hadn’t been able to sell. They’d do for the next few weeks’ worth of food. Pausing, Ivy scanned the crowd one last time for a familiar face. 

It was silly to keep looking out for her brother. It had been months since she’d heard from him. Pa wasn’t coming back from the war, and it was all too likely that…

Ivy pinched off that thought abruptly, swallowing hard. No. It wasn’t fair to think that way. 

I’m not alone, she told herself desperately. I have Josiah, after all. 

She spotted the sheriff standing over by the saloon, leaning against the wooden boardwalk, deep in conversation with the saloon owner. 

Ivy swallowed hard, hastily climbing up into the cart. She didn’t want to attract Sheriff Copper’s attention. Nobody did—it was a recipe for disaster. 

He glanced idly her way, but his gaze skipped over her, not bothering to stop. He didn’t have a high opinion of her, Ivy knew that. He didn’t have time for a traitor’s daughter who couldn’t spit out a full sentence in less than a minute. 

Those had been his exact words on more than one occasion, in fact. 

Ivy snapped the reins across Bruno’s back, and they were off, facing toward home at last. 

***

Josiah glanced up as the horse and cart rattled up the drive. Ivy waved to him, but he dropped his gaze. 

She let her hand fall, frowning. He’d had a bad day at school, then. Again. 

He was drawing something on his slate, which was almost certainly meant to be full of sums or some other useful information. He set his books and slate aside, stepping off the porch to help Ivy with the supplies. 

Josiah was twelve and growing fast. He was taller than most boys his age, lanky and thin, and outgrowing his clothes at an alarming rate. Since the work of managing the ranch fell to him and his sister, he was stronger than most boys his age, too. 

He pulled the bag of corn out of the cart with ease, slinging it over his shoulder and reaching for the basket, too. 

“Are you okay?” Ivy asked, climbing down from the cart. 

“Yeah,” he responded, not looking her in the eye. “What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

“You’re always s-starving,” Ivy said, ruffling his hair. It was dark, like their mother’s, and he had her brown eyes, too. Sometimes, they didn’t even look like siblings, not like her and Luke. “I was going to make stew, and you can tell me what happened at school.”

“Nothing happened at school.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t believe you.” 

Josiah rolled his eyes, depositing the supplies inside the kitchen door. 

“Right. Well, I’ll put Bruno and the cart away, shall I?”

“That would be helpful, thank you.”

Ivy watched her brother head across the yard toward the big, dilapidated barn. The barn needed a new roof, since it was leaking horribly. The porch creaked worryingly, and the paint was peeling. The cow pen needed repairing, the cart needed replacing, and Josiah needed new shoes again. 

The bills and things to be done never seemed to end. The accounts had always been Mrs. Turner’s task, and she was very good at it. The long columns of figures in the account books meant nothing to Ivy, but she needed to figure them out, and quickly. 

Panic bubbled up inside her, and Ivy hastily distracted herself. Fortunately, there was always something to be done on Turner Ranch. 

Always. 

***

“They took my lunch pail again,” Josiah finally said when they sat down to supper together. 

Ivy’s heart sank, but she tried to stay neutral. “Which boys?”

Josiah pressed his lips together. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“It’s not like we can do anything. They called me a…” he trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. It’s the Union business again, of course.”

“The Union business,” Ivy repeated slowly. “Because of Pa and Luke?”

He nodded. 

They ate in silence for a few minutes, spooning up too-thin stew, and blotting the gravy with black bread. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was what they could afford. Josiah had long since grown out of complaining about his food. She was careful to give him a double portion. He was a growing boy, after all. 

“I know a lot of people in town feel differently,” Ivy said carefully, “but you know that the Union side is right about this, don’t you?”

Josiah sopped up the last of the gravy at the bottom of the bowl with a hunk of bread. 

“I got caned for telling one of the other boys that we’re Christians, so we can’t support slavery,” Josiah said bluntly. “The teacher said that everyone in town is a Christian, and I’m wrong to say things like that.” 

Ivy pressed her lips together, swallowing down a flare of rage. 

“Well, the Bible says that God isn’t partial, doesn’t it?” she said as calmly as she could. “It says that it doesn’t matter where a person is from or who they are. After all, Jesus wasn’t a white man, was he?”

Josiah listlessly pushed away his empty stew bowl. “Yeah, but then why can’t everyone else see it? It always sounded so simple when Ma and Pa explained it. Why doesn’t everyone else understand?”

Ivy sighed. “I don’t know, Joey. Honestly, I-I don’t. It’s tough to hang onto your principles when everyone else is telling you otherwise. I’m proud of you, you know, and I know that Ma and Pa would be, too. I know th-that.”

Tears glittered in Josiah’s eyes. “I can’t…can’t believe that they’re gone.”

She reached across the table, taking his hand in hers. Their hands were dry and tough, calloused from farm work and manual labor. It was just another reminder of how different they were from the others, the ones who could afford ranch hands and help around the house. 

Ivy, on the other hand, had to take in washing from the locals to make ends meet. Josiah was talking about getting some sort of summer job in town, but that didn’t seem fair. He was only a child. 

Besides, Ivy still needed his help on the ranch. 

Abruptly, Josiah pulled his hand back, folding his arms across his chest. Ivy leaned back, trying not to feel hurt. He was at that age, as Mrs. Turner had said meaningfully, and he’d had a great deal to handle over the past year. Far more than a child of his age should have to manage. 

“I wish Luke would come home,” he said suddenly. “Everyone is saying that the war is over, so where is he? Why isn’t he coming back? What is he doing? Does he even know how badly we’re struggling?” 

Ivy bit her lip. “I-I sent him letters, Joey, but…”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

She swallowed hard. It was always hard to rearrange her words after being interrupted. Josiah didn’t mean anything by it, of course he didn’t, but words were jumbling up in Ivy’s head again, nonsensical and impossible to utter. 

“I wrote him letters, but we don’t k-know if he got them,” she said firmly. “Armies move, move around a lot. A lot. Our letters could have missed him very easily.”

Josiah bit his lip, shrugging sourly, like any young boy confronted with logic. 

“I still think he should come home.”

“I agree,” Ivy said. “I wish he would come home, too. I’m sure he’s trying, if he can.”

“If he can?” Josiah echoed. “What does that mean?”

Bile clawed its way up Ivy’s throat. She hadn’t wanted to have this conversation with Josiah, not now, not ever. She’d hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary. But the year was nearly over, the war was officially finished, and Luke was not yet home. There’d been no word from him, no further information. He’d been the one to write about their Pa’s death, in a painfully blunt letter streaked with tears and ink-smudged fingerprints. There would have been nobody left to write about Luke. 

“Joey, sweetheart, we need to consider that Luke may not come home,” Ivy said, her voice hushed. 

The kitchen was silent for a moment. 

“What do you mean?” Josiah asked, his voice wobbly. 

“I mean…I mean that we haven’t, haven’t heard from him in a while. The fighting was bad toward the end of the war. It’s possible that Luke is…is dead.”

Another long, painful silence. 

“Dead?” Josiah echoed. “He can’t be. He isn’t dead. He wrote to us, remember?”

Six months ago, Ivy thought. And Pa wrote too, but his letters stopped, didn’t they? 

Instead, she only tried to smile reassuringly. It came out as a twisted grimace. 

“I’m not saying that he is dead, J-Joey. I’m saying that maybe…”

“I don’t want to talk to you about this anymore,” Josiah said abruptly, rising to his feet. He pushed back his chair with a scrape, and it teetered, falling backward with a crash onto the kitchen floor. He flinched, moving to pick it up. He stopped himself and turned on his heel, all but running out of the kitchen. 

Ivy stayed where she was, listening to her brother’s heavy footsteps running upstairs. She heard his bedroom door slam, and then silence. 

She sighed, passing a hand over her face. She was tired, so tired, and she hadn’t even gotten started on her latest batch of laundry. 

Where are you, Luke? Ivy thought hopelessly. If you’re alive, please, please come back to us. 

When she’d finished her desperate little prayer, Ivy got to her feet and began clearing the table. Wishes and prayers were all very well, but they weren’t going to get the kitchen cleaned, were they?

Chapter Two 

Eli squatted down beside the stream and dipped his hands into the cool water. 

It was warm for this time of year, and their brisk walk over various hills and fields had left them both sweaty, grimy, and hot. 

On impulse, he lifted up a double handful of water, rinsing his face. It was embarrassing to see the swirls of dirty water fall back into the stream. He needed a good, long bath, with plenty of soap and a good old scrubbing cloth. 

Of course, they hadn’t had those luxuries while they were on the road. There wasn’t much in the way of washing in the army, either. There were big barrels of rainwater set out at intervals in the camp, designed for washing and shaving, but those got dirty pretty often. If they stopped by a pond or river, a man could get a wash in that, but then they had to use that same water to wash and cook. 

It wasn’t surprising so many of them took ill, really. 

Eli dipped his hands in the stream again and again, rinsing his face and head until he started to feel mostly human again. He kept getting glimpses of his own reflection, but fortunately, it wasn’t clear and still enough to get a good look. 

His reflection wasn’t something he was proud of at the moment. 

“There you are,” commented a second man, picking his way through the undergrowth. “I wish you wouldn’t wander off.”

“Just wanted a wash. Say, Luke, I don’t suppose we’ve got time for a proper bath?”

Luke eyed the clean water regretfully and shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’d like us to get further by dark. The next town ain’t particularly Union friendly, so we’ll have to camp out in the forest.”

“Fair enough.” 

Eli rose to his feet, shaking water from his hair like a dog. He saw his blurry silhouette reflected in the water. A tall, strong man, broad-shouldered and big-chested with a whip-thin waist that looked good but wouldn’t last him past thirty-five or so, with dark hair, tanned skin, and the glint of green eyes in a square, good-looking face. 

At least, it had been good-looking. Now, he had a vicious pink scar running from his hairline to the jaw on the right side of his face, bisecting the skin. It hadn’t healed right, although he knew he was lucky not to have gotten an infection. The skin around the scar was puckered and white. The surgeon had said that would probably smooth out with age, but Eli didn’t have much faith in the man. He’d watched too many botched amputations, and seen too many men bleed to death while the doctors ignored them. 

One doctor had lamely said that girls liked men with scars. Eli had just looked at him and stared. Of course, some girls did, but it was always the light, raking sort of scars. Not the scars that looked as if your face could fall apart at any moment. He’d been handsome once, but now people pointedly looked away when they passed him on the street. Girls didn’t meet his eye and smile anymore. His dreams of marriage, love, and children had always been in the distant future, but now they were gone altogether. 

He tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, but it didn’t really stick. 

Swallowing hard, Eli purposefully turned his back on his reflection, facing Luke again. 

Luke was leaning against a tree trunk, arms folded, eyes narrowed. 

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or shall I guess?”

Eli flashed a twisted, wry smile. Nope. 

“I’m just tired.”

“Oh, come on. If we’re going to travel together, we might as well talk.” 

He sighed, raking a hand through his wet hair. He still remembered Luke Turner arriving in camp all that time ago. It felt like a lifetime. He remembered the kid’s earnest, serious face—not a day older than twenty-two, which made Eli’s twenty-four seem ancient for some reason—tagging along with his father. 

Mr. Turner had been a decent enough man, from what Eli could remember. Dead now, of course, and Luke wouldn’t talk about him. Eli could sympathize with that—not wanting to talk about your family. Their motivations were very different, though. 

That was where Luke was heading now. Home to his Ma and younger siblings, who’d be anxiously awaiting him. He couldn’t wait, Eli could tell. 

Eli, too, was heading back to Texas. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there, but he had to go somewhere now that they’d handed back their stiff, filthy blue Union uniforms and got their last paycheck. 

No pension for him or Luke, since they were mostly unhurt. Scars on the inside didn’t count, nor did vanity scars. 

“If we’re going, we should go,” Eli said brusquely, pushing past Luke to get his feet back on the path. “Union soldiers aren’t popular around these parts, uniforms or not.”

Luke wavered, as if he was going to ask more questions. He didn’t, at the last minute, and Eli breathed a sigh of relief. 

They shouldered their packs, once heavy with food and supplies, now dangerously light, and carried on their way. 

They walked in silence. Eli liked Luke well enough, but they weren’t close friends, not like Eli and Jordan. 

But Jordan wasn’t here anymore. He was gone, along with the rest of his regiment. They’d all been so proud—a full regiment of black soldiers, wearing a Union uniform, fighting for their own freedom and that of their brothers and sisters. Some of the other soldiers had laughed about it, but never in Eli’s hearing. Never. 

His heart clenched at the thought of Jordan. He conjured up a picture of his friend, arms held wide, spinning around so Eli could take in his new uniform, both of them laughing in delight and disbelief. 

“Things are changing, Eli,” Jordan had said, his voice simmering with excitement, fingering the silver buttons that did up the front of his new jacket. “They’re changing fast, and it’s high time.”

Eli swallowed down a knot of emotion, blinking hard to force back the tears from his eyes. There was a time and a place to cry, and this wasn’t it. Luke fell into step beside him, for all the world as if they were marching together again. 

They didn’t talk. Not yet. 

***

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“Echoes of a War-Torn Heart” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Ivy, a gentle and kind young woman suffering from a debilitating stutter, has always struggled to connect with others. However, her world is forever changed when her beloved brother returns from the war. With him he brings the enigmatic Eli who is seeking refuge from a war-torn past with no living kin to turn to. While Ivy’s heart flutters in the presence of Eli, she buries her emotions beneath the weight of her family’s ranch, where she’s poured her soul into hard work.

Ivy, a gentle and kind young woman suffering from a debilitating stutter, has always struggled to connect with others. However, her world is forever changed when her beloved brother returns from the war. With him he brings the enigmatic Eli who is seeking refuge from a war-torn past with no living kin to turn to. While Ivy’s heart flutters in the presence of Eli, she buries her emotions beneath the weight of her family’s ranch, where she’s poured her soul into hard work.

Eli Turner, shunned by his own family for his beliefs, stands alone in a world that has taken so much from him. The ravages of the American Civil War claimed not only the lives of many friends but also his sense of belonging. A lifeline appears when a friend extends a helping hand, offering him a chance at a new beginning. Drawn to Ivy’s spirit and courage, Eli’s heart will soon find solace in her presence. Yet, this newfound connection raises troubling questions.

Can he risk opening his heart to Ivy, fearing it might jeopardize the fragile sanctuary he’s just begun to rebuild?

Amidst the rising tensions of a town filled with prejudice and bitterness, Ivy and Eli find themselves navigating a treacherous path, their love tested at every turn. Can they overcome the challenges that threaten to tear them apart? Will their bond endure in a world where nothing is certain?

“Echoes of a War-Torn Heart” 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!