The Weight of Your Heart: The Carnahan Legacy

By Juliet MacLeod

Over eight short years, Charlie McNamara suffers unimaginable losses, but using her wits and a strong dose of sheer determination, she carves out a life for herself in the desert sands of Egypt, 6,000 miles from friends, family, and everything she knows.

The Weight of Your Heart is an introduction to the sweeping five-generation saga of the Carnahan family, and their ties to a paelo-astronomical circle located in Nabta Playa in southwestern Egypt. Romance, action-adventure, and magic are combined into one epic tale about the power of one family to change the future by utilizing the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casa Cielo Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393804697

Juliet MacLeod

Juliet MacLeod is a Scottish native currently living in Southern Arizona. She was educated in Edinburgh and New York City, has worked as a web designer and as a magazine staff writer, and is currently employed as the chief dog walker and pooper scooper for His Royal Majesty, Cooper Alexander Border Collie. When not slaving away over a hot keyboard, Juliet enjoys reading, watching films (her favorites are The Princess Bride and PS—I Love You), and listening to music. She has an unhealthy obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones and Jason Statham's smile.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Michigan Creek, Colorado

January 1915

The newspaper, a weekly from Leadville, was almost three weeks old when Hank brought it to Charlie's attention. He showed her a tiny article on the fifth page with the headline of Men Are Needed To Die For Their Country . It was about the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and its need for volunteers to go immediately to France and fight against the Germans. Charlie read it and then looked up at her brother with a confused frown on her face. But we're not Canadians. Besides, Papa wouldn't ever let you join up. You're only twenty. You still have two years of school left.

Hank looked disgusted at his little sister's fatheadedness and crumpled the paper up and threw it into the little wood-burning stove that heated the kitchen of the large house built on the banks of the South Platte River. The huge picture window in the parlor where the rest of the McNamara family was gathered commanded a breathtaking view of the expanse of the snow-covered meadow of South Park and the ring of mountains that encircled it on three sides. Winter had come late to the high country, but now that it had arrived, it had settled in with a vengeance, tightening its icy grip around the tiny community of Michigan Creek, Colorado, covering the houses and stores and mines with a thick blanket of fluffy, white snow, all but cutting it off from the rest of the world.

You don't understand, Charlie, Hank said and took another sip of his rum-spiked eggnog. You're only seventeen. And a girl. America needs to get involved. The Germans and the Turks are threatening to swallow all of the Middle East and Europe. America's next, and President Wilson would be best served realizing that sooner rather than later! But he’s too busy being a coward to understand the danger.

Charlie gasped and covered her mouth with her hands in shock. Bad-mouthing the president was something Hank would never have done a year ago. She suspected his new friends at Yale had had something to do with his change in attitude. He was probably just spouting some nonsense he'd heard from them. He couldn’t actually agree with what he was saying. Charlie shook her head and sipped her milk after fixing Hank with a long, level look. Better not let Papa hear you talk like that, she said after a moment. He'll have your hide. And you'd better forget joining up, too. Papa won't let you, Hank. Just forget it.

I'll be twenty-one in April, Hank said smugly. I'll finish out this year at New Haven, and then next summer, I'll go to Toronto and volunteer. If America hasn't already become involved, that is. If we have, then I'll just go to New York and ship out from there. I'll be in my majority then. Papa can't say a thing against it.

But Hank, Charlie said, tears filling her dark brown eyes. It's a war! Boys are being killed, shot at, gassed! Papa got a cable from one of his friends in New York and their girl's son was killed in France. She shot off her chair and threw her arms around her brother's neck, hugging him fiercely, clinging to him as if she could keep him safe. You can't go, Hank! You just can't!

Henry can't go where, darling? asked their mother, Marjorie, as she entered the kitchen, carrying a tray of empty mugs. She looked at her children and a frown marred her delicate, porcelain features. She took in her daughter's tears, the fact that Charlie was currently smothering her brother in a tight embrace, and then turned coldly appraising Delft-blue eyes on her son. Henry, what did you do to Charlotte? she asked with just a touch of heat in her voice.

N-nothing, Mama! Hank answered immediately, turning a mute appeal on Charlie as he pushed her off his lap. Please don't tell Mama that look screamed. I didn't do anything to her. We were... We were just talking about how I'm leaving to go back to school in a few weeks.

Marjorie, always slightly skeptical of Hank's stories and explanations, turned those blue eyes on her daughter and arched a delicate wheaten blonde eyebrow. Charlotte? Is that true?

Charlie, wincing at being called by her Christian name, looked back and forth between her mother and her favorite brother. On the one hand, if she lied to her Mama and Marjorie found out, there would be her Papa to answer to. And on the other hand, if she told her Mama what Hank was planning for next summer, there'd be Hank to answer to. Of the two McNamara men, Hank was the far more intimidating.

Yes, Mama, she said and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. I... I don't want Hank to go back to school. I'm going to miss him something awful. The look she turned on her brother once their mother had nodded and turned away spoke volumes about what Hank owed Charlie for covering for him. It also promised that the discussion about him joining the Great War wasn't over.

CHAPTER TWO

Michigan Creek, Colorado

February 1915

HANK AND AL, THE YOUNGEST of the McNamara boys, left to go back to Yale two weeks after Hank and Charlie's conversation in the kitchen. Life in Michigan Creek slowly returned to normal. Howard Senior and Howard Junior continued their business as attorneys, seeing clients when they could. They spent most of their time, however, clearing up legal issues their out-of-town clients had developed during the summer months.

Marjorie continued educating Charlie while the tiny town's single-roomed school house was buried under seven feet