Some love stories are gentle. Others must fight to survive. They endure separation, misunderstanding, loss, impossible choices—and, in some of my books, more than a century standing between two people who belong together.

Again and again, I find myself writing about love that refuses to surrender. Not because I believe love should always be painful or that every relationship must be saved at any cost. Some endings are necessary. Some doors should remain closed. But when love is genuine, mutual, and worth protecting, I am fascinated by its ability to survive what seems impossible. Perhaps that is because I have never believed that the greatest love stories are about finding the perfect person and living happily ever after without another struggle.

I believe they are about choosing not to give up when the story becomes difficult.

Love Must Be Tested

A love story needs more than attraction. Two people may be drawn to each other instantly, but desire alone does not reveal the depth of their bond. That depth emerges when something stands between them.

Time. Distance. Fear. Pride. Family obligations. Old wounds. A truth that arrives too late—or a goodbye that comes too soon. Obstacles do more than create tension in a novel. They force characters to answer the question at the heart of every meaningful romance:

How much am I willing to risk for this love?

The answer tells us who they truly are. It is easy to promise forever when the road ahead appears smooth. It is much harder to keep moving toward someone when every reasonable voice says the journey is impossible.

That is where the love stories I want to tell begin.

When Even Time Is the Enemy

In my Upon A Time series, love is tested by the most unforgiving barrier of all: time itself.

Nika and Eli do not simply come from different backgrounds or disagree about their future. They belong to different centuries. Their love asks them to believe in something that should not be possible. It demands courage, sacrifice, and the willingness to step into an unknown world. They cannot rely upon an ordinary promise of tomorrow because even finding the same tomorrow is uncertain. For them, love is not passive.

It searches. It waits. It crosses the impossible distance between one century and another.

Alex and Abby also discover that loving someone does not guarantee that you will be allowed to remain beside them. Their story carries the ache of separation—the terrible knowledge that the person you love exists somewhere, yet may be unreachable. And still, love refuses to disappear simply because the path back has been lost.

That is what moves me most: not the absence of despair, but the decision to keep hoping despite it.

The Ones Who Keep Searching

Sometimes love refuses to give up in ways that are not romantic at all.

In A Timeless Equation, Andrew Morris is driven by his determination to find his sister, Nika, after she vanishes under circumstances no one can explain. To others, the mystery may seem unsolvable. Logic suggests that he should accept the evidence before him and move on. But Andrew is a mathematician. He believes that even the impossible may have an explanation. More importantly, he is a brother who cannot accept that someone he loves has simply vanished beyond his reach. His search becomes an expression of devotion.

This is one of the reasons I love writing about families as much as romantic couples. Love exists in every person who continues looking, waiting, protecting, or believing when hope has become difficult to defend.

Sometimes I won’t give up on you is the purest declaration of love there is.

Love Does Not Always Look Heroic

We often imagine devotion through dramatic gestures: crossing oceans, risking everything, or defying an entire world. My characters occasionally do all of those things. But love that refuses to give up is not always loud. Sometimes it is a person returning after an argument instead of walking away. Sometimes it is telling the truth when silence would be safer.

It is offering forgiveness without pretending the wound never happened. It is remaining beside someone through grief, illness, fear, or failure. It is seeing a person at their lowest and reminding them that this moment is not the whole of who they are.

Those choices may not look heroic from the outside. But they require a quiet kind of bravery.

Love does not survive because two people never hurt or disappoint each other. It survives when they are willing to repair what has been damaged—and when both people continue doing the work.

Devotion Is Not the Same as Losing Yourself

There is an important distinction between love that perseveres and love that demands self-destruction. I do not believe that devotion means accepting cruelty, betrayal without remorse, or the loss of one’s dignity. Refusing to give up on love should never require someone to give up on themselves.

The love I want to write about makes people braver, not smaller.

It may challenge them. It may ask them to confront painful truths, abandon old assumptions, or step beyond everything familiar. But ultimately, it allows them to become more fully themselves.

True love does not say, Disappear for me. It says, Stand beside me—and let us face this together.

Hope Is at the Heart of Every Story

Perhaps I return to these stories because I am, at heart, a hopeful writer. Even when my characters are separated by time, haunted by the past, or standing before a future they cannot understand, I want to believe there is still a thread connecting them. It may stretch. It may tangle. It may seem to disappear entirely.

But somewhere, it remains unbroken.

Hope does not mean believing everything will be easy. It means believing that difficulty is not necessarily the end. A locked door may have a key. A mystery may contain an answer. A goodbye may not be final.

And love—if it is deep enough, brave enough, and stubborn enough—may still find its way home.

The Stories I Will Always Tell

As a writer, I am drawn to extraordinary circumstances: vanished centuries, mysterious houses, old paintings, dreams of other lives, and clocks that refuse to obey the rules. But beneath all those mysteries, I am always writing about something deeply human. The need to be remembered. The longing to be found. The courage to return. The hope that someone, somewhere, will refuse to stop looking for us.

That is why I write about love that refuses to give up. Not because love conquers every obstacle effortlessly, but because it gives us a reason to face the obstacle at all. And perhaps the most beautiful love stories are not the ones in which two people are never lost.

They are the ones in which, against every possibility, they keep finding their way back to each other.

The Quiet Choices Behind a Lifetime Together

With my thirty-seventh wedding anniversary approaching, I have found myself thinking about love—not only the breathtaking kind celebrated in novels and movies, but the quieter, deeper love that is built across a lifetime.

We often speak of falling in love as though it were a single magical moment. A glance across a room. A first kiss. The instant when two people realize they have found something extraordinary.

But falling in love and building a life together are two very different things.

The beginning may be filled with excitement, possibility, and discovery. Lasting love, however, is created in the years that follow—in ordinary kitchens, during difficult conversations, through disappointments, illnesses, changing dreams, unexpected losses, and countless unremarkable days.

Perhaps love lasts because, somewhere along the way, it stops being merely something we feel and becomes something we choose.

Choosing One Another Again

A lifelong commitment is not made only once, during a ceremony or with the exchange of rings. It is renewed quietly, sometimes without words, over and over again. It is choosing to listen when you are tired. Choosing kindness when irritation would be easier. Choosing to stay present during the difficult seasons instead of retreating behind silence. It is looking at the person beside you—not as the person they were when you first met, but as the person they have become—and loving them through every new version of themselves.

Because none of us remains unchanged.

We grow older. We encounter experiences that reshape us. Our priorities shift. Our bodies change. Dreams are fulfilled, postponed, or replaced by entirely new ones. Lasting love makes room for that transformation.

It says: You are different now, and I am still here.

The Romance of Ordinary Days

Grand gestures are beautiful, but they are not what fills most of a shared life. Most love stories are lived in smaller moments. A cup of coffee prepared exactly the way someone likes it. A familiar hand reaching for yours during bad news. A private joke that remains funny after decades. Remembering an appointment, warming up the car, saving the last piece of cake, or simply asking, Did you get home safely?

These gestures may appear insignificant from the outside. Yet over time, they become the language of devotion. Perhaps true intimacy is not only being loved at our most impressive. It is being known completely—in our impatience, our fears, our strange habits, and our less-than-graceful moments—and still being treated with tenderness.

There is something profoundly romantic about being known that well and not having to pretend.

Love Needs Forgiveness

No two people can share a lifetime without occasionally hurting, disappointing, or misunderstanding each other. Even the strongest relationships contain imperfect moments because they are made by imperfect human beings. Forgiveness does not mean ignoring serious wounds or accepting behavior that should never be accepted. It means recognizing that in a healthy, loving relationship, mistakes will happen. Words may be spoken badly. Needs may be overlooked. One person may fail to understand what the other is trying to say.

Lasting love requires the humility to say, I was wrong.

It also requires the generosity to hear those words and allow healing to begin. A lifetime together cannot be built by keeping score. It is built by remembering that the relationship is more important than winning every argument.

Growing Together Takes Courage

We sometimes imagine that compatible people simply move through life in perfect harmony. But growing together does not mean always agreeing or wanting exactly the same things. It means remaining curious about one another. Who are you becoming? What matters to you now? What are you afraid of? What do you still hope to do? Even after many years, there should be room to ask those questions.

The person beside us is never a finished story. There are always new pages being written, new worries left unspoken, and new dreams waiting to be discovered.

Long-lasting love does not assume, I already know everything about you. It says, I still want to know you.

Staying Through the Changing Seasons

Every long relationship moves through seasons. There are times of joy and ease, when love seems effortless. There are also seasons of exhaustion, grief, uncertainty, or change, when romance may be temporarily hidden beneath the demands of simply getting through the day.

During those times, love may not look like flowers or candlelight. It may look like patience. It may sound like reassurance. It may mean carrying more of the weight when the other person cannot.

There is a special kind of devotion in saying, You do not have to face this alone.

That promise may be one of the truest expressions of love we ever offer.

The Quiet Miracle

Perhaps what makes love last is not one secret, one perfect match, or one unforgettable moment. Perhaps it is the accumulation of thousands of quiet choices. To speak gently. To forgive. To laugh. To remain interested. To offer comfort. To protect what has been built together. To remember why you chose each other—and to keep finding new reasons.

The most enduring love stories are rarely perfect. They are filled with challenges, compromises, mistakes, and unexpected turns. But they are also filled with shared memories, private laughter, and the comfort of knowing that someone has witnessed your life from close beside you.

Falling in love may happen in a moment. But lasting love is created across a lifetime—one ordinary, faithful, beautiful choice at a time.

When readers remember a beloved story, they do not always remember only the people. They remember the house at the end of the road. The garden where a secret was revealed. The room in which someone waited. The street a character walked while deciding whether to leave—or turn back.

Some settings remain quietly in the background, providing the necessary walls, weather, and furniture. Others refuse to remain scenery. They collect memories, conceal secrets, influence decisions, and change alongside the people who inhabit them.

Eventually, they begin to feel like characters themselves. They may not speak, but they have voices. They may not move, but they shape every person who enters them. And sometimes, long after I have forgotten exactly what a character was wearing, I can still see the place where everything happened.

A Place Must Have a Soul

A fictional setting does not become memorable because it is described in perfect architectural detail. Readers do not need to know the measurements of every room—although Nika Morris would probably disagree.

A place becomes real through feeling. What happened there before the story began? Who loved within its walls? Who left? What promises were made there, and which ones were broken? Does the place welcome its visitors, observe them cautiously, or seem to warn them away?

The most powerful settings carry traces of the people who came before. An old house remembers footsteps. A garden remembers whispered conversations. A city street remembers every generation that believed the future belonged to them.

As a writer, I often feel that I am not inventing these places. I am arriving after their lives have already begun and trying to discover what they know.

The Coleman House: Keeper of Time

Of all the places in my books, the Coleman House may have the strongest claim to being a character.

It is more than the setting of the Upon A Time series. It is the heart of its mystery.

The house exists in more than one era, yet it never feels exactly the same. Its rooms hold different voices, its porches overlook a changing world, and its walls contain memories the people living inside them do not always understand. To one character, it is home. To another, it is history. To someone else, it is the place where an impossible journey begins.

When Nika first encounters the Coleman House, she sees it partly through the eyes of a contractor. She notices its structure, its damage, and what must be repaired. But the house is not merely a project waiting to be restored. It is waiting for her. That distinction changes everything.

The house becomes a bridge between lives that should never have touched. It shelters love, grief, family, and secrets across generations. It witnesses arrivals no one could explain and departures no one could prevent.

And at its center stands the grandfather clock.

The clock is an object, of course—but it also feels like the pulse of the house. Its chimes divide one moment from the next while reminding us that time may not be as orderly as we imagine. It marks the hours, guards the portal, and seems to know far more than it is willing to reveal.

If the Coleman House could speak, I am not certain it would explain itself.

Some characters prefer to preserve their mystery.

Amelia Island: Where the Past Never Entirely Leaves

The Coleman House could not exist just anywhere.

Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach provide the perfect world around it—a place where history does not feel safely confined to museums or books. It lingers in old buildings, quiet streets, magnificent trees, and the atmosphere of a town that has belonged to many different eras. There is something especially powerful about placing a time-travel story near the ocean. The sea is always moving, yet it also feels eternal. The waves reaching the shore today are not the waves that arrived a century ago, but the rhythm remains unchanged.

That is time travel of another kind.

My characters may cross years in impossible ways, but the ocean connects their worlds without needing a key or an equation. It exists in every era. It watches fashions, buildings, and generations change while continuing its ancient conversation with the shore. Amelia Island brings softness and beauty to the stories, but it also adds a sense of impermanence. Tides erase footprints. Storms alter coastlines. Houses weather, families change, and people disappear.

Yet something always remains.

Perhaps that is why it feels like the natural home of the Upon A Time series. It holds the past close without refusing the future.

The Rostoff Estate: Beauty with Secrets

The Rostoff estate Zolotoe Selo in San Francisco has an entirely different personality.

Where the Coleman House feels mysterious and watchful, the Rostoff home carries grandeur, discipline, and the complicated weight of family. Its beauty is undeniable. The winding paths, rose gardens, magnificent trees, secluded corners, and elegant rooms speak of history, privilege, and permanence.

But beautiful homes are not necessarily peaceful ones.

The estate has witnessed generations of love and conflict. It has sheltered celebrations, arguments, reconciliations, and truths that family members were not yet ready to face. Its polished surfaces cannot conceal every fracture beneath them. That is what makes the estate interesting to me. It represents both security and pressure. It is a place of belonging, but belonging to a powerful family comes with expectations. The estate offers protection while also reminding the Rostoffs of who they are supposed to be.

And then there is Natasha’s Gazebo. Hidden beneath the protective canopies of old trees, near the quiet movement of the brook, the gazebo feels separate from the rest of the estate. It is delicate, almost ethereal, yet secluded enough to become a refuge. Characters go there when they need distance from the house—and sometimes from one another. The gazebo sees them without the masks they wear in brighter rooms. It holds private thoughts, difficult conversations, and moments when a carefully controlled life begins to change.

Every grand house needs one place where the truth can hide.

At the Rostoff estate, that place may be the gazebo.

St. Augustine: A City of Echoes

In Rhapsody in Dreams, St. Augustine is not simply a romantic background. It is a city where the boundary between memory and imagination already feels thin.

Old streets, balconies, courtyards, stone walls, and centuries of history create the sense that other lives remain close. The past does not appear dead there. It feels layered beneath the present, waiting for the right sound, scent, or dream to bring it forward.

For Kira, who remembers loving the same man across seven lifetimes, this atmosphere matters. A modern city of glass and steel might have made those memories feel like intrusions. In St. Augustine, they feel almost natural. The city seems willing to believe her before anyone else does. Music also belongs beautifully within that setting.

A melody can return us to a moment we thought we had forgotten. It can awaken emotion without explaining where it came from. For Kira and Al, music becomes another kind of architecture—a place built from sound rather than stone, where recognition can survive from one lifetime to another.

St. Augustine does not solve the mystery of their connection.

It simply makes room for it.

SoHo in 1962: A City in Motion

The SoHo and New York of A Twirl in Time could never remain quietly in the background.

In 1962, the city stands between eras. Old expectations remain powerful, but change is already gathering momentum. Music, fashion, art, dance, and ambition create a world alive with possibility.

For Verochka, SoHo offers something both exhilarating and frightening: the chance to become someone beyond the identity others might have chosen for her. The city does not promise safety.

It promises movement.

That makes it the perfect setting for a dancer’s story. Like choreography, New York demands timing, balance, courage, and the willingness to continue even when the next step is uncertain. Its streets can make a person feel gloriously free one moment and completely alone the next. It offers anonymity, opportunity, temptation, and reinvention—sometimes within the same block.

SoHo does not rescue Verochka. It challenges her to choose her own direction. And, true to form, she does not merely walk toward her future.

She twirls into it.

The Places We Carry Away

We may close a book, but part of us remains inside the house, on the street, beside the piano, or beneath the trees. Years later, we can still imagine walking through those rooms.

Perhaps that is why fictional places sometimes feel more familiar than places we have actually visited. We did not merely see them. We experienced something there.

Every Place Has a Story

A memorable setting does more than hold the events of a story. It changes how those events feel. A confession whispered in a garden is different from one spoken in a crowded station. A goodbye at the ocean carries a different ache from a goodbye in an empty room. A reunion beneath the chimes of an old clock belongs to a different emotional world than one beneath fluorescent office lights. Place gives emotion a physical shape. It also gives readers somewhere to return.

Real places affect us in much the same way. A childhood home may seem smaller when we return to it, yet still contain an entire world of memory. A particular scent can carry us back to a grandmother’s kitchen. A hotel lobby, train platform, beach, or quiet park bench can remain forever connected to one person or one decision. We leave places, but they do not always leave us. They become part of our private geography—the invisible map of where we have loved, grieved, hoped, changed, and begun again.

When I create settings for my novels, I want them to hold that same emotional power. I want the reader to feel that the story could not have happened in quite the same way anywhere else.

The Coleman House must guard its impossible clock.

The Rostoff estate must preserve its beauty and its secrets.

St. Augustine must allow old lives to echo through the present.

And New York must keep moving, daring anyone brave enough to move with it.

These places do not simply surround my characters. They test them. Shelter them. Remember them. And occasionally, they know what the story is about long before I do.

Is there a fictional house, city, garden, or other place that has remained with you long after you finished the book? What made it feel real?

Every writer knows that characters have opinions. They object to carefully constructed plans. They refuse to deliver the dialogue written for them. They fall in love with the wrong person, reveal secrets too early, and occasionally take an entire novel in a direction the author never intended.

But I have often wondered what would happen if my characters could read their own stories. Would they understand why I made certain choices? Would they forgive me for the heartbreak, danger, misunderstandings, and impossible journeys? Or would they appear at my door carrying highlighted copies, color-coded complaints, and a list of grievances several chapters long?

I suspect the last possibility is the most likely.

Nika Would Begin with Corrections

Nika Morris would not quietly sit down and read ’Til Time Do Us Part from beginning to end.

She would examine it the way she approaches a renovation project: searching immediately for structural weaknesses. By Chapter Two, she would have a pencil in one hand, a measuring tape in the other, and several strong opinions about the Coleman House. “That porch would never have survived this long without additional reinforcement,” she would announce.

I would remind her that this is a romance novel. She would remind me that building codes do not become optional simply because the hero has beautiful pale-gray eyes. Nika would approve of her own courage, although she might object to some of her more impulsive decisions. She would become impatient whenever the other characters underestimated her, cheer when she proved them wrong, and mutter darkly whenever Eli attempted to tell her what she could or could not do.

Then she would reach the romantic scenes. She would read several pages in complete silence, close the book, and declare that certain matters should have remained private.

But she would secretly be pleased.

Eli Would Be Offended by the Entire Concept

Elijah Coleman would approach his story with deep suspicion.

The idea that strangers in another century knew the intimate details of his life would horrify him. He would regard the book as an unforgivable violation of privacy—and then proceed to read every word. His first complaint would concern the title.

“Until time do us part?” he would ask. “What manner of pessimistic promise is that?”

His second complaint would concern Nika’s clothing. His third would concern her language. His fourth would concern every occasion on which she ignored his perfectly reasonable instructions. By then, Nika would be standing behind him with her arms folded.

“Perfectly reasonable according to whom?”

Eli would turn several pages very quickly. Despite all his objections, I think reading his story would move him deeply. He would finally see the parts of Nika’s journey that he could not witness. He would understand the fear she concealed behind her confidence and the sacrifices she made to remain beside him.

He might even realize that her refusal to obey him was not a character defect. I said might.

Some miracles are beyond even a time-travel novelist.

Abby Would Notice What Wasn’t Written

As an artist, Abby would not focus only on the events described on the page.

She would notice the spaces between them. She would pay attention to the silences, the expressions, and the emotions hidden beneath ordinary words. She would understand exactly why a character looked away, changed the subject, or remained quiet when speaking would have revealed too much. She would also be deeply uncomfortable reading about her own pain. There are experiences we can survive but do not necessarily wish to revisit. Seeing them transformed into sentences might feel like standing before a portrait painted by someone else—recognizable, intimate, and slightly unsettling.

Yet I believe Abby would eventually see something valuable in those pages. She would see that pain was not the entirety of her story. She would see the woman she became because she continued creating, loving, and hoping even when hope seemed unreasonable. She would discover that vulnerability did not make her weak. It made her human.

Then she would take out her paints and create a new cover because, naturally, the current one would not capture the light correctly.

Alex Would Skip Ahead

Alex would insist that he had no interest in reading the book.

Then he would wait until everyone left the room, pick it up, and search immediately for his own name. He would skip descriptions, scan conversations, and check whether he had been portrayed as intelligent, capable, and irresistible. If he found a passage in which someone questioned his judgment, he would reread it three times and prepare a detailed defense. If he found a romantic scene, he would look pleased with himself.

If he found a scene in which Abby suffered because of him, the humor would disappear.

Alex might be the character most surprised by his own story. We rarely understand the full consequences of our actions while we are living through them. A book allows us to step outside ourselves and see the moments when pride became cruelty, fear disguised itself as anger, or love remained unspoken for too long. He would never admit that the story taught him anything.

But he would be much quieter after finishing it.

Verochka Would Demand Better Lighting

Verochka would adore the idea of reading her own story.

She would settle into a beautiful chair, pour herself something elegant, and begin with the confidence of a woman who already knows she is unforgettable. She would approve of the dancing. She would approve of the clothes.

She would have several concerns about the lighting.

“No woman should be introduced beneath fluorescent lights,” she would explain. “It is hostile to romance and unforgiving to the complexion.”

As she read, however, her amusement would gradually soften. Verochka knows that choosing one life often means surrendering another. Beneath her elegance, confidence, and marvelous ability to make an entrance is a woman who understands the cost of following her heart.

She would laugh at her younger self, forgive her for several mistakes, and perhaps envy her just a little. Then she would close the book and say, “I was magnificent.”

And honestly, I would not argue.

Natasha Would Read with Her Heart

Natasha Rostoff would experience every page intensely.

She would laugh, cry, become furious, forgive someone, and then become furious with them again before reaching the end of the chapter. She would object whenever her family’s private troubles appeared on the page.

“People do not need to know everything,” she would say.

Dmitriy would raise an eyebrow. Natasha would continue reading.

Her story spans love, betrayal, family, separation, and the complicated consequences of choices made when emotions are stronger than reason. She might wish to rewrite certain chapters. She might long to warn her younger self, prevent a misunderstanding, or stop one painful decision before it changed everything.

But I think she would also recognize the woman emerging from those pages. Not a flawless woman. Not a woman who always knew what to do. But one who survived, grew, loved fiercely, and kept choosing her family even when loving them was difficult. By the final page, Natasha would be crying.

She would deny it, of course. She would blame the dust.

Kira Would Remember More Than I Wrote

Kira’s reaction would be different from everyone else’s.

She has already carried seven lifetimes of memories. For her, the past is not a story safely contained between two covers. It is a collection of lives that remain vivid inside her.

As she read Rhapsody in Dreams, she would notice everything I had left out.

“You forgot the sound of the rain that night.”

“That room smelled of roses.”

“He said something else before he left.”

I would try to explain that a novelist cannot include every detail. Kira would look at me with the quiet patience of a woman who has waited across centuries for the man she loves.

Perhaps she would understand better than anyone why stories matter. Memory is fragile, even when it survives beyond a single lifetime. A story gives it shape. It preserves a glance, a promise, or a love that might otherwise vanish with time.

Kira might not agree with every choice I made. But I think she would be grateful that someone believed her impossible memories were real.

Andrew Would Check the Mathematics

Andrew Morris would begin reading A Timeless Equation with a pen and a notebook beside him.

Unlike Alex, he would not search first for his own name.

He would search for the equation. He would verify every calculation, examine every theory, and place small marks in the margins whenever my explanations became suspiciously poetic.

“Time does not respond to longing,” he would tell me.

“Perhaps not,” I would reply. “But readers do.”

Andrew’s greatest objection would not concern the mathematics. It would concern everything I allowed to happen to his sister, Nika. His entire quest begins with his refusal to accept that she simply disappeared. Reading her story would finally reveal where she went, what she endured, and why she could not return in the way he expected.

For a man who trusts logic, those pages would ask him to accept the impossible. I imagine him reaching the end, closing the book, and remaining silent for a very long time. Then he would begin the calculations again.

Because Andrew Morris does not stop searching merely because the answer appears impossible.

Scarlett Would Examine the Evidence

Scarlett Fitzpatrick would read like a curator examining a mysterious artifact.

She would not accept the story simply because it was printed and bound. She would evaluate the details, question the timeline, compare the evidence, and search for the hidden history beneath the obvious one.

She would be fascinated by the Coleman House. She would want to inspect Abby’s paintings personally. And she would be extremely interested in every secret Andrew attempted to keep from her.

Scarlett would probably recognize the truth before he did—not only about the mystery, but about his feelings. She would turn to him and say, “You do realize everyone reading this knew several chapters before you?”

Andrew would return to his calculations. Scarlett would smile.

Would They Forgive the Author?

This is the dangerous question.

My characters might forgive me for sending them across time. They might understand the mysteries, accidents, separations, and impossible choices.

But would they forgive me for breaking their hearts?

Writers sometimes appear cruel. We give our characters happiness and then place something directly in its path. We allow them to misunderstand one another. We take away what they treasure, expose their deepest fears, and force them to choose when every possible answer carries a price.

We do not do it because we dislike them. Quite the opposite. We challenge them because we know what they can become. Courage means little without fear. Forgiveness means little without hurt. A reunion cannot move us unless we have felt the separation. And love becomes unforgettable when it survives something that should have destroyed it.

If my characters read their own stories, perhaps they would finally understand that I was never punishing them.

I was revealing them.

The Conversation I Would Rather Avoid

Of course, understanding does not guarantee cooperation. I can imagine all of them arriving together for a discussion.

Nika would bring her list of structural corrections. Eli would demand to know why private marital matters had been published. Abby would present a newly painted cover. Alex would object to several unflattering descriptions. Verochka would request better lighting. Natasha would want certain family arguments removed. Kira would supply details from six additional lifetimes. Andrew would challenge the mathematics. And Scarlett would quietly place all the evidence in chronological order.

They would talk over one another until someone finally asked the most dangerous question of all:

“What are you planning to do to us in the next book?”

That is when I would smile, close my notebook, and remind them that writers must be allowed to keep a few secrets. After all, my characters may refuse to follow my plans. They may argue, rebel, fall in love unexpectedly, and take possession of stories that were supposed to belong to someone else. But I still control the final page.

At least, that is what I like to tell myself.

If your favorite fictional character could read their own story, what do you think they would say to the author? Would they offer thanks, demand an apology—or insist on a complete rewrite?

The Women Who Refuse to Wait for Rescue

Once upon a time, the heroine stood at the window of a distant tower and waited. Somewhere beyond the horizon, a handsome hero was riding toward her. He would defeat the villain, unlock the door, and carry her away to a new life. It was romantic. It was enchanting. And it placed an alarming amount of faith in a man who had probably refused to ask anyone for directions.

Fortunately, heroines have changed.

The women I love to read—and the women I love to write—do not spend their lives waiting for someone else to arrive. They may need help. They may accept love, friendship, and protection. They may even dream about a handsome man appearing at precisely the right moment.

But they do not hand him complete responsibility for their futures. If the tower door is locked, they look for the key. If there is no key, they examine the hinges.

And if that fails, they start moving the furniture toward the window.

Strength Is Not the Absence of Fear

We sometimes imagine a strong heroine as a woman who is never frightened, never uncertain, and never vulnerable. But a woman without fear is not necessarily brave. She may simply have failed to understand the situation. True courage begins when a woman recognizes the danger, feels the fear, and takes the next step anyway.

A strong heroine may cry. She may doubt herself. She may make the wrong decision, trust the wrong person, or discover that her carefully constructed plan has collapsed spectacularly.

She can be wounded without being weak. She can need someone without becoming helpless. She can fall in love without surrendering her identity.

To me, strength is not about standing alone. It is about refusing to abandon yourself—even when the world is determined to tell you who you should be.

Nika: The Woman Who Walked Through Time

When Nika Morris finds herself transported to 1909, no one arrives with a helpful guide entitled What to Do When You Accidentally Travel Through Time.

She is alone in an unfamiliar era, surrounded by different customs, expectations, and dangers. Nearly everything she knows about the world has suddenly become useless. But Nika does not sit quietly and wait for history to decide what will happen to her. She adapts. She observes. She argues—occasionally with great enthusiasm. And she refuses to become a passive visitor in her own life.

Nika’s strength does not come from knowing all the answers. It comes from her determination to survive, protect those she loves, and make her own choices in a world that believes women should have far fewer of them.

She falls deeply in love with Eli, but love does not erase her independence. If anything, it gives her even more to fight for. Nika does not wait for time to rescue her. She challenges time itself.

Abby: The Courage to Rebuild

Not every heroine fights her battles with loud declarations or dramatic escapes. Some battles are fought quietly.

Abby’s strength lies in her ability to keep creating after life has hurt her. As an artist, she sees what others overlook—the emotions hidden behind a face, the stories concealed within a place, and the beauty that survives even after something has been broken. Her journey is not about being saved by love. It is about learning that she remains worthy of love after pain, disappointment, and loss. That distinction matters.

Another person may offer a hand, but Abby must decide to take it. Someone may open a door, but she must find the courage to walk through. Sometimes rebuilding a heart requires more bravery than crossing centuries.

Verochka: A Life Chosen, Not Assigned

Verochka understands that society is always eager to write a woman’s story for her. It tells her whom to love, how to behave, what to sacrifice, and which dreams are considered reasonable. But Verochka has never been particularly interested in being reasonable.

She chooses movement. She chooses passion. She chooses the terrifying uncertainty of a life that belongs to her.

Her strength is graceful but never fragile. Like a dancer, she knows that balance is not achieved by remaining still. It requires constant adjustment, discipline, and the courage to continue after a fall.

Verochka does not wait for permission to begin living. She twirls straight into her future.

Natasha: Strength That Grows Through Survival

Natasha’ s journey reminds us that strength is not always something a woman possesses at the beginning of her story. Sometimes it is something she builds, decision by decision.

Natasha loves fiercely. She makes mistakes. She endures betrayal, family conflict, separation, and the complicated consequences of choices made in moments of passion and pain. Yet she continues. She protects her family, confronts difficult truths, and grows into a woman capable of carrying both tenderness and authority. Her life is not saved by one grand heroic gesture. It is shaped by her refusal to remain defeated.

That may be one of the most honest forms of courage: waking up after life has broken your heart and choosing to participate in it again.

Kira: The Woman Who Remembers

In Rhapsody in Dreams, Kira carries the memories of seven lifetimes.

She remembers every meeting, every love, and every loss. Imagine loving someone across centuries while being the only one who remembers. It would be easy for Kira to wait for Al to recognize her, hoping that destiny will eventually do the work for both of them. But Kira knows that this lifetime may be their final chance.

Her courage is not physical. It is emotional.

She must risk being disbelieved. She must face the possibility that the man she has loved through seven lives may look into her eyes and see a stranger. And still, she chooses to try.

Sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do is reveal the truth of her heart without knowing whether it will be received.

Scarlett: Following an Impossible Equation

Scarlett Fitzpatrick lives in a world of history, art, and carefully preserved evidence. Andrew Morris lives in a world of mathematics, theories, and an equation that may lead beyond the boundaries of ordinary understanding.

Scarlett could dismiss the impossible. Instead, she steps toward it.

Her strength lies in curiosity, intelligence, and the willingness to reconsider everything she believes. She does not merely accompany Andrew on his quest. She becomes part of the discovery, bringing her own knowledge, instincts, and courage to a mystery that neither of them could solve alone.

The strongest partnerships are not built around one person rescuing another. They are built when two people stand side by side and face the unknown together.

Love Is Not a Rescue Mission

I write romance because I believe in the transforming power of love. But I do not believe love should reduce a woman to someone waiting to be chosen. The best romantic heroes do not rescue heroines from having lives of their own. They recognize their strength, respect their choices, and remain beside them when the road becomes difficult. Sometimes the heroine saves the hero. Sometimes they save each other. And sometimes neither person needs to be saved at all. They simply need to be seen, understood, and loved without being diminished.

A powerful love story is not about completing an incomplete woman. It is about two complete—and wonderfully imperfect—people choosing to build something together.

Heroines for the Real World

Most of us will never fall through a portal in a grandfather clock. We will not awaken in another century, remember seven previous lives, or discover an equation capable of changing our understanding of time.

But we face our own locked doors. We begin again after loss. We speak when remaining silent would be easier. We walk away from situations that are destroying us. We care for our families, pursue forgotten dreams, and find courage we never expected to need. We do not always feel brave while doing it.

Perhaps that is the secret.

A strong woman is not someone who never needs rescuing. She is someone who understands that help and helplessness are not the same thing. She accepts a hand when she needs one—but she never forgets that the life ahead is still hers to choose. She may not know exactly where the story will lead. She may be frightened. She may be wearing completely unsuitable shoes for the journey.

But she is no longer standing at the window. She is already on her way.

What makes a heroine unforgettable to you? Is it her independence, her vulnerability, her courage—or her determination to keep going when everything seems lost?

Would You Change the Past If You Could?

It is one of those questions that sounds simple until we truly begin to think about it:

If you could return to the past and change one thing, would you?

Most of us carry at least one moment we would like to revisit. A decision made too quickly. A conversation that ended badly. Words we wish we had spoken—or words we desperately wish we could take back.

Perhaps we would choose a different road, accept the opportunity we once refused, or walk away from something sooner. Perhaps we would hold someone a little longer, ask one more question, or say I love you when we still had the chance. At first, the answer seems obvious. Of course we would change it.

Wouldn’t we?

The Seduction of a Second Chance

The past has one great advantage over the present: we already know what happened.

Looking backward, we can see every missed sign and every approaching disaster. We recognize the moment when everything began to change, even if we didn’t recognize it at the time. How comforting it would be to return armed with everything we know now. We would be wiser. Braver. More careful.

Or so we tell ourselves.

But the person stepping back into that moment would no longer be the same person who first lived it. We would arrive carrying years of experience, disappointment, love, grief, and understanding. And that raises another question: if we erased the experience that taught us those lessons, would we still become the people we are today?

The Invisible Threads

Our lives are made of countless invisible threads.

One decision leads to another. One chance encounter becomes a friendship. One disappointment sends us down a road we never planned to travel. A door closes, forcing us to discover another door we might otherwise have ignored. If we pulled out one painful thread, what else might unravel?

Perhaps changing an unhappy relationship would mean never meeting someone who later became important to us. Avoiding one failure might prevent us from discovering a strength we didn’t know we possessed. Erasing a loss might also erase the path that eventually carried us toward love, purpose, or belonging.

We tend to imagine that we could remove the pain while keeping everything beautiful that came after it. But time might not be so accommodating. It could behave less like a polite editor and more like an enthusiastic toddler with a crayon.

The Question Behind My Stories

As a writer of time-travel romance, I return to this idea again and again.

What would happen if someone were given the chance to cross the boundary between past and present? Would love remain unchanged? Could a mistake truly be corrected, or would the attempt create an entirely different future?

My characters often believe they understand what they want from time. They want to return to someone they love. They want to uncover a mystery, prevent a tragedy, or find a person who vanished under impossible circumstances.

But time rarely gives them exactly what they expect.

It challenges them. It changes them. And occasionally, it reminds them that love is not about creating a perfect past. It is about recognizing what is worth fighting for—no matter the century.

Perhaps that is why time travel fascinates me so much. Beneath the clocks, portals, mysteries, and impossible journeys lies a deeply human longing: the desire for one more chance.

What Would You Say?

If I could travel into the past, I am not certain I would try to change anything. But I would be tempted to visit.

I would like to see certain people again—not to warn them about the future or interfere with the lives they were meant to live, but simply to sit beside them for a while.

I would listen more carefully. I would ask the questions I never thought to ask. I would tell them what they meant to me.

Maybe the greatest gift would not be the power to alter the past, but the opportunity to appreciate it while standing inside it. Because when we think about changing history, what we often want is not a different life. We want another moment with someone we loved. Another conversation. Another embrace. Another ordinary afternoon we didn’t realize was precious until it became a memory.

Perhaps We Are Already Changing Time

We may never find a glowing portal inside a grandfather clock. We may never discover a mysterious key or solve an equation capable of bending time.

But perhaps we possess another kind of power.

The past cannot be rewritten, but it can be understood differently. We can forgive the person we once were for not knowing what we know today. We can carry our memories with tenderness instead of regret. We can allow old mistakes to become wisdom rather than punishment.

And we can change what happens next. We can make the phone call now. We can offer the apology now.

We can say I love you now.

Perhaps that is the closest we will ever come to time travel—and perhaps it is enough. So, if you were offered one journey into your own past, what would you do? Would you change something? Would you simply watch?

Or would you find someone you miss, sit beside them once more, and tell them everything you never had the chance to say?

Mathematics and destiny may seem like complete opposites. Mathematics depends on logic, patterns, and proof. Destiny asks us to believe in invisible connections, inexplicable coincidences, and the possibility that some events are meant to happen.

But what if they are not opposites at all? What if destiny is simply an equation we have not yet learned how to understand?

That question lies at the heart of my upcoming novel, A Timeless Equation.

Andrew’s Search for Answers

Readers of the Upon A Time series may remember Andrew Morris as Nika’s younger brother. Andrew is a brilliant mathematician, practical by nature and far more comfortable with numbers than with mysteries that seem to defy explanation.

But when Nika disappears under baffling circumstances, logic can offer him very little comfort.

To everyone else, her disappearance may appear impossible to explain. To Andrew, however, the absence of an obvious answer does not mean that no answer exists. It simply means that he has not found it yet.

He cannot accept that his sister simply vanished. He needs to know where she went. More importantly, he needs to find a way to reach her.

That determination draws Andrew toward a mathematical theory suggesting that time may possess its own hidden coordinates. If those coordinates can be identified, calculated, and understood, perhaps time is not the impenetrable barrier humanity has always believed it to be.

Perhaps it can be crossed.

When Science Encounters the Impossible

The idea of time travel has always fascinated me because it can be approached from so many directions.

It can be mystical—a doorway opening at midnight, an antique key turning in an unexpected lock, or a grandfather clock that measures far more than passing hours.

But it can also be scientific.

Physicists and mathematicians have long explored the nature of time. Is it truly linear? Can it bend? Can the past and present exist closer together than we realize?

I loved the idea of bringing a mathematician into the world of the Coleman House.

Until now, the mysteries surrounding the house and its grandfather clock have been experienced by characters who had little choice but to accept the impossible. Andrew is different. He does not want merely to believe. He wants to understand.

He wants to prove that what happened to Nika was real.

Yet some mysteries resist being reduced to numbers—and the Coleman House has never been inclined to surrender its secrets easily.

Enter Scarlett Fitzpatrick

Then there is Scarlett.

Scarlett Fitzpatrick is a museum curator. Her understanding of the past does not come from equations but from the objects people leave behind—paintings, documents, keepsakes, and fragments of lives that still have stories to tell.

Andrew studies time as an abstract mystery.

Scarlett sees its fingerprints everywhere.

Where he searches for patterns, she searches for meaning. Where he trusts calculation, she understands intuition. Their different ways of looking at the world place them on opposite sides of the same mystery.

They also make them exactly what the other needs.

Scarlett brings warmth and humanity to Andrew’s relentless pursuit of the truth. Andrew, in turn, challenges Scarlett to imagine that history may not be as fixed—or as unreachable—as it appears.

Together, they stand at the meeting point between mathematics and destiny.

Can Destiny Be Calculated?

While writing A Timeless Equation, I found myself thinking about the patterns within our own lives.

How many seemingly insignificant decisions led us to the people we love?

What if we had taken a different street, arrived five minutes later, or made another choice years earlier?

Were those encounters merely coincidences?

Or were they points in an equation quietly forming long before we recognized its shape?

Andrew believes every problem has a solution. But his journey will force him to confront something numbers alone cannot explain: sometimes the most important discoveries are not found through logic. Sometimes they require trust, courage, and a willingness to step into the unknown.

And sometimes destiny does not wait patiently for us to understand it.

Returning to the Coleman House

A Timeless Equation returns readers to the Coleman House, the mysterious grandfather clock, and the family whose lives have become intertwined across generations.

But this time, the doorway into the mystery is different.

Andrew approaches it through mathematics. Scarlett approaches it through history. And somewhere between them lies a truth that could reunite a family—or alter the lives of everyone connected to the house.

This story brings together familiar characters, unanswered questions, and new revelations. It is a story about a brother’s refusal to stop searching for his sister. It is also a story about two people discovering that the line between choice and destiny may be far thinner than either of them imagined.

Because perhaps time does have coordinates.

Perhaps destiny follows a pattern.

And perhaps love is the force that brings every part of the equation together.

A Timeless Equation will be released on September 22, 2026.

Andrew Morris has always trusted mathematics. Numbers are dependable. Equations follow rules. Even the most complicated problem has a solution—if one is patient enough to search for it.

Love, unfortunately, has never been quite so cooperative.

That contrast became one of the inspirations behind my upcoming novel, A Timeless Equation. Andrew is a mathematician, a man who believes that the universe, however mysterious it may appear, is governed by patterns waiting to be discovered. To him, time is not merely something measured by clocks. It is a puzzle—perhaps the greatest mathematical puzzle of all.

But for Andrew, solving that puzzle is far more than an intellectual challenge.

Andrew is Nika Morris’s younger brother, and her sudden disappearance under baffling circumstances has haunted him. While others may have accepted that she was gone, Andrew could not. He needed answers. Somewhere beneath the impossible explanations, the strange clues, and the unanswered questions, he believed there had to be a pattern.

His search for the truth becomes the driving force behind his work. If time can be understood—if it can be expressed through numbers and coordinates—perhaps he can discover what happened to his sister. Perhaps he can even find her.

Then Scarlett Fitzpatrick enters his life.

Scarlett is a museum curator, a woman surrounded by objects that have outlived the people who once owned them. While Andrew looks at the past through theories and calculations, Scarlett experiences it through art, history, and the stories left behind. They seem to belong to different worlds. And yet, sometimes the most unlikely elements create the most extraordinary equation.

When Andrew discovers a mathematical formula that may reveal the coordinates of time itself, the impossible suddenly begins to feel possible. The formula leads him toward the Coleman House—a place where the past has never been entirely willing to remain buried and where the mystery of Nika’s disappearance may finally be waiting to reveal itself.

But time is not a neat line stretching quietly from yesterday to tomorrow. It carries memories, secrets, consequences, and lives already altered by those brave—or foolish—enough to challenge it.

And love makes everything even more complicated.

Can love be predicted? Can it be measured by the years two people spend together, the sacrifices they make, or the distance they are willing to cross? What if that distance is not counted in miles, but in decades?

As I wrote Andrew and Scarlett’s story, I kept returning to one thought: we often try to understand love as though it were a problem we could solve. We search for explanations. We analyze every word, every silence, every choice. We wonder why two people meet at one particular moment—or why they find each other when the timing seems completely wrong.

But perhaps love was never meant to be solved. Perhaps its power lies in its refusal to follow the rules.

A mathematical equation requires balance. Change one part, and everything else must adjust. Love can be much the same. One meeting can redirect an entire life. One decision can echo across generations. One person can transform everything we believed we knew about ourselves—and about the future awaiting us.

Andrew may understand numbers, but Scarlett forces him to confront questions no formula can answer. How much would you risk for someone you love? Would you trust what cannot be proven?

And if you discovered a way to reach through time, would you dare to use it—knowing that the smallest change might alter everything?

A Timeless Equation is Andrew and Scarlett’s story, but it also brings us back to the mystery that has connected the entire Upon A Time series: the Coleman House, the grandfather clock, and the invisible threads binding people across different eras.

Familiar lives intersect with new ones. Old choices reveal unexpected consequences. And once again, time proves that it has plans of its own…

Because some mysteries may eventually be explained. Some equations may finally be solved.

But love? Love remains the one beautiful equation whose answer can only be found by living it.

A Timeless Equation will be released on September 22, 2026.

There is something almost magical about opening a brand-new printed book. The quiet crackle of the spine. The smoothness of untouched pages. The scent of paper and ink. Even the simple pleasure of sliding a bookmark between the pages before placing the book on the nightstand feels like a tiny ritual. A printed book is more than a container for words. It is an object we can hold, admire, lend to a friend, or keep on a shelf for years. Sometimes, simply seeing a beloved title brings back memories of where we were—and who we were—when we first read it.

And then there is the ebook. It may not have the fragrance of paper or the satisfying weight of a novel in our hands, but it possesses a different kind of magic. Within seconds, a story can travel from an online bookstore directly into our possession. No waiting. No shipping. No impatiently checking the mailbox.

An entire library can accompany us on vacation without adding a single pound to our luggage. We can enlarge the print, adjust the brightness, search for a forgotten name, and read late at night without turning on a lamp—or waking the person sleeping beside us. Of course, that person might still wake up when we whisper, “Just one more chapter,” for the fifth time.

The Pleasure of Paper

For many readers, printed books offer an emotional and sensory experience that a screen cannot quite duplicate. We remember the covers. We notice how far we have traveled through the story by feeling the pages shift from our right hand to our left. We find old receipts, pressed flowers, handwritten notes, and forgotten bookmarks tucked inside books we read years ago. A personal library also tells a story of its own. Its shelves reveal our interests, our dreams, our obsessions, and perhaps a few guilty pleasures we insist are there purely for research.

Printed books can become companions. Their covers grow worn. Their pages soften. Favorite passages are underlined, and certain corners may be folded despite every librarian’s desperate plea not to do it. There is comfort in that familiarity. A well-loved book carries evidence that it has lived alongside us.

The Freedom of an Ebook

Ebooks offer something equally valuable: freedom. They make reading wonderfully accessible. A new book is available at the touch of a button, whether we are sitting at home, waiting in a doctor’s office, or traveling far from the nearest bookstore. For readers who need larger print, ebooks can make the experience much more comfortable. For travelers, they eliminate the terrible choice between packing another pair of shoes and bringing three more novels. And let us be honest—three more novels will probably win.

Ebooks also allow us to read privately. No one on the bus, at the airport, or in the waiting room needs to know whether we are studying ancient history, solving a murder, traveling through time, or enjoying a romance with a particularly irresistible hero on the cover.

But Does the Story Feel Different?

I believe the format can change the reading experience—but it does not change the heart of the story.

A printed book encourages us to slow down. It gives us something tangible to associate with the journey. An ebook offers immediacy, convenience, and the ability to carry countless imaginary worlds wherever we go. But when a story truly captures us, the format begins to disappear.

We no longer notice the paper, the screen, the font, or the percentage displayed at the bottom of the page. We are standing inside an old house at midnight. We are listening to a forgotten melody. We are falling in love, solving a mystery, confronting a villain, or stepping through a portal into another century. That is the real magic of reading. A printed book lives on our shelves. An ebook travels in our pockets. But a beautiful story makes its home in our hearts.

So, which do you prefer?

Are you devoted to the scent and feel of printed pages? Do you love the convenience of carrying your library everywhere? Or, like me, are you happily surrounded by both?

Team Paper, Team Ebook—or Team Story, in whatever form it finds you?

This summer, I lost two dear friends: Sharon Burke and Emma Janis Hess.

Even as I write those words, they do not feel quite real. Perhaps loss is always like that. The mind understands what has happened, but the heart continues to expect another conversation, another message, another familiar voice saying our name.

Grief arrives in strange and unpredictable ways. Sometimes it comes as tears. Sometimes as silence. Sometimes it hides inside an ordinary moment—a song, a photograph, a familiar phrase—and suddenly, the person we miss is standing beside us again, if only in memory.

But I have come to believe that the people we love do not simply disappear from our lives. They become part of who we are.

We carry their words. Their laughter. Their kindness. We remember the way they encouraged us when we doubted ourselves and how they made the world feel a little warmer simply by being in it.

Sharon Burke was not only my dear friend but also my editor and my mentor. She knew my stories intimately—the characters, the emotions, the tiny details that make an imaginary world feel real. She helped me shape my words, but more importantly, she believed in them. A good editor improves a manuscript. A true friend strengthens the person behind it. Sharon did both.

Her wisdom, encouragement, and careful attention remain woven through my books. Whenever I open one of the stories we worked on together, I will find traces of her there—in a sentence she helped polish, a scene she encouraged me to deepen, or a moment when her faith in me gave me the courage to continue.

Emma Janis Hess also left her own precious imprint upon my life. Some friendships become part of the quiet architecture of our hearts. We may not always recognize how much they hold us up until we are forced to face the empty space their absence leaves behind. Yet even that emptiness speaks of love.

We grieve because someone mattered. Because their presence changed something within us. Because the world was different—and better—when they were here.

As a writer, I have often explored love that survives separation, time, and even death. I have written about people finding one another across decades and lifetimes. But grief reminds us that this idea does not belong only to fiction. The people we love continue to reach us.

They live in the stories we tell about them. In the lessons they taught us. In the choices we make because we once knew them. Their voices return when we need comfort or guidance. Their kindness moves forward through every kindness we offer someone else. Perhaps that is one of the ways love defeats time.

Sharon and Emma will not be present for the future moments I wish I could share with them. That truth hurts more than words can express. But they were here. I knew them. I loved them. And my life is richer because our paths crossed. There is profound gratitude hidden inside grief—the gratitude of having had someone worth missing.

So today, I do not want to remember only that Sharon Burke and Emma Janis Hess are gone. I want to remember that they lived. That they were loved. That they left memories behind in the hearts of those who knew them. And I want to say their names. Sharon. Emma.

They were here. They mattered. They will be remembered.

Some people leave our sight, but they never truly leave our stories. We carry them forward—in our memories, in our hearts, and in the people we become because we loved them.

And in that way, they remain with us.

Always.