Chapter 7
“She’s so sweet. And I’m so glad you were able to give all of her puppies away,” Phoebe said, straightening from where she had knelt down to pet Grace, Ryland’s dog.
Ryland and Lucas had gotten married just two months or so before, and Ryland had become a regular on the farm even though they still lived in town, in her small apartment by the library. They were waiting for the finances of the ranch to turn around so they would have money to build a house. In the meantime, they didn’t seem unhappy with the way things had turned out. In fact, if Phoebe had any say, she would say Lucas had never been happier.
It made her heart swell to see the light of joy and excitement in her siblings’ eyes. To see them fall in love with good people and start families of their own. Ryland was definitely a dear. And Phoebe was happy for the time that she’d gotten to spend with her and to get to know her better.
“I’m thrilled that they all seemed to go to really good homes. All three of their new owners have sent me pictures, and they’ve stayed in touch. I hope that continues, because it was a lot harder than what I realized it was going to be to allow the puppies to go to their new homes. I mean, I know we couldn’t keep them all, but I wanted to.”
“I wasn’t even as close to them as you are, and I wanted to keep them too. They all had their different personalities, and they were all sweet and cute and cuddly.”
Ryland chatted a bit more before she walked away, toward the barn where Lucas was working, with Grace following on her heels.
Phoebe turned, heading toward the garden. They had a few early vegetables in, and there were never enough hands to help with the work there. Not that she had a whole lot of time to spare, but she had told Priscilla that she would spend an hour in the garden with her today, and she needed to keep her word. Not to mention, she knew her twin was going through a hard time, and she wanted to be there for her, although she really wasn’t sure of what she could do, other than to provide a listening ear and compassion.
Priscilla was already in the garden, kneeling down, weeding the onions.
Phoebe went over to the other side of the row so they could face each other, and she knelt down directly opposite Priscilla. Priscilla had been weeding the entire row up until that point, and now, they’d done it long enough that they would automatically both just weed half of the row. It would go faster, and they could stay together and talk.
Back when they were kids, there would be the expected arguments about where the middle of the row was, and there would be weeds left in the row, as each of them refused to pull anything that might possibly be on the other person’s side.
Phoebe didn’t know how her parents put up with those kinds of arguments, but they were resolved, all the weeds were out, and she and Priscilla had grown up as each other’s best friend.
There was no one else in the world she loved more, and no one else in the world who knew her better. Even though they had ten other siblings, there was a special bond between the two of them. Whether it was because they were twins, or whether it was just because they were the same age and had spent so much time together, Phoebe didn’t really know. She didn’t care either, she just knew she loved her twin and would do anything for her.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time here. There are hardly any weeds anywhere,” Phoebe said as a few minutes passed without them doing more than saying hello.
“It’s the best place to think.” Priscilla sounded especially despondent, and Phoebe’s heart hurt with each beat in her chest.
“I agree. It’s nice to keep your hands busy with mindless tasks while you think about what you can do, but not ruminate, you know?”
“I’ve done my share of ruminating,” Priscilla said, still sounding sad but a little bit of humor in her voice as well.
“I think we all have. But it can eat us up inside.”
“I know.”
Phoebe pulled several more weeds out, careful not to disturb the roots of the onions which were doing really well. Back when they were younger, she’d pull them out of the ground, knock the dirt off the roots, bite the roots off with her teeth, spit that out on the ground, and just eat the onion like that. It was a wonder she didn’t die of some terrible disease, or maybe it was no wonder that she was so healthy and she hardly ever got sick.
Good and bad. A person could look at it either way.
“I wasn’t expecting Tillman to be so...handsome.”
“I guess I wasn’t thinking that he was handsome, although he is appealing in a rugged cowboy kind of way, if you like that kind of man.”
Priscilla’s husband had been a white-collar guy. He had a nine-to-five job, and while his job had been in the agricultural industry, he didn’t have to get his hands dirty. That had drawn Priscilla back when she was younger, and Phoebe could understand that draw. A regular schedule, someone else owning the company so all the stress was on them. The only stress on her husband would be making it to work on time, and hoping the company didn’t go through layoffs, and wondering how big his Christmas bonus would be.
“Maybe I should have said he looks like a man of character. And Ezra said that he was honest and upright. I suppose that’s what I meant when I said handsome.” Priscilla didn’t sound any less sad than she had, and her hands didn’t stop moving around the onions, pulling out every single weed.
Was Priscilla interested in Tillman?
Phoebe and Priscilla had never argued over a guy. Phoebe had never been seriously interested, and their parents had been, not strict, but emphatic that dating was not a good idea. They often said that it was a much better idea to work with a person, invite them over and see how they interacted with the family, do things with them in a group, just to see what kind of character a person had. Phoebe had never gone beyond that stage, and Priscilla had ignored any red flags she’d seen in her ex.
But now, maybe Priscilla was interested in getting married again or at least pursuing a romantic relationship.
For some reason, the thought bothered Phoebe. No man had ever gotten between them, and if she had anything to say about it, none ever would. So she would clear the air immediately.
“Are you interested in him?”
Priscilla stopped, her eyes flying to Phoebe’s. “No! You know what I’m going through. I don’t ever want to have anything to do with the male gender again in my life! Way, way too much hurt and pain and agony. The very least is not seeing my children.”
Interesting that she and Tillman had very similar experiences in their marriages. Her ex had also gotten custody of her children, and while Phoebe didn’t think Priscilla was exactly bitter, she could see parallels in the way she and Tillman both acted.
Maybe they would be good for each other.
“You know Ezra has him here for you.” Priscilla’s voice had modulated, and she was again pulling weeds with precision.
“No. He has him here for the rodeo. And yeah, I’m working with him, but it’s not for me in any way.”
“Come on. Ezra wanted you and Tillman to get together back when he was in college, but Tillman married that woman who divorced him, and I bet that if Ezra were the kind of guy to say ‘I told you so,’ he’d be ‘I told you so’-ing all over the place with that.”
“I don’t recall any of that. I don’t even know if Ezra ever mentioned Tillman to me in any kind of way other than talking about his roommate.”
“I know. His roommate. He talked about him. To you. And he even invited him to our house over Christmas break, but Tillman was already with the girl that he would eventually marry, and he didn’t come.”
“But that wasn’t for me.”
“Ezra really wanted it to be. But I often wondered if Ezra wanted the two of you to get together because he liked you and he liked Tillman, or whether he wanted the two of you to get together because he thought you were actually compatible. Ezra isn’t exactly a romantic.”
“No. I know.”
She had never considered that. Hadn’t had a clue, but then again, that was kind of the way she was. She didn’t really pick up on those things. She was more practical, saw the things that needed to be done, and did them. And didn’t try to read between the lines.
“Then our parents had the accident...” Priscilla’s voice trailed off; she didn’t really need to say any more. They all were familiar with how everyone’s life had been uprooted and totally changed because of losing their parents.
Phoebe had tried to make it so that the younger children did not have the upheaval in their lives that the rest of the kids had, and she thought she had been fairly successful with that. But for all of the older kids, it had been a time of traumatic transition.
God had worked things out though. She still missed her parents, still longed for her mother, longed to just be able to talk to her, even once. There were so many things that she wanted to tell her, talk to her about, to get her opinion on, but beyond that, she had become a better person because of the loss.
“I find that really hard to believe. Ezra never said anything to me about it at all. And I think you are just making assumptions.”
“You’re right. I am making assumptions. But if Ezra really did play matchmaker, I think he might have been onto something. Just seeing the two of you talk and move together, you just seem...in tune with him. If that makes sense.”
“I just met him. How could I be in tune with someone that I barely know?”
“Sometimes we just know. Sometimes God has the perfect person for us, and they’re perfect for us for reasons that we can’t even put our finger on.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Phoebe said, but then she felt she needed to be honest. This was her twin after all. “I mean, there is some kind of...odd feeling I get around him, but I wouldn’t say I feel like he’s the perfect man for me, and I definitely wouldn’t say that I want to be together with him or anything. He’s... He’s in your situation. From what I understand, it’s even worse because he lost his ranch too.”
“I know. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything. I certainly am not interested in being matched up with anyone, and I can’t imagine that he would be either, but you’ve been a huge help to me. When I started to get bitter, you showed me exactly what I was doing, without making me feel bad, just making me feel like I needed to do right. Maybe God has you on a collision course with him just because you’ll be able to help him. I don’t know, maybe it’s not a romantic thing. I just can’t think of anyone else in the world who would be better for a person like that than you.”
Her hands paused for just a moment as she kept her eyes cast on the ground, as though there were some big secret amongst the onions. “I’d really like to see you with someone like that. Someone with character and integrity, someone who works hard and is a really great guy. You deserve someone like that.”
“I deserve hell. The same as everyone else. Anything else that God gives me beyond that is a blessing that I don’t deserve.”
“You know what I mean. There are some people who end up married to a great guy, who really don’t deserve him. You and Tillman would be perfect for each other.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence, but I’m gonna keep it in perspective, considering that you’re my twin and my best friend in the entire world. I would expect you to have nice things to say about me.”
Phoebe tried to lighten the air between them. She hated that Priscilla was suffering, hated that she had so much sorrow and pain in her life, and honestly she wasn’t sure she wanted happiness for herself when her twin was so unhappy. Which was not a healthy attitude either, but it was the way she felt.
“Are you still thinking about moving back to Wyoming?” She held her breath after she asked that question, afraid her twin was going to say she was. She didn’t want to lose her, didn’t want her to move away, but it had been agony for the last year that she hadn’t been able to see her children at all, and the only way to fix the situation was to move back where they could have a split time of custody.
The judge had been unwilling to demand her children be moved away for any length of time, and her husband had fought her every step of the way, able to afford high-dollar lawyers because of his family’s money, not his own.
“Yeah. I want to cry every time I think about it,” Priscilla said, and Phoebe could hear the tears in her voice, could almost see her eyes filling, even though they were glued to the ground where her hands still moved to pull weeds. “But every time I think about my kids getting back from school and me not being there to greet them, then spending time with the woman that my ex is living with now, and them being a family with someone else. It just...rips me up to the point where I can barely think about it. In fact, I try not to think about it.”
“It’s probably best to not think about the things we can’t do anything about. Right now, you can’t fix any of that, so I agree that it’s for the best for you not to think about it.”
“But I want to solve it. It’s like a problem I can’t let go of. How can I figure it out so that I get my kids? You know?”
“Right. And moving back to Wyoming is the best solution. It just means that you leave all of us and you’re back there by yourself. We built such a network of support for each other that community is almost irrelevant. Being back there by yourself will probably be difficult, but we still have friends back there, and if that’s what you need to do, then that’s what you need to do.”
“I was thinking about asking you to go with me, but after watching you and Tillman, I want you to stay.”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t considered moving back to Wyoming with her twin. But she was her best friend and her family. And she really didn’t have anything holding her here now. Not anymore. Not with Lois graduating and going to college. Lois was the youngest and the last one that Phoebe had homeschooled. Technically the ranch could live without her, especially since Lucas had married Ryland, and Ryland was more than capable of doing everything that Phoebe did. She’d probably do it better.
“I never thought about that. Let me think about it. If that would make it easier for you, if that would make it better.”
“The judge might be more inclined to give me even more time if I had someone at home who could watch my kids if I worked. If we had a two-income home. Even though we’re sisters, of course.”
“Yeah. Wow. I... I feel like I could really help you.”
“But I don’t want to pull you away from here, if this is where you really want to be, and I definitely don’t want to pull you away from Tillman, if God brought Tillman here for you.”
“God has sure been taking His good old time in bringing anyone here for me. I’m almost at the point where I can’t have children, and while I know that’s not the only reason to get married, having a family would be a big reason for me.”
“Yeah. Same.”
They continued to pull weeds in silence, with Phoebe rolling around the new ideas in her head. She had never considered them before, and she wished she had. She would have convinced Priscilla to move back as soon as her ex got full custody and convinced the judge that the children shouldn’t travel to North Dakota on a regular basis.
It was a long drive, and it would be hard on the kids, but to see their mom?
Of course, going to pick the kids up and bring them back, then traveling that distance home would be hard on Priscilla as well. Maybe that ruling was for the best, and Priscilla moving to Wyoming would be for the best as well. But Phoebe moving with her?
Lord, please let me know what I need to do. I want to do what You want me to do, even if it’s not what I want.